December 4, 2004 was a defining moment for the Virginia Tech football program.  In their first ACC season, the Hokies headed to Coral Gables to take on the other expansion team, the Miami Hurricanes, for the conference championship.

Up until the last couple of weeks with the playoff and Orange Bowl news, nobody has had many good things to say about the ACC recently.  Things were a lot different back in 2004 when the league added Virginia Tech and Miami to join Florida State and Clemson in a league that appeared to be on the rise.  On the field, things haven’t worked out quite as well as everyone would have liked, but in 2004 things were different. The ACC was legitimately good.

• Miami was ranked in the top 10 for much of the year.  They handed Louisville their only loss, they beat Florida State, and they also beat Florida 27-10 in the Chick-fil-A Bowl.
• Florida State went 9-3 and smacked WVU in the Gator Bowl.
• Virginia went 8-4 and was “on the rise” (which is the same story they tell recruits every year).

The Hokies, Miami and FSU were capable of going toe-to-toe with major programs, as the Hokies had shown earlier against USC and would later show against Auburn.  In my opinion, that first de facto ACC Championship Game featured, overall, the best matchup of all the ACC championship games.

Virginia Tech won it, and it was a huge deal.  Everybody got to go back to New Orleans (or in my case, as a senior in college, I went for the first time), and it turned out to be the first of eight straight consecutive 10-win seasons.

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