Hokies Are Embarrassed by the Commodores, Pushing Hokie Nation to the Brink

Thomas Paine famously wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” This was the opening line of his pamphlet, The American Crisis, and it was meant as a rallying cry to boost the morale of the American army during the Revolutionary War.

Well, 250 years later in Blacksburg, Virginia, the times are certainly trying our souls, and the morale of Hokie Nation is at a historic low during the most recent Virginia Tech football crisis.

After getting absolutely drubbed by Vanderbilt in the second half of Sunday’s game, a contest (for lack of better terms) that saw the Hokies get shut out 34-0 after the intermission, the Hokies are 0-2 and the fanbase is beside itself.

The second half was painful to watch, and social media exploded like it never has before.  The Hokies were embarrassed in a must-win home game under the lights in Lane Stadium, and now it seems that the fan base is teetering on the brink, with many being pushed over the edge after this most recent loss.

So where do we go from here?  The Vanderbilt game created more questions than it provided answers, so your guess is as good as mine.

Regardless, the program has become stale, and the fanbase is finally showing its exhaustion.

Can the wheels stay on the wagon?  Or is this team and fanbase already done for the year?

Saturday’s game had a very promising start where the Virginia Tech offense sustained drives and put up 20 points by halftime.  The team looked good and vibes were high.

However, the end of the half provided a glimpse of the surprise to come later when Vanderbilt started to blitz on Tech’s final drive of the half, one that stalled and resulted in a field goal.

And then Lane Stadium was blindsided.  It was as if the Blacksburg High School football team snuck into the locker room, donned the Virginia Tech uniforms, and came out onto the field for the second half.

Tech’s defense was a sieve, and the offense was as anemic and I’ve ever seen it.  Hokie Nation was stunned, and the offense proceeded to go three-and-out, three-and-out, first down on a pass interference then three and out again, then four-and-out before finally inserting the backups.

Even though the defense was getting gashed, this kind of offensive futility - which was on display in Atlanta week one - is not going to put the Hokies is many competitive games.

The Tech coaching staff needs to hurry up and figure out how to counter the blitz, because both South Carolina and Vanderbilt wrote the blueprint for defeating Virginia Tech - bring pressure.  It has worked, keeping the Hokies out of the end zone for six of the eight quarters of football so far.

The result Saturday was so much more than just a loss.

For years now, Hokie Nation has tried to cope with the disappointing state of the program by leaning on hope over reality.  We hope to get back to championship football, we hope to become nationally relevant again, we hope, we hope we hope.

But I think this Vanderbilt loss was the final gut punch to a fan base who has not let go of the past, even though the slide to get here has been lengthy and painful.

Here are some numbers to show just how much Virginia Tech has struggled recently:

• Under Pry, Virginia Tech is 10-21 against all power conference opponents, 5-21 if we take out Boston College and Virginia.  Of those 10 victories, two have come against teams who finished with 7 regular season wins, while the rest won 6 or fewer.
• Pry’s Hokies are 1-12 in one score games, losing their last 8.
• Virginia Tech has now lost 15 straight games against non-ACC power conference schools, dating back to the opener of 2017.
• Virginia Tech did not force a punt against Vanderbilt, something that they have not done since before 1987.
• Since 2011’s 11-win Sugar Bowl season, the Hokies have only won 10 games once, 9 games once, and 8 games twice.  In 9 of 13 seasons, Tech finished with 7 or fewer wins.

We have become a sideshow to college football.  Our “Enter Sandman” entrance is a spectacle, but the game that follows is not of interest to anyone outside of the Virginia Tech community, and even to that audience the games are losing their luster.

I have heard this in my circles for years - that Virginia Tech would be completely irrelevant if not for the entrance.  Then Kirk Herbstreit said exactly that on ESPN’s College Gameday, which lit up Hokie Nation on social media.

Sometimes the truth hurts, and even though we have known our program has been mired in mediocrity for a decade and a half now, it just stings even more when the national talking heads are going out of their way to point it out.

Sunday morning felt a lot different than most post-loss Sundays, even last year’s in Nashville.  All day I was in a fog, a combination of sadness, anger, and depression, with the feeling that this season - and maybe this staff - are already done just two weeks into the year.

It is like a rock-bottom feel.  I just hope it’s the bottom though, because anything worse will be harrowing to a fan base that may already be lost for the fall.

Like so many others, I had to deal with a phone that was blowing up, and I was reading comments in texts and social media posts from several groups who have lost confidence in this staff.

