You could tell by the end of Alabama’s first touchdown-scoring offensive series, Ohio State was in trouble last night.

Alabama is going to lay 50 on these guys, I told my faithful dog Maggie, the WonderBeagle.

Since she had chosen to take Ohio State and the points, she immediately got down from my lap, and as you see in the picture to the right, kneeled down and prayed I was wrong.

Her prayers - and Ohio State’s -  were not answered.

Part of it was certainly the tremendous athletes Alabama has, but Ohio State had great athletes too. Yes, the Buckeyes also were missing a key player in injured running back Trey Sermon, but he wasn’t playing defense.

The part that caught my attention, however, was how Ohio State approached playing defense against this powerful offense. It looked pretty predictable, and made Alabama’s drives look relatively easy. ESPN, as it does in national championship games, provides multiple feeds for the game, including a “film room” with coaches, and they did not appear impressed.

Former Auburn coach and UNC defensive coordinator Gene Chizik noted Ohio State was playing so much one-high safety, Alabama’s offense could pretty much pick what they wanted to do. Liberty Coach Hugh Freeze, who knows a thing or two about offense and has actually beaten Alabama as a head coach, echoed that by saying you could see clearly what Ohio State’s defense was going to do when you came to the line of scrimmage.

Alabama’s hard enough to beat when you DO confuse the quarterback; letting him easily see what he’s facing is just inviting a boat race. It creates a situation where I kind of thought Alabama QB Mac Jones was just having a ho-hum night, making throws that were good, but nothing spectacular. Then you realize he threw for 464 yards and 5 touchdowns while completing 80 percent (36 of 45) of his passes.

Ho hum, indeed.

Twenty-one years ago today, I woke up in a rather modest hotel in Slidell, LA, packed up my things, and my friend Bob and I began the long drive back home to High Point, NC.

It was the morning after Virginia Tech had played Florida State for the National Championship, and the previous 24 hours had produced memories that at the time we knew would – and have – lasted a lifetime. But we were both silent and a bit sad.

We had come so close to watching Virginia Tech realize the pinnacle of college football. We both gone to VT from 1974 to 1978, so we had a clear appreciation of where the program had been and where it was that morning. We also knew that this specific moment in VT football history – at least what it meant to the two of us – was never going to happen again.

“You think,” Bob said as we crossed the Mississippi state line, “that there will come a time where all our fans are spoiled and anything less than this will be a disappointment?”

It was a fair question that we talked about for many miles. When the Hokies beat Texas in the Sugar Bowl four years earlier, I sat out on my deck a few minutes past midnight, light rain falling, smoking a Cuban cigar I had saved for a special occasion. I was a newly minted Dad, as my 8-month old daughter was sleeping inside, my alma mater made it all the way to a big name contest like the Sugar Bowl, and they didn’t just show up and act happy they were in the game. They fell behind, then stormed back and had actually WON.

Life was good. And I knew how lucky I - and every other Hokie who was as passionate about the team as I was – was to experience it. The days of 3-win seasons and never being mentioned on the national sports scene seemed over.

“Everything runs in cycles,” I answered Bob. “I guess it will depend on how long they’ve gotten used to experiencing this kind of winning.” I then pointed out we’d see pretty soon because anyone who was a freshman in 1995 was now either graduating or was about to. They’d seen two Sugar Bowls, an Orange Bowl, a Gator Bowl and a win over Alabama in a Music City Bowl.  An 8-win season – the high-water mark for us when we were students at VT - to them might be considered a disaster.

We both agreed that the way things were going, there were going to be a lot more years before that ever was going to be a problem. Heck, we came within a quarter of winning it all. Mike Vick was going to be back the next year along with a lot of other players. All the publicity was going to allow us to bring in even better recruits. If we could just have 2 or 3 more really good years, we might even get a chance to get our ultimate goal, which was to one day be in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“We’ll be back next year,” Bob said, and I agreed. We should.

I have to admit, I couldn’t help noticing several moments during Virginia Tech’s big upset of No. 3 Villanova last night and then not think about the contrast between the football and basketball programs.

Those moments illustrated a lesson I hope Virginia Tech’s athletic administration has learned.

The first came late in the game when the Hokies were rallying. Television cameras caught the Virginia Tech bench, where Coach Mike Young was briefing his players on what he wanted done during the timeout. The players were engaged, excited, listening. Young was full of energy, but controlled, as if teaching a class and both coach and player alike were excited about what they were learning.

