If you donât care about finances and are only talking as a fan, you have fair points.
But throwing shade saying âmediocre is your thingâ then posting a screenshot with 1 bar LTE isnât the best follow up to making that commentâŚ
But I digress. All in good fun. Me and @BDragon and a few others will be here posting about football. Hopefully itâs a successful season and you will want to join us. If not, no big deal, see you in mid October for scrimmage games.
I still blame Lalich for that oneâwas handed the keys to a Gator Bowl victory. All he had to do was avoid turnovers and give the D decent field position to help drain the clock.
Yep, I was a hungover mess that day and that game did not help it out at all. Brutal to watch.
Hope we have players with more heart, faith, and dedication than you do. I think we do.
Lowest period of time began with the 38-0 abysmal showing at home against tech. Losing in the peach bowl was âmehâ after that. Didnât end until the new regime came inâŚ
Lowest moment or individual game (for me, anyways) was the 3 QB rotation at Tech. Not only were we terrible, but we didnât even appear to be a competent football team. Literally the trash talking buddies who pull for tech said this is so bad, we wonât even give you a hard time about it. Thankfully Bronco reclaimed some respect after whatever that was.
The screen to Albert wasnât helpful, either. Settled for a FG on a must-TD drive. Lose by a FG.
And donât get me started on that fu#âŹing banner plane.
I was playing golf that day and my older brother (indifferent to UVa football) was at the house watching the game. I get home, excited to watch on DVR, and tell my brother not to reveal anything. He is absolutely stoic as I watch and fast forward commercials and timeouts. Roughly 75-90 mins of this. We get to the end and the kick sails through for the crushing loss. I turn to my brother and say âDUDE! Why did you let me go all the way through this for the last 90 mins???â. âCuz, you told me not to say a wordâ.
We were at the game and having a great time. We had to leave before the end because the kids were still little back then and we had a 6 hour drive ahead of us. As we were walking to the parking lot I could hear the stadium PA indicate the Sewell injury. As we drove up 95 progressive gloom filled the car leaving us with 5 hours of driving with Dad really pissed.
From a great day to abject misery in the span of about 30 minutes. Even the UMBC game took longer than that (although that one I witnessed live to the brutal end).
My submission is the 2014 home game against UNC.
Had a 6 point lead and the ball at UNCâs 32 with 6 minutes left and a genuinely good kicker. Then they decide to run an end around for a two yard loss and then a screen that gets intercepted. UNC scores a touchdown on the next drive after their starting qb gets his helmet knocked off and Mitch Trubisky has to come in and throw a 16 yard TD on 3rd and 15 and go up by 1.
Then UNC gets the ball right back off an onside kick. Run out the clock thanks to a 12 man on the field penalty after a timeout somehow.
This game in ingrained in my mind.
Randomly I seem to remember Lalichâs college career ended due to a drunken boating incident? What a ride.
Played beer pong against him once - he was a 5 star there.
Louisiana Tech game was brutal.
Great start offensively. Built a big lead. Then Rocco shit the bed with three INTs. Sims led us back to within 6. We were going to get the ball back, and it was âKhalek, get off the field!â time. 12-men penalty to seal it for the Bulldogs.
Oh, and we were penalized 16 times for 145 yards.
That was the London âmental mistake after mental mistakeâ way.
When Kevin Ogletree was with the Cowboys and they were playing the Redskins at FedEx, he hit up Lalich for his weed guy.
That guy happened to be my friendâs guy as well (they all went to hs together). Said he delivered it to a hotel room with Dez Bryant among others which was kinda funny.
Lalich definitely had a reputation - haha so much that an NFL player would hit him up after playing with him for a year in college to see whether his HS/local guy had green.
Now this is great. Kevin came to my job few years ago to see what we did at work etc. was fun talking shit with him that day even though we knew nothing about each other than UVa and Brian Toal
Lalich stole my table in Newcomb once. There is nothing more to this story. What a time.
Rock bottom was definitely Londonâs last year. Absolutely hopeless and no reason to have let it go on that long.
The problem with the us vs. Wisconsin comp is they have established an incredible brand and stuck to it for 2 decades. Theyâre veering off the path now, and while the Fickell hire was an absolute coup, they are really struggling with the new system. Unfortunately we donât have the recruiting footprint to create a brand like Wisconsin offensive linemen.
Weâre somewhat unique given our geography and academics, so I do think an exact comp is hard, but there is no reason Kentucky, Maryland, any of the North Carolina schools, or any of the Go5 Virginia schools should be outperforming us to the degree they are right now.
Hereâs the thing about football in the broad scheme of things that seems to be overlooked. Sometime in the next 5-6 years the ACC will crater and the strongest schools will leave. The conference may survive the breakup, but at best it will move forward as a Big East type conference, mostly focused on hoops with Notre Dame using it to park its non-revs.
U Va. canât afford to be left behind when this happens, because it would impact all sports eventually. Our football program doesnât have to be a perennial top 20 program, but it at least needs to be semi-respectable so that we can still sell the stronger points why the SEC or B1G should want us to join.
Right now the football program is among the worst in P4. If the Athletics Department can get it to say roughly the same level as Kentucky or Arkansas that should be sufficient. It might still be possible to join one of the Power 2 without much improvement in football, but thatâs rolling the dice. So this is why U.Va. needs to devote resources to football and try to achieve modest success. Itâs about much more than one sport.
The funny thing is, though, weâre attractive to the SEC and B1G exactly as we are. SEC wants another Vanderbilt, great academics, great basketball/Olympics/non-revenue, not going to upset the power dynamic in football for their CFP hopefuls.
I donât really see a world where weâre getting to the point of disrupting CFP hegemony anytime soon. I think we have plenty of room to grow in football and ensure weâre additive.
Elliott needs to get it together ASAP, this is not a time we can afford to be too patient.
A few days ago, before a modest bounce from the AC announcement.