A New Philosophy Regarding Virginia Tech Hokies Football Scheduling

For those who have seen the 2011 Virginia Tech Football Schedule and really examined the games in detail, you will see that there is a bit of a shift in scheduling philosophy in Blacksburg this season.

The 2011 Virginia Tech College Football Schedule has been released and for whoever has looked at it carefully, especially concerning how it compares to recent times, it obviously includes a distinct appearance. This is principally when it comes to the out-of-conference section of the schedule in which the athletic director and head coach find more control (as opposed to the ACC conference schedule that is a lot more pre-determined).

Over the last few years, Virginia Tech has highlighted a big name adversary in an out of conference match up. This particular game has mostly been at the start of the season, even the very first game of the entire year. This was in fact true this year when the Hokies played Boise State at FedEx Field in Washington DC. In 2009, Virginia Tech did something similar by playing Alabama, the ultimate BCS National Champion in the Chik-fil-a Classic in Atlanta. The Hokies have experienced comparable games in recent years with LSU as well as USC.

This year, the Hokies open up the season with Appalachian State, at East Carolina, Arkansas State, and Marshall. While ECU is really a decent program in Conference USA and really should concern Hokie fans some, none of those opponents are ‘featured match ups’ similar to the types discussed from previous years and give the Virginia Tech 2011 Football Schedule a very different feel. Virginia Tech vs Arkansas State tickets will be easier to locate than the Boise State or even Alabama seats were in previous year.

Even though the out-of-conference games with major showcased competitors have provided excellent pre-season build-up as well as drama regarding both fan bases, the Hokies have come out on the losing end of virtually every one of them. This has position the Hokies behind with regards to group objectives for the year straight away (generally banging them out from the National Championship picture) truly prior to a season can even get started.

Now that doesn’t imply they were nevertheless bad ideas. The teams and coaching staffs will probably tell you that those earlier premier match-ups supply many benefits in terms of pre-season and off-season determination. They also provide the college amazing publicity for the reason that the games are generally designed for TV events that can only assist the program. As a premier program, Virginia Tech likely wants to play in these types of games to be on that stage.

Nevertheless being beaten in a number of these games in sequential years, this year will change whether intentional or not. The beginning of this year, with Four out-of-conference games against non-BCS conference colleges allows the Hokies to build into the season much more gradually. In a year where they are breaking in brand new quarterback Logan Thomas, that is probably not necessarily a bad thing. It will have a component in terms of strength of schedule if the Hokies wind up watching the BCS standings at some point.

Regardless of whether this is a permanent switch to scheduling philosophy or not remains to be seen. The proven fact that Virginia Tech recently announced that they plan to play in another Chik-fil-a Classic against Alabama in 2013 clearly means they are not really leaving these types of games altogether. But the 2011 schedule definitely will have a different feel to it compared to previous years.

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