Here are some of the things I read (kept anonymous because I did not ask for permission to use them):

• “We have become a G5 school in a P4 league.”
• “I’m not ticked off.  I’m just in a fog, wondering how what used to be a perennial top 15 program has been washed away to absolute obscurity and mediocrity with no escape.”
• “I’ve never seen Lane this empty.”
• “VT football is officially the Rutgers of the Big East back in the day.”
• “I am done.  I’ll watch once in a while if I’m bored, and my Hokie clothing is going to stay in the drawer.”
• “I’m looking for other things to do on Saturdays until they start proving to me that I should care.”
• "It feels bad to just not have hope anymore."
• "There's nothing worse than watching your team quit on September 6th."

The comment that hits hardest is the one using that awful four-letter word: “quit.”  A lot of fans think that the Hokies quit early in the second half Saturday.

Given the poor body language on display, it is understandable why so many - including myself - feel this way.

It is alarming, distressing, discouraging, and exasperating to see players give up.  Especially when a lot of them are making good money to represent the university.

This fanbase is being pushed to the limit.

Other than winning the ACC, which seems less likely than an intergalactic war right now, I don’t see how optimism is restored any time soon.

And that is a death knell to the program.  Lack of faith in the staff and administration.  And apathy toward the team and the games.

This comes at a time when money is more important than ever.  Yet fans are tired of being asked for more money while getting no improvement on the field.

We are also fatigued from the long drives and the high costs of weekend trips to Blacksburg, only to be let down in Lane Stadium just as often as we are excited to be there.

The Terrordome has become the Tomatodome, because so many recent Tech showings at Lane Stadium have been soft or rotten, and they would have resulted in fans throwing tomatoes if they were stage performances.

Barring an unlikely 180 turnaround, I don’t see how things get any better without getting worse.  Maybe this isn’t rock bottom.

After the Vanderbilt loss, Pry said that he is still excited about what this team can do.  And what they need to do is win.

But how many wins is enough?  Sure, getting seven victories might help bring back some of the fanbase for now, but can this team realistically win seven of the remaining ten games on its schedule?

There is a bigger issue though.  Like a bandaid, a few more wins will only cover the wound, it will not heal the problem.

Long term, 6-7 wins and a low-tier bowl each year are not enough.  Tech needs to win 8-10 games a year.  The Hokies must be in the mix somewhat regularly for a berth in the ACC championship game and the higher tier (and higher paying) bowls.

In the current landscape of college football, however, that takes money.  And the current investment the school is making into its football program is lagging.

Tech athletic director Whit Babcock noted that Virginia Tech’s football budget is among the worst in the ACC.  He recommended an additional $50 million.  That needs to be high on the administration’s priority list.

Without that investment bump, I do not see a future where Virginia Tech can attract highly qualified and experienced coaches nor make enough NIL offers to acquire and retain top talent.

Even with a bump in funding, is Virginia Tech a desirable job right now?  The team has not won 8 games since 2019, facilities are lagging, and the conference might be relegated to G5 status in five years.

It is a very precarious situation for the Hokie faithful right now, and I don't know if winning 6 or 7 games this year will be enough to keep this boat afloat.

I hate to write an article like this.  It is no fun, and as a fan, it is only causing me to relive my pain from the weekend, not to mention the frustrations and emotional trauma of the last seven seasons combined with the worry about the future.

It is not meant to sound overly negative either - it is merely acknowledging the grim reality that Virginia Tech football has fallen to a place that is even lower than the 3-8 season of 2022, a place where none of us want to be yet have been for too long.

That 2022 team was the first under our new coach and the roster was extremely thin.  This is year four, and the program looks like it is going backwards.

I want to be positive.  I want to hope for more wins and better seasons.  But the results of the past four years (even longer!) have not shown that things are getting better.

To think that Tech can win out like they did in 1995 and 2010 is just delusion.  To have hope that things will simply turn around is wishful thinking.

And the roundhouse that follows this gut punch is knowing how much Tech might continue to suffer financially throughout this downward trend.

Ticket sales will drop (none of the remaining home games are sold out as of this publication), TV revenue will be lower when Tech loses viewership and primetime slots, and donations will scale back.

That is a slippery slope, and it is a road that none of us want to travel but all of us fear we are already on.

Like many other fans, I don’t see how this course is changed without something drastic happening.  Running the table and winning the conference is considered drastic, but it is also extremely unlikely.

That leaves us with the other drastic event - job terminations.  Virginia Tech tends to drag its feet in regards to staff changes, though, so this program could very likely continue to spin its wheels for a while.

I will always love the Hokies.  But just like any unconditional love, it will be tested.  Our souls are being tried right now to the point that I feel like Thomas Paine was a fellow Hokie.

But that’s not entirely bad, because Paine also said, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

If things don’t turn around soon, those words will also ring true across Hokie Nation.