Back on January 8th, as the Hokies prepared to start their ACC schedule (we are ignoring Duke), I said I would revisit the team’s progress after our first five conference games and here’s how things went:

Win  - Jan. 10, 2009 Virginia
Win - Jan. 17, 2009 Boston College (then ranked #17, currently unranked)
Win - Jan. 21, 2009 at Wake Forest (then and currently ranked #4)
Win - Jan. 25, 2009 at Miami-FL
Loss - Jan. 29, 2009 Clemson (then ranked #12, currently ranked #11)

Well I hate to be unhappy with a 4-1 result especially since we upset the last undefeated and number one ranked Wake Forest team on their home court but I really feel deflated from tonight’s collapse against Clemson. Up as many as 15 in the second half the Hokies couldn’t adjust from a fast paced full-press gameplay in to a slower more aggressive protection by Clemson. From the high euphoria of Malcom Delaney’s 50-foot buzzer beater to a freezing cold middle of the second half in which the Hokies just couldn’t score it was the definition of high and low for one game. To have a certain top 25 ranking and inside track to the NCAA tournament cut in to by the Tigers by a slowly twisted knife in the Hokies’ gut was as much pain as any Hokie fan can take.

But there is a lot to be proud of, after all if you told me back at the start of the ACC schedule we could be 5-2 at the end of January - I would be exstatic. If you told me we would beat a number 1 team in that span, I would punch you in the face and then punch myself in the face. The win over Wake Forrest ranks as one of the biggest victories in Virginia Tech history and helps to ease the pain of the couple of almost-top-team-upsets the Hokies saw disappaear in the final second of the game. And other than Delaney’s rediculous performance in the first half of the Clemson game there are plenty of plays to look back upon and smile, including Allen’s great pick… I mean two great picks… against UVA, our great runs against Wake, Thorns really stepping up off the bench, and a great overtime victory on the road at Miami.

In all being 4-2 in the ACC is nothing to take lightly and if we can continue playing strong basketball against our next five ACC opponents, all of which are ranked below Virginia Tech, the Hokies can look to the last two home games against Duke and UNC to be a final push for a NCAA tournament berth before the ACC tournament at the end of the season. I am definately pleased that the basketball team is keeping me this interested in the football offseason and actually starting to make a basketball school out of Virginia Tech.

PETA, the people who tell you that eating Peeps causes anxiety for both chickens and the Easter bunny alike, have decided to rescind plans to make an animal cruelty Public Service Announcement starring Michael Vick. PETA now insists that Michael Vick submit to a “brain scan” to determine if he has a serious mental impairment (which -in their opinion- is the only reason Vick would want to put his own “family” pet in a dog fighting octagon).

PETA also gave Vick an animal empathy test (scanned copy here) on which he mustered a (highly subjective) score of 73.5% which actually isn’t half bad if you think about the fact that we already knew Vick was dumb enough to wear a hat that advertised his Bad Newz Kennel illegal dog fighting operations on national television and he thought it wise to build essentially a Doggy Death Bellagio Deathcamp Resort at his home in Surry County, VA. I scanned the test responses Vick gave, and although the answers looked as rehearsed as a first-grader spitting out a memorized verse of the Declaration of Independence in a school play, there is a certain honest humility to the answers he gave. I was impressed to see the quality of Vick’s writing… he used proper punctuation and commas, I counted several 4-syllable words, and my shit was blown away when I saw a semicolon. By comparison I don’t think that his brother Marcus can spell his name without suffocating on an empty bag of Alphabets Cereal.

So okay, Vick messed up… colossally. He wants to come back to the NFL by any means possible and clearly is willing to jump through any flaming hoops PETA tells him will help accomplish that goal, but I think he needs to give up on ever getting in that lunatic farm’s good graces. PETA will never allow Vick to live down his actions… despite serving more jail time than was recommended by the prosecutors, losing his career, his money, his endorsements, and his name. PETA is so fucking crazy that even the most stringent animal-loving-vegan crotch-forest hippies look at the things PETA does and say “Woah, these people are totally apeshit.”

