When I first saw the schedule yesterday, already knowing the opponents and dates of Virginia Tech’s first four non-conference football games, the first thing my eyes went to was the opening games of the ACC slate. The first three names I saw were Pitt, Florida State, and Wake Forest, and I thought, “Yikes, that’s tough.”
Pitt has been a good program recently, though I’m not sure how good it’ll be this year. Florida State is coming off a 10-win season with victories over LSU and Oklahoma, and by the end of the year, I thought the Seminoles were the best team in the ACC. Wake Forest is among the best coached teams in the country. The Demon Deacons were 8-5, 11-3 and 8-5 (27-13 overall, 14-10 ACC) in their last three non-COVID seasons.
So yeah, those are tough games. Then I started thinking about it a little deeper and realized that if the Hokies started off with Louisville, Boston College and Syracuse, I would be saying the exact same thing. On paper, those three teams aren’t as tough as the trio of Pitt, FSU and Wake, but we’re not exactly talking about a normal Virginia Tech team, are we?
We’re talking about a football team that went 1-6 in the ACC last season, including a six-game conference losing streak, with a seven-game overall losing streak before winning that final non-conference matchup with Liberty. When you’re 1-6, they’re all tough. When you’re 1-6, just about everybody else seems the same. From my Virginia Tech perspective, there’s really no difference between Florida State and Louisville. FSU is better, but coming off a 1-6 season, they both feel like losses to me, so they’re the same in that sense.
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