The second came after the game. Young immediately took the blame for a key play that occurred in the final seconds. Keve Aluma was supposed to miss the second shot of a one-and-one; he tried, but it banked in, so Villanova had one last chance. There were 1.3 seconds left so the odds Villanova could pass the ball inbounds and make a shot were slim to none. The only chance was to run the baseline, slip one of your players in front of the defender while he’s watching the ball, and draw a charge.

That’s what happened to the Hokies’ Justyn Mutts. A foul was called, Villanova made both ends of the one-and-one and the game went into overtime. Asked about it after the game, Young was quick to say “I failed to coach my player [Mutts] on one of the oldest tricks in the book and it almost cost us."

This was not a case of Young using the press to confess his coaching sins to the world. Young is a sharp and experienced coach who is not only good at coaching X’s and O’s, but is just as good managing and motivating people. He knew people might criticize Mutts for that play, and he was having none of it. He immediately drew the arrow toward himself, deflected all criticism from the player and heaped it all on the coach.

Which is what great coaches do.

Well, here we are, back at the crossroads.

We knew we’d be back here one day. As we watched the rocket ship take off under Frank Beamer, enjoyed the streak of bowl games, the long streak of wins over Virginia, even the decades-long streak of not having a losing season, we knew nothing would last forever.

But last night it officially did. The end of the streak of not having a losing season ended two years ago. The 15-game streak over UVA ended last year. With a 45-10 loss to Clemson last night, there will be no bowl game. The 27-year run is over.

Every brick Frank put together to build the foundation of the football program is now gone.

That it has happened so fast is maddening. That it is Justin Fuente who has fired up the flux capacitor and taken this program back to where it was in the 1980s is stunning. After his first two seasons, he was doing so well fans were afraid he might leave. He won 19 games in those seasons, said all the right things, and executed the transition between Frank and his program flawlessly.

But last night’s game was a microcosm of what has happened since. You could see flashes of what a great coach Fuente could be in the first quarter; he employed personnel in different roles, showed different formations defenses couldn’t study on film, and made bolder calls on offense that for a moment, had Clemson back on its heels.

This fired up an already well-prepared team, as they realized the improbable could be possible. It was 10-10 late in the second quarter, and despite having to create their own energy in an empty stadium, the Hokies were showing a national television audience they weren’t going to roll over and fulfill the 23.5-point beating oddsmakers had predicted.

But Clemson then scored to make it 17-10 in the final minute. The Hokies got the ball back with relatively decent field position at the 32, one run got them to the 36, and another advanced the ball to the Clemson 43. For a second I thought there was a mistake, as my television showed the clock continuing to run through all that, with Khalil Herbert’s 21-yard run going out of bounds with only two seconds left in the half.

It was no mistake. Fuente told his offense to run out the clock despite having three timeouts left. Had he just used one, he probably could have kept running the ball and ended up in field goal range. As it was, they threw a Hail Mary that was caught at the one, and the half ended with no time on the clock.

Lord knows, there were plenty of things in yesterday’s Virginia Tech-Pitt game to be unhappy with.

But for me, it wasn’t the predictable play calls, the missed tackles, the going for it on 4^th and 4 and only getting 3, or losing by a wide margin to a team that had lost 4 of its last 5 and had 16 players out.

It was a single answer by Justin Fuente to a fair question by Richmond’s Mike Barber after the game.

The question involved the Hokie offense and the perception of a lack of imagination in play calling that has been voiced by many Hokie fans on social media. The team had gotten off to a great start offensively, averaging over 40 points a game and going 3-1 in their first four games.

But a wheel seemed to come off the high-scoring bus at Wake Forest, as Virginia Tech was held to only 16 points in a loss to the Deacons. The Hokies have now lost 4 of their last 5, and instead of averaging 40, they scored 16 against Wake, 24 against Miami and only 14 yesterday against Pitt.

During those games, there have been flashes of versatility and imagination that led to big plays. But when things got tight, the Hokies seemed to crawl back into their shell and run the same handful of plays they always run, specifically a quarterback keeper by Hendon Hooker.

Because of that, Barber asked the question many fans would like to know the answer to: With an open date coming up, which would allow for some changes to be made that would address some of the shortcomings shown during the current 3-game losing streak, would Fuente consider taking over play calling for the final two games of the regular season?

Fuente reacted with not only disgust, but almost contempt for Barber. “That’s the most ludicrous crap I’ve ever heard. Next question.”

I’ll take that as a no, coach.

