The hammer doesn’t consider the nail its rival. UVA Football fans know how the nail feels about the whole situation.
“It’s two in-state schools. It’s houses divided. It’s bragging rights,” UVA coach Tony Elliott said on Tuesday, musing on the topic of, ahem, rivalry week, such as the annual UVA-Virginia Tech football series can be considered a “rivalry.”
The UVA side has won twice since the last time the Cavaliers were victorious in Blacksburg in 1998.
How this is personal for me: I’m a UVA alum, my wife, Crystal, is a Tech alum.
We started dating in 1999, got married in 2000.
I didn’t mention, her family is small, but the two first cousins that we see most Thanksgiving weekends are also Tech alums.
My side is 2-22 in the annual football series since 1999.
Thanksgiving weekend … f#$%&* sucks.
ICYMI
- Virginia Tech fans are tired of beating UVA to get into a cold weather bowl game
- Virginia Tech may have to go with freshman Pop Watson at QB for UVA game
- UVA Football Injury Report: Vaughn needs to step up at RB, good news with Trell Harris
- UVA Football: Get off Tony Elliott’s back, as if that’s the #1 problem
- Mailbag: Misery among UVA Football fans loves company
“It’s a true dislike, right, that’s not just on game day. It’s 365 days. Man, you have to live with the comments, you have to live with people having bragging rights. You also understand that households, like everything they do in their household, is around this. I mean, it’s deep,” Elliott said
“I believe that that’s what it is between us and Tech, but we got to change it on the field. I think football drives a lot of that. That’s what I learned. Everything is rivalry, every sport is a rivalry, but football drives the overall rivalry for bragging rights,” Elliott said.
No, all the national championships in swimming, tennis, lacrosse, even the one in basketball, they don’t move the needle.
As fun as it might be making fun of that empty trophy case down there in Southwest Virginia, the way we are able to sleep at night is by reminding ourselves, you know, that we’ve been #1 in the country for football, for three glorious (!) weeks, and Tech hasn’t, and that the Tech side only has football, and they haven’t been any better at that since Frank Beamer retired than our side has.
To that point, five times since Beamer’s second-to-last season, in 2014, the Hokies have gone into the annual football series game needing a win over UVA to get into a bowl.
That means, five times since 2014, those Tech teams were 5-6.
The Hokies’ record in those games: 5-0.
It doesn’t matter that they suck; they still run us into the ground, even though they suck.
As it happens, both teams go into Saturday night (8 p.m. ET, ACC Network) with equally sucky 5-6 records.
For the UVA side, 5-6 is an improvement. Elliott, in Year 3 at UVA, was 3-7 in 2022 and 3-9 in 2023, and the media, back in the summer, picked the ‘Hoos to finish 16th in the 17-team ACC.
We’re happy with 5-6 (relatively; truthfully, we’re never happy, with anything) against that backdrop.
On the Tech side, there were loud whispers from inside and outside ahead of the 2024 season about the Hokies being a darkhorse contender for a spot in the ACC Championship Game, which stoked talk of a College Football Playoff berth.
Against that backdrop, their 5-6 is … major letdown.
“As a former player, I am so tired of us being happy to beat UVA! Beating UVA isn’t exciting to me or anyone else anymore! Any season that we don’t make it to the ACC is a busted season. Sick of UVA being the Super Bowl of the season!! We have to beat UVA go to a toilet bowl!!!”
That was Sergio Render, a former Tech offensive lineman, on social media, following the Hokies’ 31-28 loss at Duke on Saturday night, which made Saturday’s Commonwealth Clash game a do-or-die for the Hokies.
What he’s saying there, basically, is, acting like beating up the snot-nosed little step-brother is doing something when the kids down the street keep handing us our ass is getting old.
Feel ya, Sergio.
The problem on our side is, we go into the game expecting to lose.
Our kids know that there will be a weird bounce on a fumble in the end zone, a dumb play call involving a lateral to a 300-pound lineman, a coach blowing all his timeouts trying to ice a kicker on a chip shot.
Flip side, the Tech kids go in expecting to win, because they know the ball is going to bounce their way, that our coaches, trying too hard to turn the tide, are bound to do something mind-numbingly dumb.
“That’s where we have to take a step as a program, as a staff, players, everybody. It’s rivalry week. That’s been the message to everybody,” Elliott said. “Nothing else matters. It really doesn’t. Nothing else matters but what you do this week. I think that’s the difference. When you have that intensity, that focus, you have that passion, right, and you can block out the distractions.
“Because you know, yes, bowl eligibility is on the line, but there is a lot more on the line, right, bowl eligibility, right, is what we’re after, but I’m really after having all the folks that support Virginia have the upper hand for 365 days. That’s just how I was bred in rivalries. I think that’s the difference, the way you look at it, the perspective you have.”
We’re already past unhealthy here, but, yes, it gets deeper.
“You are playing for something bigger than yourself,” Elliott said. “That’s the message that I’m working on getting the guys to understand, the intensity that it takes and the way it should feel, the way you should approach it. I know I talk a lot about every game is the most important game on the schedule and that’s true, but rivalry game is different. It’s just different. Has to be different. For everybody. Everybody that’s involved, it has to be different.”
That’s the smell of 2-23 wafting its way up from Blacksburg, in case you were wondering.
Video: It’s not a rivalry
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Chris Graham
