Embarrassed by Old Dominion Again? Searching for Light in a Tunnel of Darkness

If I had a dollar for every time I heard the term “rock bottom” these past two weeks, I would probably have enough money to hire the next Virginia Tech coach.

Just when Hokie Nation thought the Vanderbilt loss was the bottom, along came Old Dominion to beat the snot out of Virginia Tech and send us deeper into the abyss.

The Monarchs, an FBS program only since 2014, now have three victories over power conference foes.  All three of those teams are named “Hokies.”

Virginia Tech was coming off a dreadful second half against Vanderbilt where they were outscored 34-0, and this was a great opportunity to turn the season around.  Instead, the Hokies laid an egg in the first half, falling behind 28-0, eventually losing 45-26.

Never before have I seen such poor effort from a team wearing maroon and orange.  And I first came to Blacksburg as a freshman in the fall of 1989.  Those early Beamer teams struggled to win, but they always competed.  These past two games felt like “quit.”

This two game stretch, which included a 62-0 deficit over four consecutive quarters, is probably the rock bottom that everyone says it is.

It emptied Lane Stadium Saturday night, but not before the Hokie faithful let everyone know how they felt.  It was stunning to hear boos like that in our stadium.

The next 24 hours were rough.  Anger, frustration, and embarrassment set in, but for me that all turned to indifference because I am hardened by similar emotions that I have felt far too often over the last fifteen years.

However, although my Hokie fandom descended into darkness Saturday night, a faint light appeared Sunday afternoon.

A day after the ODU debacle, Virginia Tech fired its football coach.  While I really like Brent Pry as a person, this move absolutely had to be made, and it absolutely had to be made over the weekend.

Truthfully, it brought a sense of relief that something was finally going to change, and it shined a little hope on my soul for the future of this program.

Short term, there will be more pain.  Before the fifth game (and the end of the four-game redshirt rule), more players will enter the portal.   Recruits have already de-committed and more may join them.

But long term, there is potential to fix this mess, and that gives me hope.  Guarded optimism for sure, but there is hope that long overdue change will now make its way to Blacksburg.

The timing of the decision to fire the head coach sent a message to the fanbase, who was already starting to check out, as evidenced by the empty stadium in the second half on Saturday night.

The decision was quick and decisive.  In the past, Virginia Tech administration tended to be more reactionary than proactive - to quote my friend Mike, “VT’s administration moves at a glacial pace.”

A decision to leave the status quo would have tested the limits of “rock bottom.”

Instead, Pry was relieved of his duties and President Tim Sands followed that move with a public announcement that offered hope to the fan base.

The message stated that the school was going to make the effort to improve funding of its athletic teams, which is drastically needed.

Last month, athletic director Whit Babcock made the now well-known presentation to the Board of Visitors illustrating how far Virginia Tech had fallen behind its ACC public school peers in financial support. (The Hokies are dead last among public schools, close to the bottom overall.)

And now, the BOV will unveil its plan for increased funding at its next meeting on September 30.

This increase in funding is not the only beacon of hope, though.  It appears that there will be changes in the athletic department as well.  In Babcock’s press conference Tuesday, he mentioned plans for a “modernized structure,” something more like an NFL setup.

This suggests the potential for a new general manager position, something that several other power conference schools have started to explore.  I’m sure that is not the only significant change, and I do hope there is more, but we will have to wait until after the meeting to hear the full plan.

With the increasingly expected conference realignment coming after 2030 when the ACC buyout drops and other important media contracts in college football expire, it is imperative that the Virginia Tech athletic department positions itself to be a solid expansion target.

It is well known that Virginia Tech’s football program has been mostly mediocre over the past fifteen years, and a lot of that had to do with the athletic department falling behind as the landscape changed.

When Justin Fuente was hired, there was a lack of investment in facilities and staffing, which did improve, but when Pry was hired, more financial support was still needed for the program.

The Hokies keep surfing behind the wave, making these moves after others have done so, and college football has been passing the program by.  

The results on the field have been not-so-coincidentally sub-par.

The latest announcements give hope that the necessary changes will be made for Virginia Tech to be competitive in the new age of college football.

Of course, the right decisions have to be made, which we will not be able to judge until years after the new hires have a body of work to evaluate and the restructuring has shown measurable results.  So it is foolish to think that just because change is coming Virginia Tech will suddenly be good again.

But at least the hope of righting the ship and returning to competitive football has returned to Hokie Nation.

For now, as tough as it is, we just have to endure what comes our way this fall.  All we can really do right now is continue to be fans of the school we love and hope the players play with some pride the rest of the year.

So while ODU may call us little brother for the next two years (remember, we cancelled our road trips to Norfolk), and while this could very well be the worst loss of my 36 years as a Hokie, I am somewhat thankful that it happened.

This ODU loss will always be an embarrassment, but had Tech won the game, no changes would have occurred in our athletic department this weekend.  We probably would have waited too long to make the changes that are so desperately needed.

So thank you Monarchs for forcing the hand of our leadership.  These are dark days, but there is a glimmer of light.

We may be swimming through an abyss right now, but just like Marlin and Dory In Finding Nemo, we need to just keep swimming.

Hopefully, much-needed wholesale changes will occur to modernize the athletic department and the football program, and hopefully the right people will be in charge to manage the department and the new resources.

If not, the light the we think is the exit out of this mess will be an angler fish waiting to devour us.

In other words, if we don't change with the times, big time college football will eat us up and spit us out, and we could be relegated to Group of 5 status.

That would probably be the rock bottom that everyone is talking about.