How long has it been since UVA Football has had this big a game?

#18 UVA is in South Bend for a game Saturday at #10 Notre Dame, and … shhh! … Notre Dame isn’t the only team thinking College Football Playoff.

A Virginia win thrusts the ‘Hoos into the CFP conversation, most definitely.

Scanning the memory banks for the last time a UVA team played a game with this much meaning, I’m going to have to go all the way back to 1990.

Yep, the year the Cavaliers spent three weeks at #1 in the nation, and no matter what your friends, neighbors, co-workers who are Virginia Tech fans try to say, nope, they don’t know what that feels like.

We do, and … it felt good.

For three weeks.

Georgia Tech stole our national title from us, winning 41-38 in Charlottesville on an unnaturally warm November Saturday.

That’s the last time we played a game with this much meaning.

The 1995 ‘Hoos might have been the best team we’ve ever had, to this point, but that one lost three games on the final play and finished 9-4.

The 1998 UVA team was 5-0 and ranked seventh nationally, and had a 38-17 third quarter lead at Georgia Tech, who of course won, and of course the final was 41-38.

(Assholes!)

Al Groh’s 2004 team also started 5-0, and was sixth in the nation, and favored at #7 Florida State, so I should go with that one as our last really meaningful game.

FSU won that one, 36-3, and the Groh Era was downhill from there.

(Literally. UVA went 32-35 under Groh after that beatdown, until he mercilessly read his “Man in the Mirror” speech and exited stage right in 2009.)

So, either 2004, or 1990. Either way, it’s a long time since UVA has played a game this big.

The kids taking the field under Touchdown Jesus Saturday were either in preschool, or they were waiting for their parents to hook up so that they’d eventually procreate.

That’s how long we, as fans, have been waiting for this moment.

Hook ‘em up.

Column by Chris Graham