As I always do on fall Sunday mornings after a Saturday Virginia Tech football game, I found myself out on the patio as the sun was just coming up, trying to understand what the heck just happened last night.
My mind was drawn to the memory of a movie from long ago called “Remember The Titans” in which Coach Bill Yoast turns to his defense and after a fiery speech, concludes “Leave No Doubt!”
That’s kind of what the Hokies did last night. The atmosphere at Lane Stadium was a little like another movie – Hoosiers – where the basketball coach had lost a few games and the town council was voting on whether he stayed or got fired. No matter what the year or results, Hokie fans have always been a mixture of “fire him now” and “maybe if you just gave him a little more time” perspectives, but you could feel a certain expectation that if there was a time to show you knew what you were doing, now would be an excellent time to do so.
Instead, Virginia Tech “Remembered The Titans.” They left no doubt as to how far the program has slipped, immediately falling behind 31-0 to Old Dominion, a school that when I was a student in Blacksburg, didn’t even play football.
There was never a moment when any reasonable fan fashioned an expectation Virginia Tech had a chance. By game’s end, an ODU player was dancing in the end zone like the Monarchs were Ohio State and the Hokies were the Washington Generals. The stands were so empty it looked like a spring game audience. The ACC Network had another game coming up next and they didn’t bother to move the remaining minutes to ACC Network Extra. They just left, believing nobody cared.
They weren’t laughing with us. They were laughing at us.
Clearly something on this team broke in the last two weeks. They opened against South Carolina and for three quarters, they showed a fair amount of fight. They made changes on defense that seemed to work, the players showed emotion and fire on key plays, and had the offense managed at least one touchdown, they were in it until the final minutes.
The same was true in the first half against Vanderbilt, as they took a 20-10 lead into the locker room at halftime. But then something must have happened.
The Hokies got outscored in the second half of the Vanderbilt game 34-0, and after the first half last night, trailed ODU 28-0. That means in the span of the four quarters that would normally make up a regulation game, Virginia Tech got outscored 62-0, and in the process, looked emotionally checked out.
It seemed as if it went from being an adventure to just a job for the team. Even though they were playing in the biggest stadium the school has ever had, filled with fans paying the highest ticket prices the school has ever had, with even the players getting the largest NIL monies the school has ever paid, they looked lost. As if they had been prepared for a certain set of circumstances and told if they did particular things in response, they could fight back.
Whatever they were prepared for didn’t work. And they looked less than confident that any new information coming in was going to work either.
Rock, meet bottom.
So now here we are, in a deep fog as to where we’re going. I wrote last week if the Hokies started off 0-3, the barbarians would be at the gate and they are…or at least were until leaving in disgust at halftime. If that crowd last night was a town council meeting voting on the fate of the coach, it would have been a lopsided tally for a change. Not even Jimmy Chitwood coming in the door to say I’ll play if coach stays would have made a difference.
The problem, however, isn’t just one guy. None of the issues affecting the program just popped up this summer and culminated in what we saw last night. This has been a gradual decline where the plan of action at the top seems to have been centered around just hoping the problems would go away. “Wait until next year” could have easily been the title of one strategic powerpoint presentation in Merryman.
Hope, however, is no longer a strategy, and now it gets hard, because unless you like open festival seating at football games because so few people are attending, problems have to be addressed. It’s also not just one coach that needs replacing, as Virginia Tech athletics has to get the right people in the right seats on the bus going forward. They haven’t in some time, and the fact that some of the same people who need to be replaced are in positions of influencing such decisions only makes it more difficult.
But it needs to happen. Now. Fans are always clamoring to “clean house” when things don’t go well, and most of the time I think they’re overreacting.
But after watching last night, I don’t think they are. Changes have to be made.
It’s nothing personal, as they said in the greatest movie ever made, “The Godfather.”
It’s strictly business.
WE ARE …… the worst team in P4 ……
Has Tech EVER had an athletic director that the “fans” were not howling through the bum out.
It all comes down to University goals and the allocation of University funds.we have VERY FEW billionaires who are willing to through millions at sports.