Failure.

As my colleague Rich Luttenberger wrote following Virginia Tech's 34-27 loss to Vanderbilt on August 31, Hokie fans are all too familiar with failure. 14 seasons have passed since the team has won the ACC, and in that span, they have only won 10+ games - an annually expected achievement in the peak of the Beamer era - twice. During that time, numerous failures have stood out in the annals of Hokie lore - and not in a good way. To name just a few:

• Losing twice in 2011 to an ascending Clemson team taking over the conference by a combined score of 63-13.
• Two years of mediocrity in 2012 and 2013 with a QB that initially had NFL scouts drooling.
• Dropping a heartbreaker at home to ECU in 2014 one week after taking down the eventual national champs in Columbus.
• Failing to score a single point that same year in regulation against a 3-9 Wake Forest team after illegally receiving their game plan, leading to the most iconically humiliating meme of Frank Beamer's career.
• Leaking the news of Frank Beamer's replacement while he was coaching his final regular season game in 2015. 
• Seeing what was initially believed to be a high-flying offense sputter in 2017, scoring more than 24 points once in the final nine games. 
• Losing on the road to Old Dominion in 2018.
• Seeing the locker room crumble in 2018 after the first losing season in 26 years.
• Losing 45-10 to a 5-7 Duke team at home while honoring the 1999 National Championship team in 2019.
• Capping off what was a truly stellar career for Bud Foster on a sour note with 39 and 37 points allowed to run-heavy QBs in 2019.
• Botching the situation with a future Heisman contending QB in Hendon Hooker.
• Three straight losing seasons from 2020-2022.
• Having to fire and replace the head coach that replaced the legendary head coach.
• Losing on the road to Old Dominion AGAIN in 2022.
• Going 3-8 in 2022, the team's lowest win total since 1992.
• Starting the wrong QB and running the wrong offense to start in 2023, leading to a 1-3 start against four teams with the same or worse records.

Need I go on?

After the most recent largescale failure of losing to Vanderbilt, fans are justifiably upset. Months and months of pre-season hype for a team returning the most production in the ACC with the words "ACC Championship" and "Playoffs" constantly tossed around popped faster than SpongeBob and Patrick's balloon on Free Balloon Day.

Following another lackluster performance against a bad Marshall team that saw the offense start painfully slow again, taking a trip onto Twitter/X will show you next to zero hope from what was one of the most optimistic fan bases 12 days ago. 

But here's the thing about sports: failure is a common - nay, essential - aspect. Failures, both large and small, happen on nearly every play. Take baseball for example. Josh Gibson and Ty Cobb hold the best batting records in MLB history at .372 and .366, respectively. That means that each of them only got a hit in less than 40% of his at bats. In other words, every single batter fails a majority of the time.

In basketball, the average team field goal percentage in the NBA in 2023-24 was 48.7%. Again, a majority of shots did not go in. 

And in football, particularly college football? Failures are constant; blown coverages, missed tackles, bad passes, dropped balls, poor routes, etc. 

So, what is the difference between a good team and a bad team? The key is how one responds to failure. Do they learn from it, or are they doomed to make the same mistakes again? 

For 14 years, Virginia Tech has mainly seen the latter. Either that, or they've seen failures be responded to with a completely different set of failures. 

That is a lot of years of one of the most devoted, passionate fan bases seeing its football team constantly fail to live up to expectations. At some point, perhaps, it will become too many years. Blind hope of getting back to the glories of yesteryear can't last forever. In fact, I'm almost surprised it has lasted this long.

The Hokies are at a crossroads. They are on the precipice of saving their program or descending, perhaps permanently, into the realm of irrelevance and apathy.

Is it fair to Brent Pry that he - a first-time head coach - inherited over a decade of this baggage? Probably not, but he knew what he was signing on for.

The athletic department allowed ghosts of a bygone era to linger four years longer than they needed to in an aging, beloved legend. They let a confusing, dramatic, square-peg-in-a-round-hole regime bring further chaos into what was once a stable, "family atmosphere."

For Pry, he was on thin ice before he even set foot in Blacksburg. Yet here we are in Year Three with two more head-scratching performances. It is time for Pry and this entire Hokie team and coaching staff to learn from its failures and figure out how to counteract them with more success. That is the difference between a good program and a bad program.

But here is the good news: there are signs of life, even if they are difficult to spot. With the win - albeit an ugly one - against Marshall on Saturday, the Hokies are now 5-0 in their last five games following a loss. This team more than doubled its win total last year from the previous year.

Even individual performances can be emblematic of this. Take Mansoor Delane for example. A player that was highly scrutinized following one of the more disappointing performances of his career against Vanderbilt turned it around the next week, getting 2 PBUs and 1 INT against Marshall. After giving up numerous big passes against the Commodores, Delane's only major catch allowed came on a Randy Moss-esque one-handed catch that made it onto SportsCenter.

Everything this team wants to accomplish is still in front of them. Failures have abounded, but they are in control of what they do in response. No one WANTS to fail (save for the pro sports execs tanking for better draft picks), but they have to learn how to turn those failures into greater successes.

Don't count the Hokies out just yet.