Virginia Tech Announces Future Home-And-Home Series With Alabama, Ole Miss

Virginia Tech

BLACKSBURG – Virginia Tech fans have long hoped for the addition of home-and-home series with Southeastern Conference opponents to the Hokies’ football schedules. On Thursday, Director of Athletics Whit Babcock announced that Alabama and Ole Miss will each play a home-and-home series with the Hokies. In addition, Babcock also confirmed that the dates for the Wisconsin series have been solidified for 2031 and 2032. Plans are also being finalized to play a home-and-home series with an SEC opponent in 2024 and 2025. 
 
“Wisconsin approached us within the last year about moving our game dates again or potentially even cancelling our two future games. Knowing Wisconsin and Alabama could certainly pay the collective $1 million cancellation fee if they wanted to ultimately play on our dates in 2024 and 2025, we didn’t want to be left without a second Power Five non-conference opponent in those years.
 
“Fortunately, everyone worked together to get to our final outcome. We worked with Dave Brown of Gridiron to help identify an opportunity for us to play an SEC opponent in 2024 and 2025, then the Wisconsin contract got amended, thereby freeing up the shift, and additionally, Alabama worked with us to schedule a future home-and-home series in the out years. 
 
“Football non-conference scheduling is definitely a unique proposition, and admittedly, some of the out years are ‘way, way out there.’ Another generation of Hokies’ will enjoy the games with SEC opponents just like we are now enjoying many of the Big Ten matchups that Jim Weaver and Coach Beamer scheduled. We’d prefer to have a schedule with marquee home opponents and other games against regional foes locked in for years down the road, giving us the ability to refine and adjust as necessary as opposed to pursuing or chasing games later. Our non-conference schedules are now essentially set through 2030 and we’re pleased with the mix of games. We’re pleased other conferences have been willing to schedule more home-and-home series.”
 
The Crimson Tide will visit Blacksburg in 2034 for the first time since Frank Beamer’s senior season as a player in 1969. Alabama won that contest by a 17-13 margin. Tech earned a 38-17 victory over Alabama in the 1998 Music City Bowl with Beamer as head coach. The two most meetings between the two squads took place in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta in 2009 and 2013. Tech’s game scheduled at Alabama in 2035 will mark the Hokies first visit to Tuscaloosa since facing Paul “Bear” Bryant’s No. 1 ranked Crimson Tide in 1979.
 
Tech’s upcoming series with Ole Miss also features ties to Beamer’s tenure as a Tech player. The last time the Hokies and the Rebels squared off was the 1968 Liberty Bowl in Memphis. Beamer was a junior defensive back for the Hokies while the Rebels were quarterbacked by Archie Manning. Both were later enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. Virginia Tech will visit Oxford for the first time in 2037. The first meeting between the two schools occurred in Blacksburg in 1913 when the Hokies registered a 34-13 win. Ole Miss will return to the Tech campus in 2032.
 
Tech confirmed dates for a pair of contests vs. Marshall. The Hokies will travel to Huntington, W.V. in 2023 and host The Herd at Lane Stadium in 2024. The date of Tech’s 2031 contest at Old Dominion has also been moved. 
 
Virginia Tech has also added North Alabama to next season’s home football schedule with a Sept. 26, 2020 game. North Alabama begins play in the Big South Conference in 2019 as the school enters its transitional period to the FBS level. The Lions already have a 2020 game scheduled at BYU and a 2022 contest slated at Memphis.
 
The addition of North Alabama to Tech’s 2020 schedule will give the Hokies seven home games at Lane Stadium for a third consecutive season. The Hokies also have 2020 non-conference contests scheduled with Liberty (Sept. 5) and Penn State (Sept. 12), along with home ACC contests against Boston College, Georgia Tech, Miami and Virginia.
 
Other non-conference additions to Tech’s future schedules include Wofford in 2022 and James Madison in 2025.

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  1. Sorry but these are just tease games, like Auburn, Michigan and Wisconsin. How can ANY of us get excited about games 14 years away? Seriously? Way too easy for these big money schools to write a check and leave us filling in the spot with Furman or E. Illinois. How did we get games with LSU, TAMU, Nebraska and OSU in short order?

  2. Correction: We beat Alabama, 38-10 in the 1998 Music City Bowl, not 38-17. Also, what’s with 13 games in 2021?

    1. Yep, we’re playing Boston College for the ACC Championship in 2021!
      Kinda surprised you hadn’t heard about it…

    1. No kidding! I’ll either be in a nursing home or dead by the time some of these great match ups occur.

    2. No kidding. I’m gonna be stunned if 1/4 of these games ever are even played. See Michigan and Wisconsin recently. I just can’t just all fired up about a game with Ole Miss 14 years from now when I am going to be 65.

  3. I’m hoping that by the 2030’s, some enterprising Hokie biomedical engineers will have developed a lightweight exoskeleton that will allow us old farts to be-bop around with relative ease. Or at least an electric wheelchair with a built-in cooler!

  4. Push that Bama game out by one one more year and it could be my induction year into the VTCC Old Guard….however, I’m not holding my breath. Both teams will fear VT as that date nears and they will cancel as Auburn and Michigan did a few years ago!

  5. FB’s last season was 1968 so he didn’t play in that 1969 Alabama game which was the 2nd of a 10-game package, all except the 1969 game were played on an Alabama home field.

