The Virginia Tech baseball team is off to a 6-1 start. After a sweep of William & Mary to open the season, the Hokies brushed off a Friday night loss to Rutgers to take two of three from the Scarlet Knights.
Saturday night’s game was particularly dramatic in the late innings. Tech trailed 5-3 heading into the bottom of the ninth before scoring two runs to force extra innings. However, Rutgers scored three runs in the top of the 10th to take an 8-5 lead. That’s when the real drama happened.
The Hokies ripped off four runs in the bottom of the 10th to win. Hudson Lutterman and Sam Grube had solo homers, and freshman star Ethan Ball (remember that name) walked it off with a two-run homer.
That’s a heck of a fun way to win a baseball game, even if you’d like the relief pitching to be a little bit better (and it was in Tech’s 4-3 win on Sunday in the snow). But we’re not here to talk about relief pitching, Ball’s great freshman performance so far (.379, 2 HRs and 6 RBI) or the triumphant return of starting pitcher Griffin Stieg.
I’d like to show you highlights of that 10th inning against Rutgers, but I can’t. Outside of what the Hokies’ creative team captured, no highlights exist because that game — as well as every other Tech game this season — was not available for streaming. It’s caused a bit of a dust-up on our baseball board and amongst Virginia Tech baseball fans on social media. I even saw one Hokie assistant coach retweeting a complaint about it.
On the surface, it might not sound like a big deal. Yeah, the early non-conference baseball games are not available to watch on ACC Network Extra. So what? It’s probably the same for the other ACC schools, right? Wrong.
The table below shows the numbers, and it’s not a good look for Virginia Tech. Some teams in colder climates such as Boston College and Notre Dame haven’t played a home game yet. Miami doesn’t list TV availability for games that have already been played on its schedules page, so I didn’t include the Hurricanes in the table, but a quick glance at their social media indicates that most, if not all, of their games have been available for streaming.
Whether or not you include Miami, the numbers are embarrassing.
| Team | Home Games | ACCNX Games | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| UVa | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| Wake Forest | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| Florida State | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| NC State | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| UNC | 6 | 6 | 100% |
| Duke | 9 | 9 | 100% |
| Louisville | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| Stanford | 4 | 4 | 100% |
| Cal | 3 | 3 | 100% |
| Georgia Tech | 7 | 6 | 85.7% |
| Virginia Tech | 7 | 0 | 0% |
Virginia Tech baseball fans will finally get to watch the Hokies online this afternoon for the first time this year when the Hokies play at James Madison, a Sun Belt team whose budget is far below that of Tech. That’s a 3 p.m. ET first pitch on ESPN+.
It would be one thing if the other ACC schools weren’t broadcasting their home games, but they are. Georgia Tech appears to have missed a game, but other than that, 100 percent of ACC home games are being streamed. Except for VT, of course, which is at 0 percent thus far in 2026.
It’s a bad look. The baseball staff is not happy about it, and I imagine the parents aren’t either. It certainly doesn’t help recruiting. Parents want to be able to watch their kids play — if not in person, then on their televisions. Even if it doesn’t do anything to harm recruiting, at the very least it’s disrespectful to the parents who entrusted Virginia Tech with their kids. I wouldn’t be happy about it if I were in their shoes.
Virginia Tech’s school motto is Ut Prosim, and I don’t have to tell you what that means. In this particular case, I don’t think the athletic department is serving the baseball program as it should be.
It’s also not serving the fans. The fan base, like every other fan base in the country, is being asked for more and more each year. But Hokie fans are going to be asked for even more in the coming years with the increased focus on philanthropy. By choosing to not stream baseball games, the athletic department is providing less to the fans while asking for more. It doesn’t make any sense. If Tech can’t do it because it is understaffed, then that goes back to my complaints of the last several years that the athletic department isn’t staffed properly. I don’t think that’s it, though.
In the grand scheme of the athletic department, choosing to not stream these early-season baseball games is nothing more than a paper cut. But paper cuts add up.
Before the VT-FSU men’s basketball game on Feb. 14, a graphic was run on the video boards in Cassell Coliseum that said that Tyler Johnson was returning to action that day for the first time since December. Except he didn’t, and he still hasn’t. You’ve got to have that graphic prepared just in case he does play, but it’s one massive screwup to actually put the graphic on the videoboards during pregame warmups.
To be fair, I didn’t see the Johnson graphic myself. Will Stewart did, though, and he’s got no reason to lie to me and the rest of us at TSL. One thing I personally saw earlier this basketball season was some other incorrect graphics on the videoboards during pregame, such as getting dates wrong when advertising future games.
I’m not actively looking for things that Virginia Tech is doing wrong. I’m there to enjoy the games like every other fan. But the more mistakes you notice, you begin to wonder how many are being made that you don’t notice. To me, it seems like a lack of attention to detail, with certain departments not being managed closely, and with no repercussions for getting things wrong.
It’s not too surprising, as many of Tech’s top associate athletic directors are spread too thin. According to his bio on HokieSports.com, Brad Wurthman is in charge of ticketing, brand advancement, broadcast and production (which means he’s probably responsible for not streaming baseball games), the “In-Venue Experience,” the ACC Network, facilities technology, and he’s the liaison with Playfly and other key campus partners.
Danny White now serves as the head of the Hokie Club, and he’s also responsible for sport performance, sports nutrition, academic support and sport psychology, while also serving as the program administrator for both football and swimming & diving. The more responsibilities a person is given, the more likely something slips through the cracks, and I think there is simply too much on those guys’ plates for them to do an effective job at everything.
There’s a difference between videoboard mistakes and not streaming baseball games, though. The former are simply oversights and lack of attention to detail. The latter indicates either poor decision-making, an unwillingness to support a program or simply a lack of drive. Take your pick.
It’s disappointing. I really like the James Franklin hire, and I think he’s going to change a lot about Virginia Tech through sheer will. He can’t fix everything, though, and a lot of the operation that is out of his reach needs to improve quite a bit.