I’ve watched almost every Virginia Tech football game for the past 30 years. 15 mostly good and 15 mediocre or worse. The first two Virginia Tech football games I ever watched were in 1995 as a freshman cadet. We lost both of them and my roommate after the game said who knows, maybe we’ll win every remaining game. And guess what? We did, and then the magic of our Sugar Bowl victory that year. I was there when we beat Akron 77 to 27 and I had to do 77 push-ups. I saw Michael Vick’s first game when he backflipped into the end zone. I was there in our final home game in 1999 when we went undefeated, and we all watched the scoreboard to see if Nebraska would lose. When the final score of that game was announced, we all rushed the field after going 11 and 0. I ran right past Ronyell Whitaker and looked at the top of his head even though he was in cleats and I’m straight up 5 foot 10. I rang in the new millennium on Bourbon Street and I was there for our National Title game when we took the lead 29-28 in the fourth quarter. And oh man, if it wasn’t for Peter Warrick, we just might’ve won it. But it didn’t matter because we were so good and I was so young and I knew that we would be back again, probably every year. As time went on, it was pretty much part of my marital contract that I got to watch every Virginia Tech game from start to finish, whether we were up by 50 or losing horribly. I was mowing my lawn when we lost to JMU and I came in in the final minutes in disbelief and listened to it on XM radio. I was there at FedEx Field when we lost to Boise State. I can’t believe that BS penalty on Bruce Taylor, and how could we not get just one more first down to seal it? I had tickets to the Sugar Bowl when we played Michigan but I decided not to go at the last minute and gave away my tickets, and then watched in disbelief as Danny Coale’s obvious touchdown catch was overturned. That moment was the start, apparently, of our slow decline. And even though for years afterwards I would start the season with childlike optimism, telling anybody with even a remote connection to Virginia Tech how this was the year that we returned to greatness, it started fading off. I watched our 10-win streak end, and I watched our bowl streak end, and I watched our streak of beating UVA end. I watched in horror as we fired a good football coach in Justin Fuente because he wasn’t likable, flushed millions of dollars to hire a likable guy who couldn’t coach. Now here we are in 2025… I’m almost 50 years old and my son who’s 20, who watches the Tech games with me and is the most optimistic football fan in the world, only knows Virginia Tech was a good team because I told him and he believes me, but he doesn’t really remember it because it happened so long ago. This year I have to admit, after the second half of the Vanderbilt game, I gave up. I don’t even watch the games this year and I don’t know—maybe it’s a redshirt year or a gap year, or maybe I’m just done. I hope they turn it around, and even though I’ve been a fan for so long, I kind of feel like a fairweather fan for not watching, but I just can’t. Love you all and Go Hokies, but I have to take a break.