I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and some down time, maybe taking in some of the early bowl games, and gearing up for the big ones coming up this weekend. Starting Friday evening, I'll be enjoying friends, frolic, and football straight through the weekend until life's realities are back on Monday. But in the mean time there's is the build up to the Virginia Tech vs Tennessee Chick-Fil-A bowl which seems like has gone on forever. I can't imagine what the Big 10 goes through with this 169 days off.
My main take away from all the interviews, blogs, and forum reading regarding the CFA bowl is that Hokie fans, players, and coaches are completely obsessed with the fact that Tennesee is an SEC team. Maybe too obsessed.
First off I understand the significance in Virginia Tech finally beating a team from the SEC. Its important. We've lost 4 straight, and they have all be high profile, memorable games. The SEC is the gold standard in college football and its a hurdle that must be overcome for Frank Beamer on down to the fan base to achieve some sort of validation about Virginia Tech football. I get that.
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I used to have the same obsession with beating Florida State. Will Stewart had a similar analogy in his recent article, but in the 90's all the way up until the first ACC Championship game it completely gnawed on me and I'm sure others that FSU and Bobby Bowden was a team that the Hokies just couldn't over come, even when VT was more talented (and in the case of the ACC Championship game, a 14 point favorite). Beating them in 2007 for the first time was not necessarily a significant win for the program, but it was huge for me.
So it is with the Hokie Nation and the SEC in 2009. Just listen to Frank Beamer's address to the team before practice on BeamerBall.com, or read the player interviews by Kyle Tucker, or go to virtually any other fan blog or forum. We aren't playing Tennessee on Friday, we are playing the SEC conference.
Which is what makes me worried. Whenever you've failed at something several consecutive times, it can go to your head. Which means that the next time you're faced with the same task (for example, a 3 foot putt), even if you are perfectly capable of doing it, your previous failures make it harder to overcome. Are we building up this unranked, rather smallish, and frankly average Tennessee team too much by constantly thinking of them as "one of those big, bad, fast SEC teams that always beats us". If Tennessee somehow goes up 10-0 on VT, is the "here we go again" syndrome going to kick in???
Hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully the challenge of finally beating an SEC team, in Atlanta of all places, is something that brings focus to the Hokies preparation and play on Friday. I'm just worried that instead of gearing up to play Tennessee, we are building up this Friday's game into some hurculean effort it isn't.
There are a lot of other important reasons to win this game - Will Stewart also does a good job point those out. Beamer has never won back to back bowl games (?!?), the 10 win season, and what I personally think is most important: momentum and ranking going into 2010.
Oh yeah, there's also the fact that my neighbors, and New Year's Eve guests are Tennessee alums.
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