Vick, if you are reading this, which you aren’t, and you want to help your image with the public then simply walk out of jail (only once released please) and face the media cameras directly on your own. Tell them all (PETA, Nancy Grace, the white guy who bought your Nike shoes) that you are deeply sorry for what you have done BUT also remind them you are only one person: a person who has served time for your crimes and lost everything with nothing left to give but your word. Shave your eyebrows off to show them how serious you are.

Then when you go and join the 49ers training camp just try and ignore all the boos and protesters- they will become thinner and more distant in enough time. Number 7 jerseys will begin to populate the bay area and you will once again find yourself in Young Jeezy lyrics. Then finally after enough time has passed you will walk out on to field many seasons later as “the man who overcame a very difficult time to become a football hero again”. On that day your boos will be drowned out (like pitbulls) in the echoing cheers of your fans and finally, at that moment, you will have learned the true meaning of the golden rule (at least for half credit).

Tomorrow Virginia Tech will walk in to Joel Coliseum and attempt to hand the only undefeated team in the nation its first loss. Although it will be one of the toughest games in recent memory for the Hokies, I believe they have a real shot at making headlines when the final second ticks off the clock around 9:30pm tomorrow.

After tomorrow’s game, Wake Forest will have the upcoming weekend off, that’s before they host Number 2 ranked Duke on the 28th. Fans have started camping out for Duke, media crews are already polishing their media guides, and Dick Vitale’s hard-on has reached terminal velocity for (what would be) a 1 versus 2 match-up. Its a great opportunity for VT to come in and catch the Decons off guard (by the way never google image search “Jeff Allen” with safe-search turned off). It seems like every year Tech pulls off a great road game (sometimes ending in half court heartbreak) and the team is posied to take momentum in to North Carolina… Virginia Tech has won three straight and seven of their past eight games since mid-December. Since the Duke loss, the team signed a contract promising to give 100% the rest of the season - a tactic Seth Greenberg pulls out every year.We will see if the team upholds its end of the bargain.

Its not to say that Wake is overrated either. In five of the past six seasons, the very last team in the country to lose a game has gone on to at a minimum the Sweet 16 and three of those years the last unbeaten has advanced to the NCAA title game. Young starters Jeff Teague and Al-Farouq Aminu have been masterful but much like Hokies squad, they makeup the bulk of a three man show for scoring and rebounding. VT should look to hold back the long shot and esspecially pressure freshman Aminu, who though talented also gets in to foul trouble quickly when frustrated.As long as we play a well-paced game and don’t get ahead of ourselves (taking horrible attempts at dunks and quick look shots at threes) and the fans don’t attack us in the stands we can show the ACC that you should never overlook any team when you play in the best basketball conference in the country.

Score Prediction:  Virginia Tech 80 - Wake Forrest 78 (far fetched — but change you can believe in)

Aside from being my all time favorite dick cheer, every year there are a number of teams who shit the bed and don’t live up to lofty preseason expectations (thus being labeled overrated). On the flip side, there are also teams who grab a couple of roided up Juco transfers and post amazing seasons that their fans will talk about for years to come. I did a quick analysis of the data to find out which teams lived up to (or poo pooed) their preseason expectations. For my method, I looked at each team in the preseason and final AP and coaches poll rankings and compared their average poll positions. If a team was no longer ranked in the final polls, I had to use the Jeff Saragin ratings (aka the dipshit poll) to perform the calculation. The results are below:

And the award for most overrated team goes to…..Michigan! That’s right; the winningest team in CFB history pulled a Notre Dame this year and left a tightly coiled pile of losses on the lawn of the Big House. Rich Rod may be on unemployment by this time next year.

The most underrated team…TCU. LT’s alma mater was hardly noticed at the beginning of the season when they received only a handful of votes in the coaches poll and finished at a unanimous 7th place in both polls.

So who was fairly rated? Both USC and Pittsburgh finished at exactly the same average poll spots. Way to live up to expectations and not a penny more!

Other notable observations: VT was slightly underrated this year…Notre Dame finally got legitimate rankings (starting and finishing outside of both polls)….

