1) What’s more likely next season: the football team makes it to a bowl game or the men’s basketball team makes the NCAA tournament? – GretnaHokie

Chris Coleman: On the surface, you’d probably expect me to say basketball because the Virginia Tech men’s basketball team is better than the football team. We’re talking about five NCAA tournament appearances in a row (not counting the COVID year), followed by an NIT berth. Meanwhile, in that span, the football program floated around .500 before (hopefully) hitting rock bottom at 3-8 this past season.

But that’s just looking at it on the surface. There are numbers that you have to consider as well. By my count, there are 42 bowl games scheduled for 2023. That means 84 teams will make a bowl game. There are 133 FBS programs with Jacksonville State and Sam Houston making the jump from FCS in 2023. However, those two teams, plus JMU, won’t be eligible for a bowl game because they are making the transition up to FBS. That means 130 teams will be eligible to qualify for a bowl.

Doing the math, that means 64.6% of college football teams will make a bowl game in 2023. That’s nearly two-thirds. It’s not nearly as special to make a bowl game in 2023 as it was when Virginia Tech’s bowl streak began in 1993. At that point, there were only 19 bowl games, so there were 38 spots for the 106 FBS teams. Only 35.8% of teams made bowl games that year, so it was a big deal.

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