VT-WVU Preview

As I noted Wednesday afternoon, Saturday’s game between #3 Virginia Tech (4-0, 3-0 ACC) and West Virginia (4-0, 1-0 Big East) is the last scheduled in this long-contested rivalry (12 noon EDT, ESPN/XM 191). That article took care of the fans; let’s focus on the football here. (BTN folks, head over to the Fanblogs version of the rivalry article for some high-quality entertainment from whiny Eerfan.)

Make no mistake, this game will be a challenge for the Hokies. The 2003 matchup is a singularly nasty omen: when Tech crushed moderately heralded Syracuse 51-7 ten days before traveling to WVU for the first serious road test of their year, the Hokies came out on the back end of a 28-7 beating. That game exposed serious holes in the VT defense and began a 1-5 slide to end the year. Since then, a lot has changed, though: the Hokie offense has matured and diversified, WVU has lost longtime field general Rasheed Marshall to graduation, and of course, the Hokies made the jump to (and promptly won) the ACC. This year, Tech had a nailbiter on the road against N.C. State to break in Marcus Vick, which ‘03 and the Big East scheduling philosophy didn’t offer.

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VT-WVU: A Rivalry's Meltdown

WVU commenter EER14 had a couple of good thoughts on the upcoming Tech-WVU matchup in a WVU-ECU postgame thread on Fanblogs Big East Tuesday morning, and the Roanoke Times followed up Wednesday morning with a good article on the Hokie players’ perspective. EER14 is right that this rivalry has become huge, and that it’s disappointing it must end.

But Mountaineer fans wondering why need only look in the mirror. A rivalry that had once been intense but mostly-civil got grossly out of control following the rise of WVU’s riot culture in the past 5-6 years, and Virginia Tech’s escape to the ACC tossed gasoline on the burning Morgantown couches. To be honest, WVU would have been an outside hope anyway for the ACC’s twelfth spot, but their fan base ended discussions before they ever started. Rumor was that Jim Weaver and WVU AD Ed Pastilong discussed continuing the rivalry at a neutral site like FedEx Field, but adding in-stadium beer sales to this matchup would have been asking for a disaster.

Hokie fans will travel just about anywhere, but I’d be surprised to see more than a thousand of us at Mountaineer Field on Saturday. Between my usual traveling group of friends, we’ve done Charlottesville three times, Pittsburgh twice, Miami twice, New Orleans twice, FedEx Field (P.G. County), Nashville, Jacksonville, Phoenix, Durham, and we’ll get College Park (P.G. again!) later in October, but none of us will touch Morgantown. It isn’t safe there, and that’s no way to enjoy a football game.

San Diego Scorecard

And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite feature here at BTN, now illustrated for your enjoyment… the latest travel scorecard! Follow along at my San Diego Flickr photoset; not all are illustrated, but enough to make it exciting.

So, without further ado…

Friday

• Starbucks/home/Dulles 1, work 0
• Metrobus 5A 1, published schedule 0
• O’Hare weather 1, initial plans 0
• AAdvantage Gold status 1, oversold plane 0 (woohoo!)
• New DFW Skylink several million, old TrAAin -27
• DFW delays 1, re-scheduled early arrival time 0

Church, religion, and a whipping Post

I’ve got a brief philosophical foray to spin out of a sports/religion story, so bear with me if you will. (Or you could just click away somewhere else — after all, it’s not like I’ll know.)

Washington Nationals OF Ryan Church has gotten into hot water following a remark quoted in a Washington Post story Sunday on the role of chaplains in Major League Baseball. Nats chaplain Jon Moeller (who himself has been suspended from his part-time duties) is quoted secondhand by Church as stating that non-Christians will go to hell, with Church expressing his shock that, according to Moeller, his Jewish ex-girlfriend would be heading south after death.

To get the theology out of the way: yes, Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and that no man would go to the Father but by him (John 14:5-6). This can be read to support Moeller. I hesitate to make statements like Moeller’s, though, because we as sinners are not supposed to judge lest we also be judged (Matthew 7:1). Using the first citation to state conclusively that someone is going to hell reads as judgment of that someone to me. Yes, that’s a fine distinction; that’s why theologians have been in business for two thousand years. (And we haven’t even discussed where God’s continuing covenant with the Jewish people plays into this.)

The Hokie Week, Backward and Forward

The Virginia Tech Hokies completed the early cupcake segment of their schedule in fine style Saturday, thrashing the Ohio Bobcats for a 45-0 win in Blacksburg after doing the same to Duke at Durham the previous week.

Ohio posed a more serious threat to the Hokies than the completely overmatched Blue Devils; Tech didn’t put the game away until superior team speed, personnel and halftime adjustments wore the MAC visitors down in the third quarter. Evidence of the N.C. State game plan was clearly present in the first half, as Bobcats QB Austen Everson went directly at short routes, both outside and over the middle where overpursuit by the Hokie linebacking corps could be punished. Other teams are going to do this all year; reading the offensive alignment and changing the defense at the line could mitigate this threat, but after losing defensive signal-caller Vinnie Fuller to graduation, the Hokies’ read-and-react capability is limited in the early going. Better tackling would at least limit the damage, but like last year, our players seem to have forgotten their fundamentals over the summer.