Recently, ESPN showed a replay of the 2007 West Virginia-Pitt game, and I DVR’d it and watched it. The things I saw made me reflect on the 2007 season, how crazy it was, the things I had forgotten about it, and how it represented the end of an era.

No one talks about that last thing, and in time, it will be the focus of this article. But in setting up that conclusion, a lot of ground has to be tilled. When it comes to the 2007 NCAA football season, that’s a daunting task.

2007 is generally regarded as one of the wildest college football seasons ever. Buried in its wildness is a poignancy for many college football fans that isn’t obvious at first, but which reveals itself as we look back from where we are now to where we were then.

For Virginia Tech fans, three games stand out in the 2007 season: (1) the Bayou Beatdown, when LSU beat Virginia Tech 48-7 in a game that was, as the joke goes, not even that close; (2) the painful last-minute loss in the rain to Matty Ice and the No. 2-ranked Boston College Eagles; (3) losing an astounding, infuriating Orange Bowl to not-relevant-before-or-since Kansas, 24-21.

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