    I was at that 1969 game which then-Coach Jerry Claiborne had been preparing for several years. His 1969 team figured to be his best: Playboy, which in those days made pre-season projections, said of us, “Virginia Tech is loaded.” However, an injury to our best RB, Kenny Edwards in summer camp, was a disaster. We were tied, 10-10 at the half, but Alabama QB Steve Sloane led the ‘tide on a later drive and we lost, 17-13. I also remember that there were about 5,000 Alabama fans, in the middle section of the West Stands who drowned us out with, “Hello Virginia Tech, we’re Alabama,” which they repeated over and over. We thought we had proved something, and went down to Winston-Salem the next week, expecting we’d run all over hapless WF. But we were flat and the Deacs’ Sophomore QB led them to a 16-10 upset. We lost the next 3, all close. We rallied to win 4 of the last 5 but a 10-10 tie w/FSU left us w/the first losing season since JC’s first, in 1961. A friend who played on that 1969 team told me all the air went out of Claiborne’s program after the ‘bama loss because he put so much emphasis on the game. It was supposed to be our breakout game but the disappointment lingered. We lost the first 5 games of 1970, rallied but a loss to FSU doomed us to a 5-6 season. Claiborne was fired after 10 years of what was really mediocre football. The best that can be said about the Claiborne years is that they spawned Frank Beamer. Incidentally, that ‘bama team was itself mediocre, finishing 6-5, losing its last 2 games, to Auburn and to Colorado in the Liberty Bowl. So, the ‘bama loss was less than it appeared.

    1. Love recaps like this. Thx for the details of an almost great but mediocre season. We’ve had a few of those.

    2. We actually lost to Ole Miss in the Liberty Bowl. We were winning 17-0 and lost 17-33. Archie Manning got hot. We also lost the Liberty Bowl to Miami. I went to both. Not sure where you got Auburn and Colorado.

    3. Wrong on a couple of points:
      Bama QB was Scott Hunter Not Steve Sloane. Sloane was bama QB 66(?)
      Claiborne had really good teams in 63, 64,65 and 66. Bob Schweikert was annAll American QB ….Michael Vick before Michael Vick.
      FrankLoria was First Team All American Safety. Tech played great Defense and of course Special Teams.
      The home games vs Florida State in ‘64 and ‘66 were classic wins. In 64 we win with a Tackle Eligible TD and Huge Goal line stand. Bilitnekopf throws a ball out of Miles Stadium in frustration.
      In 66, Tech wins on a Safetyand blocked punt and Loris punt return for TD. Keith a Jackson called the game for ABC.his first year in broadcasting.

  6. I remember driving all the way to Birmingham Alabama to see us play Alabama in 1968 and they must have had at least 150 players in uniform and were ranked and we played well but lost 14-7. Great game but like so many big games over the years we came up just short. I don’t think they have scheduled us since.

  7. I’m okay with playing the ODUs and JMUs – good for family rivalries. I’m sure there are Hokie families with Liberty ties – but I like playing the state schools if we have a choice. I’m not holding my breath for Wisconsin – but I am excited to see Penn State.
    Also, it will be fun to get the ‘neers back in Lane – I don’t plan on going up to Morgantown though.

  8. When was the first time Wisconsin showed up on a future schedule? I think in was in the early 2000’s and was scheduled for sometime around 2010. I remember thinking, “wow… that’s a long time in the future.” Now, in this latest fantasy schedule plan, the Badgers show up in 2030/31. Whatever… Doubt anything beyond 5 years in the future has any validity.

    1. You are absolutely right…I don’t see them ever coming to Blacksburg and I don’t care!

      1. True. Just fluff to excite the fan base. It will be canceled a few years before it’s to be played.

  9. I’m glad I was there to see VT beat Alabama in the Music City Bowl in 1998. Even if I live to see the next Alabama game I probably won’t know what is going on!!!! But no problem, they will cancel by then kinda like the forever and never Wisconsin game.

  10. Beamer graduated in 1969 but played his last game at VT in the Fall of 1968. So, he didn’t play against Bama in 1969.

    1. And he was a senior when we played Mississippi in the Liberty Bowl, not a junior. Also, we beat Alabama 38-7 in the 1998 Music City Bowl, not 38-17.

    2. Yep…1st VT I ever attended. I was a jr. in high school. Sat right across the aisle from the Bama band in Sec. 8. They weren’t annoying at all !!! :>)

  11. No comments on North Alabama for next year? Digging deep in the depths of CFB to find transitional FCS programs to bring to Blacksburg. Also, we have the exact same schedule in 2027 and 2028?!? Thats lame, glad ODU and Liberty will be on the schedule for the 6th straight year. Gets crazy in 2029 tho, swapping Arizona for ND. Hopefully by then one if not both of these ODU/Liberty decade long series will have been cancelled.

  12. Speaking of the Big 10, didn’t we play at Purdue a few years ago? Is there a return engagement on that in the Burg?

    1. yea, seriously. Why not do like Alabama, and refuse to elevate lesser in-state programs? (though I wouldn’t go as far as Penn State in cancelling Pitt games. We need to keep beating UVA).

      1. That’s like saying I rather break my little toe verse my big toe. While I agree with you both games are a drag.

    2. Actually, fans in the Tidewater area appreciate those visits to Norfolk. Increasing visibility throughout the state is a good thing. It sure beats playing ECU.

      1. True statement before the invention of TV, which has been around for a while. Let’s see, please 2 million plus another 66k in Lane, or 33k at ODU?

  13. I’ll be able to visit the Grove in 2037 and have my now-3-year-old boy legally have a beer with me. Sheesh

    1. He’d be in his 80s, but I suppose that’s not entirely unprecedented. Watch it be Shane Beamer coaching the Tide! 🙁

  14. Exciting…for my kids who’ll be in college or just finishing then. They’re 7 & 6 now 🤷🏻‍♂️

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