Q: Does this weekend’s game with Pitt have more significance than our typical ACC opener?

Tafkam Hokie: I think it is easy to label this game as critical due to (a) it being a conference game (Beamer’s poorly worded “exhibition” comment aside, conference games ARE more important), (b) the need to show resilience and bounce back after a tough loss, and (c) the question of whether the team can pull together despite some key injuries.  But I think I’m going to go the other way and say that no, this weekend’s game is not more significant than your typical ACC opener.

I subscribe to Beamer’s philosophy of never getting too high or too low. If you label this game as more significant, you set yourself up to overreact to its outcome.  If we win, some would start penciling us into the ACCCG just because we beat our nemesis despite all the injuries.  Lose, and we want Coach Beamer fired so we can daydream about Chip Kelly coming to rescue the football program.  Realistically, we could lose the game and still be in the hunt for the Coastal title.  We could also win the game but still have a 2014 Wake Forest-like clunker left in us before the season is over.  In the end, this is the first of eight conference games, and the result of this one is not going to tell the whole story of the 2015 football season.

It is an important game. More important than East Carolina by virtue of it being an in-division conference game. But I certainly would not put this game on a pedestal and declare it more significant than any of our other in-division conference games.

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