Reading Beamer’s lips after Georgia Tech recovered an onside kick with less than two minutes to go said it all.

The Hokies hopes for a National Championship vanished at the hands of Paul Johnson spread-option offense. The empty trophy case will remain such for at least another year. In some regard it felt like the Hokies had snuck under the velvet rope to the National Championship party after the season opening loss to Alabama and squeezing by Nebraska, but had there been a win over Georgia Tech, as the last ranked opponent the Hokies would face all regular reason, all it would require is cruise control to sneak in to the Rose Bowl Championship game.

Pretty sure our engineers could do a better job of ripping this down

Though I can accept the loss to Georgia Tech, I think its worth pointing out three glaring “bullshit moments” from the game:

1. 4th and 2 Williams rushes for 1 yard? What? Even the announcers said that spot was far off, prompting the comment “The spot of the ball is reviewable” … but nothing happened except Tyrod running off the field for the GT offense to come back on. Sure we forgot all about it after Ryan Williams ran 60+ yards a few plays later after an interception, but that bad spot was only further magnified because what of what you will see below.

2. Inches to go + ????? = Profit. This one was so unexplainable I still don’t know if it even upset me because I don’t even know what rule applies. I understand that you should have the football facing straight up, but why then did the ball not start on its correct side?

Ta daaaaa

I haven’t seen a dead ball move like that since Tiger Woods hung a putt on the edge the 16th at Augusta National. It was a neat trick for the line judge David Blaine, who I heard later pulled out Josh Nesbitt’s eyeballs before clapping them back in place a different color.

3. Don’t you give Stinespring credit. To those of you watching the game on ESPN2 you saw not only saw three minutes of Bud Foster wake surfing but got led  down some idiotic conversation regarding the definition of consistency, or some shit like that, and the announcers pointed out that the Hokies were about as consistent as you can hope for in college football and then showed 4 coaches… head coach, defensive coordinator, strength coach, and lastly offensive coordinator. Yes, you could say Stinespring has been amazingly consistent at keeping our offensive ranking in triple digits, and despite the variation this season, I’m not convinced he has done anything consistent but suck since becoming the OC. And no, he has NOT been in that position for 14 years… pricks.

In the end I guess we did see Tyrod react very well to being down as he efficiently moved the team down the field in the final drive of the game. It was great to feel confident in a quarterback, something I haven’t done since Bryan Randall’s last season. And I’m convinced that had we recovered the onside kick Tyrod would have scores again. And also Ryan Williams, even with the flu, still showed he is going to be a terrific asset for years to come.

That damn option offense just took too much time off the clock (three of the GT drives took 6:21, 6:34 and 7:34)… it may have been even more efficient to try an onside kick every time we had to kickoff. Plus that newer college rule that the clock doesn’t stop when a player goes out-of-bounds (except in the final two minutes of the half) didn’t do us any favors either. Nice try covering the spread Bud, not enough though to save the team from a loss, I will still post the video below as the game’s moment of Zen because you are grandfathered in as totally badass regardless of this game:

In the end if we are going to lose to anyone in ACC (division implications aside) I suppose it might as well be Georgia Tech, they are nice enough fans, they have the word “engineer” in their fight song and and generally speaking haven’t done anything to piss me off. In my ranking of ACC teams I would hate to lose to in football they are dead last:

1st: Florida State and Miami (tie)
3rd: UVA
4th: Maryland
5th: Clemson
6th: Boston College
7th: UNC
8th: Duke
9th: Wake Forrest
10th: NC State
11th: Georgia Tech

So savor the win Yellow Jackets - we owe you anyway for last year when you beat Miami to let us back in to the ACC Championship game - and at least now I can stop shitting kittens over staying perfect for the rest of the season.