For me, itās not about the total number of wins itās about who the wins are against.
Have to beat:
Coastal Carolina, William and Mary, Stanford, Washington State, California, Virginia Tech.
And 2 others.
One of Duke, NC State, Wake
And one of:
UNC FSU, Louisville
Thatās the minimum for me to care much and for any non Hoos to care at all.
People said the same thing about the basketball team before CTB. I think we need to hit football tv ratings (the biggest expansion decision criteria) that are accretive to the SEC or BIG, so better than their average team. To me, thatās top 30 in the 16 team playoff era, even if that sounds unrealistic.
The problem we are facing is that we have an immediate decision fork ahead of us. If we are truly trying to optimize for 2028 (which we should), we have to make a call on Tony this fall or likely forego on the opportunity to make a change and get us to where we need to be by realignment decision time. You really want preferably 3 years for a new coach to create momentum (what Prime has done at Colorado can be seen as a results benchmark - they finished the year ranked last year in year 2 but would be good to give a longer runway).
So the bar has to be higher than our historical standard. We need to reach our goals by 2028 and we canāt be caught in the purgatory that is mediocrity for the next 4 years. Either Tony proves he can reach the goal with better talent, or we rip it all out and try to give a better coach enough runway to get there.
I am confident in the decision weāll make on Elliott weirdly because of the money involved. Donors shelled out, theyāre gonna want wins, and theyāll be loud if we underperform
Another trophy for Bryce.
https://x.com/espn/status/1933598105456255048?s=46&t=vkjgQUekzGC7z44tIfnIRQ
A post was merged into an existing topic: 
Hoos in the NFL 2025-26
Random question. For game day atmosphere, one thing I think UVA is missing is a song that we claim as ours. Something that gets people up and engaged. Perhaps to play coming out of halftime or going into the 4th quarter. Think Rocky Top, Dixieland Delight, even the Orioles use of āThank God Iām a Country Boy.ā
My suggestion for UVA would be REMās āItās the End of the Worldā - just so they could kill the music at the key moment and let the crowd shout: āNO FEAR CAVALIER!ā Iāve never understood why we havenāt done more with that phrase.
Or āNo beer, Cavalier,ā if you believe the urban legend that REM was also watching President OāNeil crush rush!
The urban legend is even MORE of a reason for UVA to use this song. Always been perplexing to me that we donāt.
Alternatively, of course, we could go with anything DMBā¦
Interesting thought that I feel like Iāve had the conversation at some point. I do think it would be cool to have someone of rally/fight song that could be played. Hell at this point Iād settle for using one of the tried and true ones. A little Seven Nation Army or some Mo Bamba would go a long way to upping the anti.
This is also something in general UVA athletics lacks. I was genuinely surprised to hear āMUSTARRRRDā during pre-game of the ND basketball game this year. When I go to GT games basketball or football I will give them credit they have the arena/stadium bouncing with a mix of local artist and just good hype music. Itās tough not to feel the energy. Virginia has always lagged behind on that
We used to have a fight song, āFrom Rugby Road to Vinegar Hillā but the lyrics were unacceptable by todayās standards and most people, like me, didnāt know them anyway. Thus, itās not played anymore. I did like the music played with it - same as the GA Tech fight song " Iām a ramblin wreck from GA Tech and a helluva engineer."
I also have a couple thoughts on this, because itās an interesting convo and one thatās 100% up to opinion and subjectivity.
My personal take is that a lot of the fight songs that are synonymous with programs are viewed that way almost entirely due to the years of tradition theyāve built up and not because the songs are necessarily ācoolā anymore, itās really, really hard to manufacture that and not have it happen naturally. And because of that I think adopting an REM or DMB or honestly any 80ās/90ās era rock song would be so incredibly corny to do in 2025, we needed to have done that in the late 90ās or early 2000ās and made it our thing in order for it to have worked. It would be the same vibe of an old dad showing up at a college frat party asking where the wine coolers are and why the DJ isnāt bumping Coldplay. If we wanted to have a song catch on now it would need to be something thatās current and that the players can get behind. That is unless it were to happen completely organically somehow with an older song.
I would love for us to embrace something part of hip hop culture, Penn State kinda made Mo Bamba their thing in 2019 and it elevated their already crazy ass environment. But I do have my doubts about our fanbase actually getting behind something like that, Iāve seen complaints before about not liking the amount of rap music thatās played at our games nowadays (and we really donāt even play that much). Just doesnāt seem to be our vibe I guess.
Nailed it, perfect follow up to what I was thinking.
Thatās why I donāt think UVa will ever earn a new āhype song.ā The general culture clashes too much with he ethos/historic culture that is UVa. If Iām being honest Iād be pissed if they used an REM song, thatās just corny. A DMB song would make me laugh as a hometown kid, but I also know that basically everyone in my friend group would be disappointed with it and I would be too if Iām honest.
Here is an appropriate song for the 2025 Hoos
that Uruk Hai theme from Lord of the Rings
I feel like anything like this is corny when you start doing it, especially with the additional eyes on it from social media, but if you power through a few years its fine.
Our larger issue is that you would have to pipe in crowd yelling it to make it not sound sad.
I donāt know what the reception was when VT rolled out that Metallica song (a couple years after Mariano Rivera began using it fwiw). Probably pretty positive initially, but after a few years it got old, then a few years after that it turned into a tradition.
For it to work it almost has to be organicāstarting from the students and then embraced by the wider audience. It is the kind of thing that has little chance of working at UVa (in my opinion) unless it was something that really resonated and had meaning.
Sandstorm gets the same treatment at Gamecock home games. They always had 2001 song to open the game but Sandstorm is now there jam during the gameās bigger moments.
Itās awesome to be in Williams-Brice for their entrance. So much better ā and louder ā than sandman, and their fans actually stay for the game.
The first sandstormā¦..
Iām sorry, but I feel like I hear a good amount of hip hop at football games - know what I never hear? Something like this. Imagine storming the field to pure HIGH T energetic metal. It is football, after all - lets have a bit less of the nancyboy ārockā, and a bit more of this.