Music City Bowl, ACC Close to a Deal

The ACC is close to adding another bowl game beginning
with the 2006 season. According to multiple published reports, the Music City
Bowl and the ACC are in the process finalizing a deal that would send an ACC
team to Nashville to meet an SEC team.

Yet
to be determined is where the Music City Bowl would rank among ACC affiliated
bowl games, and how much money the bowl would pay out to participants. Currently
the Music City Bowl pits a Big Ten team against an SEC team, with a payout of
$1.1 million.

The ACC was able to get into the Music City Bowl race when
the Big Ten backed out after recently signing deals with the Champs Sports Bowl
and Insight Bowl. Bowl contracts expire at the end of the 2005 season, and the
ACC, as well as all other conferences, are battling it out in order to secure
bids.

Thus far, the ACC has deals with the BCS, Gator Bowl in
place for the 2006 season. (The Gator Bowl is not signed yet, but Gator Bowl
officials have said that the new deal will include an ACC team every year.) It
is expected that the ACC will re-sign with the majority of its previous bowl
tie-ins, which also include the Peach Bowl, Meineke Car Care (previously
Continental Tire) Bowl and MPC Computers Bowl.

If the ACC signs on with the Music City Bowl and keeps all
previous bowls, that would give the conference a total of seven bowl
affiliations for 12 teams. It is also possible that the ACC could add an eighth
bowl tie-in, with possibilities including the Liberty Bowl, Independence Bowl
and the Emerald Bowl.

In 2004, seven of the 11 ACC teams were bowl eligible at
the end of the season. Six of those teams were invited to bowls, while Clemson
announced that they would decline any bowl bid following a brawl in their annual
rivalry game with South Carolina. Boston College, still in the Big East at the
time, went bowling, giving the present day 12-team ACC eight bowl eligible teams
last season.

ACC Football Kickoff will begin this Sunday at the
Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, Virginia. There will be bowl representatives at
this meeting, including representatives from the Peach Bowl and Meineke Car Care
Bowl. The bowl officials and ACC officials will have discussions about bowl
tie-ins at this conference.

The
Virginia Tech athletic department announced on Thursday that the kickoff time
for Tech’s rivalry clash at West Virginia has been set for noon. Television
coverage has not been announced, but it is probable that ESPN, ESPN2 or ABC
regional will pick up the game at some point.

Most likely it will be one of the ESPN networks. The VT-WVU
game has been aired on either ESPN or ESPN2 every year since 2000. The 2000,
2002 and 2003 games were played at night, while the 2001 and 2004 matchups were
set for noon kickoffs.

The Hokies upset #6 West Virginia 19-13 in a noon game on
ESPN last season. The last time the Hokies played WVU at noon in Morgantown was
2001. Tech blanked the Mountaineers that afternoon 35-0 on ESPN.

Virginia Tech incoming freshman quarterback Greg Boone has
injured his knee and will have an MRI performed on Monday to determine the
extent of the damage. It is not clear whether the knee was injured in the VHSCA
All-Star Game last Friday night, or during workouts that Boone was participating
in earlier in the summer.

Boone hurt his knee slightly while running earlier this
summer, but things went back to normal and he didn’t think anything else of
it. Then, during the All-Star Game, the same knee was injured while he was
trying to make a cut. He later returned to the game, but when he exited for the
last time, his knee began to stiffen up.