Heading into Week 5 last season, the UVA Football program was feeling good, not quite great, but good, about itself, with a 3-1 record, and a chance to get some national love with a Top 10 Florida State team coming to Charlottesville.
Florida State would go on to finish with a 5-7 record.
The team that had beaten UVA in Week 2, NC State, was an OK team, going 8-5.
The Virginia team that would go on to win 11 games and get thisclose to a berth in the CFP had no business losing to NC State in Week 2, or needing two OTs to beat FSU in Week 5.
We’re still trying to figure out what we have in 2026, after the 38-27 loss to a bad West Virginia team in Week 3 – WVU had its doors blown off by Oklahoma State this past Saturday, giving up 609 yards in a 41-24 loss, on its way to what will be, at best, a 6-6 finish.
The 2026 version of Florida State is still a work in progress – the ‘Noles are 2-2, with the two losses being to the two Power 4 programs on the schedule to date, SMU (27-24) and Alabama (50-36).
Which is to say, the hype around this coming Saturday’s UVA-FSU game, down in Tallahassee (3:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2), isn’t what it was for last year’s nationally televised Friday night game.
That said, it’s still a game in Tallahassee against Florida State.
“My mindset has always been in this league, to win this league, you gotta go through Tallahassee, like, bottom line, like, that’s just that’s just the mindset, that’s the way that I see it, right?” Virginia coach Tony Elliott told reporters on Saturday night, after his team had completed its bounceback from the WVU loss with a 42-3 thumping of Delaware.
“That’s the level of respect that I have for Florida State,” Elliott said, “and you can make the mistake and throw out what’s happened over the last, you know, couple years if you want to, but they’re extremely talented, they’re well coached, and, like, if you want to find your way to Charlotte, you got to go through and you got to win down in Tallahassee, and this will be our first time, you know, taking a team down there.”
That last point there is one that I hadn’t thought of, but in the superconference era, you don’t go everywhere in conference every other year, so, yeah, Tony Elliott is in his fifth year as the head coach at Virginia, and this is his first visit as the head coach to Tallahassee, which further illustrates how dumb the current era of college sports is.
On top of preparing for the FSU offense, defense and special teams, you have to prepare, for the first time as a staff, for the environment – it will be warm and muggy, with the forecast calling for a high of 88, with a real-feel well into the 90s.
The game will be a sellout, or damn close, at 65,000+.
They’ll all pretend to honor the Seminole Nation with a war chant that dates to a group of frat bros at a game in 1984.
Me calling it racist means I’m inviting a cascade of emails from White people with Indigenous best friends telling me how wrong I am.
That the guy riding a horse will stab the 50 yard line with a flaming spear a couple minutes before kickoff is not all being disrespectful.
Whatever.
“It’s a tough place to play, right?” Elliott said, and traditionally, yes, it is.
“I’m glad it’s not a night game, to be honest with you, because it gets it gets rocking down there,” were the next words on the topic from Elliott.
Translation: as with anywhere in football, the later the kickoff, the more the fans have consumed.
Plus, Elliott said, “it’s a conference game, and we’ve already seen around the league, man, the ACC is a really, really, really good league, from top to bottom, right, from top to bottom, and anybody can play with anybody in our league, and it’s going to be a very competitive, you know, next couple months in our league, and so every win that you get in league is going to be is going to be huge.”
Elliott, ehhh, is overstating the “really, really good league” thing by both of the “really”-s and at least half of the “good” – the ACC has one team in the AP Top 25 right now; we’re Miami and the 16 Pretenders at the moment.
Any case, it’s a game at FSU, and it feels weird to see Virginia favored by two and a half on the road at FSU.
Last time I remember that being the case was 2004, and that one didn’t turn out so well for the good guys.
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Chris Graham
