In which we poke fun at a Virginia military college (and Auburn)
Tech’s fourth game of the year features their bout with this year’s FCS opponent: VMI, the Virginia Military Institute. Now, we here at Snarky Previews Inc. are not in the business of poking fun at FCS schools or military academies. Fortunately, we can have plenty of fun by simply looking over at one of their historical rivals that played like an FCS school in their opener.
No, not the Citadel— Coach [REDACTED] man is gone and (mostly) can’t hurt us anymore. No, we’re talking about a rivalry from much further back against another military-heavy Virginia college.
Yes, we’ll get to make fun of Virginia Polytechnic a lot more later this year. But one important detail is still fresh:
They lost to Vanderbilt.
Now, let’s caveat that. Vandy picked up one of the most fun QBs in the country in Diego Pavia, who’s also the only person better than Fran Brown at turning an inad xnocuous comment into a motivating slight. They might actually be putting together a decent team under Clark Lea. And they might go 3-9 anyway with their brutal schedule, but maybe they aren’t a bad team.
And yet. It’s Vanderbilt. You don’t lose to them if you want to amount to anything. And the Hokies were a trendy pick to contend for the ACC crown. Instead, their lone achievement so far is matching something that Auburn did in 2008, something so embarrassing that when that Auburn coach ran for the US Senate, the opposing party used “he lost to Vanderbilt” as a line of attack.
Speaking of Auburn, the VT loss meant that every ACC-SEC game so far has gone the SEC’s way… except for one: Cal’s win over Auburn. (Two if you count GT beating a team that desperately wants to join the SEC.) The ACC remains perfect in every way.
As for the actual game, it would be a major letdown if this is anything other than an unsteessful tune-up game for Tech following a deflating loss. But we’ve seen, thanks to [NAME REDACTED], that FCS games should never be considered a guarantee.