The ACC schedule is underway for the Hokies and it is time to start scrutinizing every game and how it could impact the Hokies’ chances of making it to the NCAA tournament. VT already fell to Duke in an unsurprising rout (which was looking like a ballgame a few minutes in to the second half but quickly deteriorated when the Hokies tried to speed things up). ACC Game number 2 is Saturday when VT takes on UVA. Its a chance to start the tally of all-important ACC wins. The ACC usually sends a good number of teams to the tournament, however last year the conference only managed four teams compared to Big East’s eight, and this year there is a good crop of talent in the conference to return to old trends and get a majority of ACC schools playing in March. Currently ESPN’s bracketology forecasts seven ACC teams in the dance, the Hokies of course are outside looking in.

With the exception of Duke and UNC who are basically constants, ACC teams find a way to at least GET to the tournament every three years or so. A look at the last time each team made the tournament shows that all but two teams have been within the past three years, with Wake Forrest just a year behind that… Florida State hasn’t been in a decade but look like they could return this year. I personally hope they don’t make it and lose to a bad case of measles after trading goods with Coppin State.

So what will that mean for the Hokies, who were considered one of the last bubble teams left out last year? It means with their underwhelming out-of-conference performance they will need to pick up a good number of wins, against good ACC opponents, if they want to return in 2008 after a year hiatus. Our next 5 ACC games should be a good barometer for gauging how hard this battle will be:

Next 5 ACC Games:
Jan. 10, 2009 Virginia
Jan. 17, 2009 Boston College (currently ranked #17)
Jan. 21, 2009 at Wake Forest (currently 13-0 and ranked #4)
Jan. 25, 2009 at Miami-FL
Jan. 29, 2009 Clemson (currently ranked #12)

We will revisit at the end of January and see how tech is doing and whether or not its time to start thinking about baseball season…

The Miami Herald headline the next morning read “Happy Hokies” - and that is probably all you need to know about the Orange Bowl.

The Hokies exercised a lot of demons with their first BCS win and the team’s first major bowl victory since 1995’s Sugar Bowl victory over Texas. After the first 2 minutes it looked like it was going to be a long night for the Hokies but a little Le Dip Majick helped rebound the Hokies and after tying up the score at 7-7 we never looked back. Despite an expectation to be an empty stadium, both teams filled up their respective sections and only the top bowl was loosely filled bringing the supposed total attendance to 57,821, meaning Jon Ross was doing the counting.

Obviously the Hokies did everything they had to do in front of a national audience. The team benefited from great athletic running performances by Evans and Taylor and it is an understatement to say it was a great night for Tech defense. Watching from the stands I didn’t realize how spectacular the four interceptions were for the Hokies until I saw replays the next day while flying back. Then I puked in to my seatback pocket.

Bud Foster was clearly on top of his game after the first drive made it look like the Hokies were severely overmatched. Media interviewers couldn’t avoid asking Foster how he feels about still being an assistant and he said he is happy staying with the Hokies but didn’t hesitate advertising he would be willing to be the big show at a major conference school.

I spoke with a couple of Hokie alumni on my flight back who claimed to be close to the coaching staff and they said Foster hasn’t made the move to another school’s head spot because he apparently doesn’t interview well and is extremely disorganized - something that would keep him from being successful if he did leave Tech to be a head coach elsewhere. And apparently Stinespring is very well liked among the coaching staff as a person, despite the team knowing he is out of touch with play calling, which has helped keep him out of the doghouse.

The mixture of ice and whiskey delayed some of my reactions to big plays, but when we held Cincinnati at fourth and goal in the fourth quarter I could finally sense that the BCS bowl loss streak was going to end. It was a strange feeling that almost seemed undeserved since I have grown accustom to leaving bowl games saying things like “well… they played well, can’t be disappointed with the season either” but instead we left to cheers of “let’s go Hokies” intermixed with screaming Doobie Brothers lyrics. The celebration continued through the streets of Miami Beach - and culminated in a boutique hotel room where our extremely old and extremely Jewish neighbor thinks we caused $100 worth of noise, and for good reason.

Though its been highly publicized, its worth repeating: Virginia Tech has reached bowl games in 16 straight seasons (only Florida and Florida State can say that these days) and with the win on Thursday VT has won at least 10 games in five straight seasons (USC and Texas are the only common company there).