It's a complicated question, and the answer isn't easy. The analysis is complicated by the fact that Tech plays on grass at home, and the only time they play on turf is on the road, so naturally that's going to skew the results.

Many Hokie fans, swayed by what they have seen in Lane Stadium, and the Orange Bowl, and the Carrier Dome, and Mountaineer Field, say that Tech is a better football team on grass. Other Hokie fans, recalling the 1998 Music City Bowl (turf) and both Sugar Bowls, say that astroturf enhances Tech's speed and makes them a better team on the fake stuff.

I decided to gather up some data to present to you that might help you answer the question if Virginia Tech is a better team on grass than on turf. The answer isn't simple, and whether or not the data are conclusive is up to you to decide.

First of all, I decided to start the analysis in 1993, the first bowl game of the Frank Beamer era. There's no particular reason for that, other than the fact that I thought the data should represent not just the Beamer era, but the bowl teams of the Beamer era. So the data that I'm about to present runs from the beginning of the 1993 season through the 2000 Central Florida game.

Here's a quick look at what I found:

At first glance, the data support the notion that Tech is a better football team on grass. They win 81% of their games on grass, versus just 67% of games on turf. That's a simplistic view of the stats, though, and it's obviously skewed by a 41-6 record on the home grass of Lane Stadium.

When you take out the home grass record, the non-home records for grass and turf start to come more in line.

When you look at the data this way, the difference between grass and turf performance is so miniscule as to be insignificant. The Hokies have played a nearly equal number of non-home games (23 on grass, 24 on turf) on each surface in the last 8 years, and on grass, they're just 3 percentage points better and just 0.3 points better per game. These differences are so small as to be nearly negligible.

47 games are included in the non-home game data, and out of those 47 games, the bulk of the data (34 games) comes from games against UVa, ECU, and Tech's Big East opponents. Those are the only opponents against whom Tech has played more than one road game over the time period of 1993-present.

* in 1993, UVa had turf in Scott Stadium, and in 1995, Tech played Temple on the grass surface of RFK stadium.

This subset of data seems to suggest that Virginia Tech is indeed a better team on a grass surface, but only in terms of winning percentage. In terms of scoring margin, there is no difference between grass and turf in these data.

Despite the presence of ECU, Miami, and UVa as tough road grass surfaces, Tech has an impressive 10-4 record as a road grass team against the opponents listed. The presence of Rutgers as a road grass game boosts the record here, but no more so than the presence of Temple as a road turf team does in the turf category.

On turf, against the trio of BC, Pittsburgh, and Temple, Tech has racked up a 9-2 record with an average score of 35-18 (+17 margin). Tech has had no trouble against those teams.

Where the Hokies get into trouble on turf on the road is at Syracuse and WVU, where they're 3-5 overall. Tech has absorbed two whippings at those places, a 52-21 defeat in 1996 at Syracuse, and a 30-17 defeat in 1997 in Morgantown. They have at least managed to make the other 3 losses close. Out of their 3 wins at WVU and Syracuse, only 1 was a laugher (27-0 over WVU in 1995).

The bowl games Tech has played since 1993 are only a limited set of data, so I'm not sure you can draw many conclusions from them, but they are interesting to look at. Here's the breakdown:

Here's what that equates to, in a grass/turf breakdown:

If you went by this small set of data, you would think that Tech is a horrible grass team in bowl games and a great turf team. The grass data is skewed by two bowl games where Tech got thrashed: the two Gator Bowls, played in 1994 and 1997. The Hokies ran into BCS-quality teams both times, playing a hot Volunteer team in 1994 with Peyton Manning as a freshman QB, and an awesome North Carolina team in 1997.

And when you add in the 1996 Orange Bowl, which was a pretty close game that saw Nebraska pull away at the end, you get a pretty warped set of data for bowl games on grass. Only the 1993 Independence Bowl saves Tech's bowl record on grass from being a total loss.

When it comes to bowl games, you can argue that the Hokies are a turf team, but again, that conclusion would only be drawn from three games. But you have to admit that those three games have been good ones for Tech: the 1995 Sugar Bowl, the 1998 Music City Bowl, and the 1999 Sugar Bowl. The Hokies stood tall in all three games.

My own personal conclusion is that Tech isn't any better on grass fields than they are on astroturf fields. I think the key set of data is data set #2, "Road Games and Neutral Site Games." That data set presents results that do not include the home (grass) games, which are naturally heavily slanted in Tech's favor.

But you can draw your own conclusions. You can view the data used to generate this report on-line at http://www.techsideline.com/tslextra/issue1/techonturf.htm, and you can even download the data in Microsoft Excel 97 format (directions are on the techonturf.htm page), so you can sort it and manipulate it yourself.

I hope you enjoyed this look at Tech's record on artificial turf and on grass. Future installments of "Inside the Numbers" will be equally mind-numbing in detail!