I mean in reference to basketball. It was always interesting to me that we weren’t able to join until we were looking at the ACC and made our way to the other hoops conference with a football problem. Obviously, I wasn’t around for it, but I feel like if we were able to be a full member from the beginning, the program would have improved from the 90s and not when we were in the ACC.

I've passed it off to Chris, and he's going to answer it in the Friday Q&A this week, if that's OK. Very in-depth question, and I sadly don't have the knowledge from that era — given it was before I was alive — to answer it. But from a few quick conversations, it sounds like VT got screwed over by the Big East and then again by the Metro and was bouncing around without a home for a while, which couldn't have helped.

Temple, VT, WVU, and Rutgers had an agreement that none would agree to go into the BE unless ALL were invited to join. Then when WVU and Rutgers got invited, it was like, Virginia Tech who? That's what I recall.

And that was only half of it. Jim Boeheim threw such a fit about having to go to Blacksburg that I was told it was mostly to appease him that our Bball program was left out. The other part of the story was that the old Metro Conference upon hearing of our football program joining a conference (we were independents in football) and led by the scumbag Denny Crum voted to kick Va Tech out of the Metro for all sports essentially leaving us without a conference affiliation for anything but football. Luckily the A10 allowed us to sweep the remaining pieces of our athletic department into their league where we languished. This is why I will gladly tell Denny Crum or Jim Boeheim to go screw themselves if I ever run in to them. I was not happy when those 2 programs were sucked into the ACC. That was how I remember it.

Nor the 86-60 whipping we laid on him in Freedom Hall years later. Boeheim, as I recall, didn't want Cuse in the ACC either.

a VT football game way back in 91, I was with someone who asked Braine when VT would be a full member. He said 2 years. He wasn't BS'ing. He even spoke of expanding Cassell when needed.

are both scumbags.

game.