I thought Andy Bitter’s article Friday night did a masterful job of capturing what makes college football so great:
Even in the midst of a lost season like this one — nay, in spite of it — you can still go to Lane Stadium and have a heck of a time and celebrate a win. This one had it all: great plays, horrible brainfarts, terrible officiating and more swings in momentum than a teenage girl’s prom week.
There’s not a lot to play for this year, not in the conventional sense. The Hokies are unlikely to qualify for a bowl, although technically they’re not mathematically eliminated from doing so. A conference championship isn’t on the line and no players are going to win a national or conference award. The team isn’t playing for the interim coach’s chances to be named the permanent head coach; it’s widely and correctly perceived that Philip Montgomery isn’t a candidate.
In short, there aren’t any larger goals, although as Virginia looks more vulnerable with each passing week, that season-ending trip to Charlottesville gets tastier and tastier. Don’t let that No. 15 ranking for the Cavaliers fool you; this one, if played today, would be a battle.
Back to the topic, though. When there’s “not a lot to play for” in the larger sense, then players, coaches and fans alike commit themselves to the narrative each week, and when you take this game as a standalone, it was a lot of fun and there’s a lot to be admired.
If you missed Montgomery’s postgame ESPN interview, you missed the veteran coach getting a little choked up as he talked about his players, the effort and the crowd support. It’s a reminder that even as things collapse around them, they go to work every day, they do their best and they put their bodies on the line, with no apparent reward or goal forthcoming.
As fans, you respect that. You’re still committed to spending the money and the time, tailgating and cheering in frosty temps that dipped down into the 30s before the game ended. So it’s good to see players and coaches that are still committed to doing everything they can to win.
Kyron Drones Rolls Over Cal
Take Kyron Drones, for example. After a strong redshirt sophomore season in 2023, Drones had NFL aspirations. He had all the tools and was a rising star. Nearly two seasons later, he’s not going to be an NFL Draft pick, and barring a remarkable turn of events, he’s never going to play a down for an NFL team.But there he was Friday night, keeping the ball over and over and putting his body on the line, gaining a career second-best 137 yards on 21 rushing attempts — the second-most carries he’s ever had in a game behind 22 vs. Rutgers in 2023. He didn’t look like he was mailing it in at the end of a 37-game career that hasn’t gone like he once hoped it would.
By the end, Cal didn’t want to have anything to do with tackling him. Check out No. 5 on Drones’ touchdown run in overtime:
— Joaquin Ruiz (@WalkingRuiz) October 27, 2025
Drones led an attack that racked up 357 yards rushing, the most since the Hokies put up 368 on Boston College last year behind Bhayshul Tuten’s record-setting 266 yards.
If you dig a little deeper, you find that Virginia Tech had 361 yards rushing vs. BC and 362 vs. Tulane in 2023. However, then you have to go all the way back to 2009 to find the last time Virginia Tech had more than 357 yards rushing. In reverse chronological order:
- 2025 vs. Cal: 357 yards
- 2024 vs. BC: 368 yards
- 2023 vs. Tulane: 362 yards
- 2023 vs. BC: 361 yards
- 2009 vs. Marshall: 444 yards
That puts Friday night’s rushing performance into perspective. Even though the Hokies were battling just to keep their heads above the 10-loss line, a performance like that can be appreciated.
The players who are still here are committed, and as the games go on, fans start to connect more and more with those who remain behind. This team is not good, but at this point, the fans and players who remain are in this together.
Attendance Notes
Speaking of the fans, in 2024, every home game sold out (attendance 65,632). In 2023, Virginia Tech sold out all but one game, the Thursday night Syracuse game (60,236). In 2022, Brent Pry’s first season, Virginia Tech sold out three home games and had strong attendance for Wofford (62,043) and Georgia Tech (62,844).If you’re paying attention, that means that Virginia Tech had 60,000-plus in attendance for every game from 2022-2024.
This season, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest sold out, but the other three home games (with two left) are below 60,000 in attendance:
- Old Dominion: 57,627
- Wofford: 57,229
- Cal: 53,837
That attendance figure for Cal is the lowest since a September 2021 game against Richmond (53,174) in Justin Fuente’s last season. That year, five of seven home games registered 58,000 or fewer fans, indicating that the fan base at large had given up on Fuente as the man for the job.
There might be a perception out there that Virginia Tech fans are hitting rock bottom and are bailing out of the program, but history from the last 10 seasons — 2016-2025, spanning Fuente through Pry — show that it’s not as if the Hokies were selling out every game before taking a dip this season.
Average home attendance figures, 2016-2025:
- 2016: 63,043
- 2017: 63,214
- 2018: 59,574
- 2019: 58,293
- 2020: n/a (COVID)
- 2021: 58,729
- 2022: 64,357
- 2023: 64,733
- 2024: 65,632
- 2025: 59,991
How about that. Virginia Tech’s attendance was higher during Pry’s first three years than it ever was during Fuente’s tenure, if you believe the reported attendance (which is another discussion entirely).
