have to take it with a grain of salt. Their sourcing of players and their funding for the band is completely in a different universe from the MVs and 98 percent of college bands.

The football equivalent of this band is of course the Crimson Tide. You couldn't ever expect VT to be in that league, period. And I do say this as a former MV. Back in my day, I would have loved to operate at a much higher level. But there was simply no way to manage that level of inspiration and hard work. Closest we got was a 1984 Olympics show that we got to take on the road to Clemson. It was the only time I thought everybody actually had the proper level of juice and concentration. But that was lightning in a bottle, a one-off.

OSU is the finest band ever. But it's still not real marching fieldwork -- even they cannot whiff the shorts of the great drum and bugle corps units of the 80s and 90s. Try this sample out.