As I do every Sunday morning, I got some hot coffee, then Maggie the WonderBeagle and I thrashed out the results of the previous day’s Virginia Tech football game. It was another loss, and I was trying to develop some level of outrage about how the state of the program has fallen so far since the glory days of the 90s and early 2000s.

I couldn’t.

It was at this point Maggie looked up from sniffing every leaf in the back yard and said “why would you? Do you really think anything’s going to change?”

Admittedly, the hound is right.

If you take yourself through what would happen if you made the change this morning, you see the foolishness of such a move. Unless you’ve got a name coach ready to come in tomorrow who can lead the program back to the 10-win seasons of yesterday, the first thing you’d have to do is name an interim coach for the rest of the season.

That alone says to fans we’re punting on the rest of the season, not to mention the question of which assistant would you elevate to the job temporarily. This isn’t your father’s program where if Frank Beamer left, Bud Foster could grab the helm and the program would keep on trucking. Indeed, one of the bigger issues on this team is the performance of some of the key assistants. You going to promote one of them?

Then there is the danger that the assistant does really well those last few games. With nothing to lose, many times the team plays better as they rally around their teammates. Then there’s pressure to let the interim stay as the head coach, the school does it for the sake of continuity, and you soon realize why that coach was an assistant and not a head whistle.

You certainly don’t save any money in that scenario, as you’re going to pay the head coach any way. If anything, it costs you more because you have to pay the assistant you promoted more. So you’ve spent money you don’t have just to make a change that doesn’t make the situation any better.

I’m not arguing you shouldn’t consider a change at the end of the season. But this is an unusual year where all players get a mulligan and can come back next year regardless of eligibility. And there is a possibility that head coach Justin Fuente might just “get it” before the end of the season. There were signs of that yesterday.

It has taken me 8 games into the season to see it, but I think I now have a feeling why this program isn’t going anywhere.

It’s a decided lack of trust. Or for lack of a better word, fear.

Not just fear of dialing up a daring play when the game is on the line, although that certainly happened in the fourth quarter. The coaching staff actually put together an imaginative offensive game plan where early plays set up later plays and for three quarters, they ran it well. It wasn’t until the fourth period that they became like a turtle going back into its shell, afraid to do anything other than the basic core plays they run all the time.

But I’m talking about more than that.

One of the things you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been a long-time watcher of Virginia Tech football is that the most hated man in Blacksburg is always the offensive coordinator. Half of the profane words I have accumulated into my vocabulary were acquired sitting up high on the alumni side of Lane Stadium around the 20, listening to old-timers describe the job they thought Ricky Bustle was doing.

Fans weren’t much kinder to Gary Tranquil, Bryan Stinespring or Scot Loeffler, and under Justin Fuente, Brad Cornelsen is the man getting his time in the barrel.

Over the years, sometimes the brutal criticism has been warranted. Other times it has not.

But if you’ll look at the years when the Hokies’ performed well no matter who the OC was, I think there’s a trend that’s hard to ignore.

After finishing what I believe was my 8,000^th career pizza on a Friday night for dinner, was just noticing a few people on Twitter saying they really don’t care about the game tomorrow with Miami after last week’s disappointing loss to Liberty.

I get it, I really do. Actually heard an old friend say the same today.

But here’s five things I’d counter with:

1. This isn’t some nameless team of people who come and go any given week wearing a jersey that says Virginia Tech on it. It’s Hendon Hooker and Quincy Patterson and Tre Turner and young men we’ve seen and gotten to know the last few years. I don’t care what jersey they’re wearing, they’ve become family. Family doesn’t give up on family when things get tough.
2. It’s Miami. The U. The team that’s always back once they win more than one game in a row. Yeah, they’ve got some good players, but they've always got good players. They talk the talk yet rarely walk the walk. Many years ago, the Dallas Cowboys were perceived this way and one day after San Francisco was routing them at halftime, viewership actually went up in the second half despite the game having no suspense to it. People just wanted to tune in to see the Cowboys get their backsides kicked. Miami is like that too.
3. If you play golf, you know you’re not going out on the links and shooting 70. You’re playing for moments, like that birdie on No. 5, or the 5-iron on the par-3 No. 12 that just missed being a hole in one. Then you drink a lot of beer and make it sound like it was much better than it was. Well, that’s also the way Virginia Tech football is going to be this year. Remember that win over N.C. State with half the team not playing? That was the birdie on No. 5. The loss to Liberty was the driver in the woods than turned into an 8. Tomorrow could be that 5-iron on the par-3, which is the beauty of this team. You know it has weapons, just like you have a bag of golf clubs. Question becomes if in either situation, the tools are used correctly.

