Seven of North Carolina’s top 2018 football prospects will be in Blacksburg for their official visits this weekend. Tech’s focus on the Tar Heel state has never been more evident or important as it is right now.

Virginia Tech recruits the state of North Carolina a lot these days, and they go head-to-head with the Tar Heels as much as anybody. Justin Fuente was asked Monday on Tech Talk Live about the impact of Saturday’s game on recruiting. Here’s what he said.

“To me, if I was advising an 18-year-old on deciding where to go to school, I don’t know that I would stake a large portion of that on one football game,” Fuente said. “I think there are a lot of other factors that are much more important to their happiness and their day-to-day life that don’t have to do with what happens on one particular Saturday for four hours. I’m sure, in their minds, there’s an element of that, but ultimately, making a decision on where you’re going to go to school and who you’re going to play for, the program you’re going to represent, to me, one game shouldn’t define that one way or the other.”

He’s right. Tech will play UNC four times over a four year span. At about 3.5 hours per game, that’s a total of 14 hours. That’s 14 hours out of a total of 35,400 hours spent at a school over a four-year span. In other words, 0.04 percent of a player’s time over a four-year span will be spent playing the Tar Heels. Nobody, in any profession or field, needs to make a decision based on what will be happening in 0.04 percent of all hours in a four-year span. Virginia Tech’s likely victory over North Carolina on Saturday won’t make much of a difference when it comes to 2017 recruiting.

...