Finally, the Hokies are Aligned

Sometimes, because I'm an absolute sicko, I'll go on YouTube and watch Virginia Tech games from the glory days. Specifically, I'll speed through just about any game I can find from the 1999-2010 range. I frequently take in anything from Michael Vick-led blowouts to Tyrod and company in the ACC Championship game, with everything in between.

At some point, as the games slowly got stripped off the internet — because the big tech conglomerates hate anything that elicits positive human emotion — I began to run out of Hokie wins. So now, I'll watch the losses. What are they going to do, hurt me again?

(The answer is yes, they still hurt on the second and third watch.)

I really started leaning into this particular masochistic tendency when things turned south for the 2025 squad. I'd rather watch the 2007 Kansas Orange Bowl or the 2005 Miami blowout than spend another second thinking about if Kyron Drones and the boys will lose by two or three touchdowns.

But one thing I noticed after watching some of the most brutal Hokie losses of the last 20 years: the team was still so good. They had their problems, sure. They weren't ever quite as talented as those at the tippy top of college football. The lines weren't always great. The offense in general...Stinespring'd. And in the moment, the warts felt palpable.

At the time, the 2009 opener against Alabama seemed like a classic example of the distance between Tech and a true contender. The Tide controlled the game, Tech miraculously kept it close for a while until Nick Saban's squad slowly pulled away. They had Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, Julio Jones and a gaggle of defensive NFLers. "Damn," we thought, "the Hokies just aren't good enough."

But when you go back and watch that team with a 2025 lens...holy shit:

Yes, the Hokies lost by 10, and couldn't move the ball for large chunks of time. But look at how fast they are. Look at how physically built they are. The defense wanted to kill Greg McElroy in cold blood. Dyrell Roberts was a four star athlete returning kicks. Ryan Williams looked like a pro on his first touch.

The Tide would go on to win the national title, and this game was one of their most competitive of their season (including both the SEC and BCS championship games.) Not due to luck, but because Tech was a top-10 team with over a dozen future pros on the roster.

It's important to remember this, not for some nostalgic walk down memory lane, but because time puts distance between ourselves and the truth. It's easy to talk about BeamerBall as some ragtag group of walk-ons and coal miners' kids who won with special teams and grit. But the facts tell a different story. One of a single-minded head coach who drummed up massive amounts of cash (for his era) to make the Hokies one of the most funded programs in the country.

They built one of the earliest modern football facilities. They started paying assistants top dollar before it was the norm. They took advantage of prime time slots on ESPN to turn Lane Stadium into the Terror Dome. The Hokies were one of the coolest brands in college football, not because they were doing more with less, but because they were doing more with more.