I have to admit, I’m getting tired of all the negative Virginia Tech stories. I understand they need to be written, and I’ve written several myself. But it’s a rainy Wednesday that’s probably going to turn into a rainy Thursday, so I’m ready to read something positive.

As noted in a previous post, I was digging through the basement for some old newspaper clips involving Wichita State Coach Gregg Marshall last night. Having found what I was looking for, I returned to the basement this morning to put them away. In the box I was returning these artifacts to was the program you see to the right.

Which sparked one of the greatest Hokie memories I’ll ever have.

That game back in 1995 wasn’t one filled with joy and anticipation. My wife and I had sat out in the rain the previous week against Cincinnati, a miserable contest where Virginia Tech didn’t even score. They were 0-2 after losing to Boston College in the opener, and there were even grumbles in the car driving to Lane Stadium that we may have wasted a bunch of money for these season tickets if they were going to continue playing like this.

As history will note, the Hokies bounced back in this game, beat Miami, and would not lose the rest of the season, winning 10 straight and culminating in a program-defining win over Texas in the Sugar Bowl.

But that’s not what made the day special.

As I noted in a different story the other day, the world was not only given the likes of Chase Elliot in 1995, but also received a beautiful baby girl born to a single mother in Eastern North Carolina. She would later become our daughter, but it was not without some legal issues that made for more than a few sleepless nights for my wife and I. We had hired a lawyer to help us get through all these issues, and as we were driving from High Point, NC to Blacksburg, my Leroy Jethro Gibbs-style Motorola Startac flip phone rang.

We were on I-77 closing in on the North Carolina/Virginia line, and it was the attorney. She had good news, explaining that the last of the paperwork had been completed Friday, and everything was in order so that Monday morning, we could go get our new daughter and bring her home with us.

While things are not a lot of fun these days in Blacksburg, there is one good thing about all the unrest around Virginia Tech athletics: You get to hear from all your old Hokie friends.

They all want to know the same thing. What the heck is going on?

Then there are the two friends I’ve known since my freshman year: Bob and Doug. The three of us have seen every twist and turn there has been involving Virginia Tech. Bob and I drove 12 hours to New Orleans to see Michael Vick and the Hokies in the national championship game. Doug and I flew to Chicago, rented a car and drove to South Bend to see Virginia Tech play Notre Dame for the very first time.

We’ve followed the Hokies for so long, we’ve gone from being able to fit in those narrow seats in Cassell Coliseum (it was actually just the Virginia Tech Coliseum for a couple of years before being renamed for Stuart Cassell) to growing to the point of being uncomfortable in those seats, to now seeing Hokie leadership show some compassion and just make the seats bigger.

We’ve seen coaches fired, coaches hired, buildings built, crushing defeats, and wins that made us disturb the neighbors with our celebrations. We’ve followed the Hokies through divorces, deaths of friends and family, and a variety of moves by the three of us to different parts of the country.

Together, we’ve seen fire and rain.

So it was no surprise I heard from Bob yesterday. It was his question I found unusual.

“Just wanted to check in on you and make sure you’re OK,” Bob said.

Why would you be concerned about that? I replied.

It’s highly unusual I write on any subject for three days in a row. But I keep seeing this sentiment of “Fire Fuente” on social media, and I just have to address it in more than a couple hundred characters.

First, I understand the emotion to get on the phones and ask fans for millions of dollars to make a change.

Second, it’s a really bad idea.

I will acknowledge that Saturday’s game moved me from the “Fuente can be a good long-term coach for Virginia Tech” to “He’s never going to be more than a C-minus kind of guy in Blacksburg." But we’re like a patient who has finally realized their knee has been torn up so bad over the years, something needs to be done to possibly return it to the form of younger years.

The first step is not to amputate it.

You’re also calling for people to give money in the middle of a pandemic where discretionary funds are historically at their lowest in most households. It’s also 6 weeks before Christmas. You're going to ask people to skip out on buying a few extra presents for family so they can throw a few C-notes into a fund to hire someone you don’t even know who it is?

That’s the problem with these kinds of things. When the phone rang back in the early 2000s asking for some money to make sure we had a pot of gold to keep Frank Beamer from going to Alabama, my answer was an immediate yes. I knew what I was getting for my money: An established coach who loved Virginia Tech, had recruiting connections in every high school in the state and had just played for a national championship in the last few years.

I mean, who wouldn’t say yes to that?