Now for something I’ve been promising for a while: My trip to the College Football Hall of Fame (Georgia Tech game weekend) and how VT is represented there.
Hokies at the College Football Hall of Fame
A few weeks ago, I stopped by the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. It was the Sunday after Georgia Tech flattened the Hokies. My goal was to check out the Hall, of course, but also to see if there’s much Virginia Tech stuff there.As I waited outside to enter, I happened to randomly look down and see this brick in the sidewalk, which I thought was kind of cool.
I checked, and we’ve got a Michael Tiernan registered in our database, but he hasn’t logged on since at least August 2013, which is the limit of our login records. So, if you know Mike, tell him you saw this pic and that he needs to come back and subscribe to Tech Sideline.
The HOF (as I’ll refer to it) is a three-story exhibit that begins with a full-height wall of helmets that displays a helmet from (I assume) every college football team in the country. By my count, that’s 24 rows of 37 helmets (888), minus 70 helmets in that little balcony cutout, for a total of 818 helmets.
I put this pic in Monday Thoughts a couple of weeks ago, but here it is again. Find the VT helmet:
If you can’t find it, here’s a cropped pic that should help.
When you first go in, you have the option of personalizing your visit by going to a kiosk, getting your picture taken and answering a handful of questions including where you’re from, what your favorite team is and, oddly, one word your friends would use to describe you.
That picture you take and the information you give is encoded into a card that you carry with you and can use to personalize your experience at various displays. More on that later.
After finding the Virginia Tech helmet, I went to the third floor and saw this display of the members of the 2025 class, which I had forgotten includes a guy named Michael Vick.
Here’s a closeup of Michael’s “locker,” including a box of Hokie Toasties and various other memorabilia:
Trivia: If you have a copy of that Sugar Time magazine, check out the inside covers. One of them (front or back, I can’t remember which) features a full page ad for Hokie Central.
(If you don’t know what Hokie Central is, go to the back of the class and write your name in cursive 500 times as your punishment.)
From there, I went to the large display hall that includes year-by-year listings for every class of players, coaches and admins that have entered the HOF since its inception.
Here’s a better idea of what those displays look like:
And here is a photo of the 1987 class (Carroll Dale):
The 2006 class (Bruce Smith):
The 2023 class (Corey Moore):
That’s just a sampling of the class listings that include Virginia Tech Hokies.
In the middle of the room are interactive displays that you can tap and quickly bring up a team of your choice. Pulling up Virginia Tech gives you a display that’s two screens wide (swipe to scroll) and shows every Hokie in the HOF, except for Michael Vick, who hasn’t been incorporated into the display yet.
Tap any player/coach display and you get details on that person. It’s a pretty cool way to include information about all HOF members without having an old-school sculpted bust of each person sitting in a little alcove.
Another area where Virginia Tech is featured is in a display honoring the ties between college football and the military:
Here’s a closeup of the “Commitment” part of that display:
A closeup of the Virginia Tech area of that display:
And an even closer look to demonstrate that you’re not imagining things. One feature of that display is... upside down:
No, I didn’t report it, but maybe you can, if you go.
Lastly, here’s a random display about Frank Beamer:
Something No One Wants to See: A.I. Will Stewart
And now, much to my regret, we find out what the picture taken at the kiosk near the entry was for.The HOF uses that photo and the accompanying information from questions you answer to create a personalized display at various points in the HOF, complete with an artificial intelligence (A.I.) rendering created from your photo.
Here I am, supposedly posing with the Heisman trophy. (Spoiler alert: I already have transformed my dreams into reality, with Tech Sideline.)
I’m not sure why the A.I. rendering dressed me like that. It’s got a Steve Spurrier vibe to it, so maybe that’s it. Oh, well.
Here’s another example, showing me doing something that I would never do, unless large quantities of alcohol were involved. At least this one looks like me:
Here’s A.I.’s idea of what I would look like as an O&M drum major (or something), in a rendering that looks only slightly like me:
And that’s quite enough humiliation for one column. I’m pretty sure those pics are going to wind up on social media at some point in the future, and not in accounts friendly to yours truly.
Do I recommend a trip to the College Football Hall of Fame? Yes, if you’re in town for something else and don’t mind spending $35 for a ticket to wander through the HOF and see yourself rendered in creepy A.I. fashion. Otherwise, you’ve seen everything a Virginia Tech fan would want to see, captured here.
Up Next: Loserville
In case you don’t know or don’t remember why Louisville isn’t well-liked by Virginia Tech fans, spend some time this week reading over my Conference Wars series from 2004, in particular Part 3: 1994-2000.
That’s ancient history, though, and it won’t motivate Virginia Tech in the slightest this week, as the Hokies go up against a ranked Louisville squad that is an early 10.5-point favorite.
If you’ve made it this far through this week’s off-beat, off-topic and self-indulgent Monday Thoughts, then give yourself a cookie. You have earned it, my friend!
We’ll see you later this week.