After a one-year hiatus, Virginia Tech is back in a bowl game. It’ll be in familiar territory at the Military Bowl in Annapolis but is facing an unfamiliar opponent in the Tulane Green Wave (11-2). That’s the fun part about a lot of bowl games. You’re facing someone who you don’t get to play very often, and that sense of unknown is intriguing.

While I’d prefer a home-and-home with Tulane for road trip purposes, my entire bowl game philosophy this year is “anybody, any time, anywhere.” I’m just happy to be involved in the postseason again. Virginia Tech earned this trip thanks to its 5-3 record post-Marshall and will face a very worthy opponent — albeit a coachless one — in the Green Wave.

It’s too early to dive into specifics. Tulane has a good, veteran quarterback, and a redshirt freshman running back who ran for nearly 1,300 yards. But we’ll save all of that for later in the month. I want to focus in a few specific thoughts on this bowl game and what it means to me.

Thought No. 1: A Normal December (knock on wood)

Because of the early Signing Day and the transfer portal, we’ll never have that total sense of normalcy in the month of December like back in the day. But for 2023, in the modern era in which we now operate, this December should be about as normal as it gets for Virginia Tech’s bowl preparations.

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