As we head into another off-season filled with discussions of painted end zones, conference realignment, and the merits of certain football uniform color combinations, I would like to volunteer an additional topic for consideration of the HokieNation:

What standards should Hokie fans use to determine if a particular football season is considered "successful" or a "disappointment"?

These seem more like goals for the Syracuse program, rather than minimum expectations. Perhaps this helps explain some of the "Coach P. Must Go" feelings from our Big East brothers to the north. But enough about the Orange-People. This article really got me thinking about what the expectations for the Virginia Tech football program should be.

There are some who say that VT should have the highest of expectations. Anything short of the National Championship should be considered a disappointment. This in an admirable goal, but is it a reasonable expectation? I do not doubt that Frank Beamer and his staff have this goal clearly in mind as they develop their football program. But, as fans, can we truly say we were disappointed in the 1999 season because the Hokies fell short of the National Championship due to Florida State�s 4^th quarter rally in the Sugar Bowl? No. While we may sight our goals high, our expectations should reflect what is reasonable to expect from our football program every year.

There is no question our expectations for the Virginia Tech program should be rising. My studies (ahem) at Virginia Tech coincided with the 1982 � 1985 football seasons. Believe it or not, I remember having expectations for Bill Dooley�s program. They went something like this:

• Win more games than you lose.
• Get some kind of regional or national exposure. As a football independent, we were starved for any kind of attention. Even a regional TV date was HUGE!!!
• Beat Virginia. Virginia was an ACC doormat at the time. This was not normally a difficult expectation to meet. Still, as the superior program at the time, there was no way to justify a loss in this series.
• Qualify for a bowl game occasionally. Any bowl game was fine with us. The 1984 Independence Bowl game against Air Force was high cotton, especially coming on the heels of a Peach Bowl snub the previous year.
• Since we were scheduling teams like VMI, Appalachian State, William & Mary, Richmond, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Duke each season� don�t lose to them for goodness sake!!!

I don�t think I was the only Hokie fan with these expectations at the time. Clearly, the expectations for Frank Beamer�s Hokies should be much higher now that our program has evolved into a perennial Big East power.

For this exercise, I have chosen to "reverse-engineer" the problem. "Reverse-engineering" does not refer to the common practice demonstrated by Virginia Tech engineering students every year as they matriculate to the school of business in a race against academic probation. No. "Reverse-engineering" refers to the process of coming up with the method of solving a problem after you already know the answer.

On the topic of expectations for the Virginia Tech football program, we all have a pretty good feel for what the answers should be. Ask any Hokie fan over the age of 30 about their favorite seasons. 1999 (National Championship game), 1995 (Sugar Bowl vs. Texas), and 1993 (Independence Bowl vs. Indiana) will be prominent among those fondly remembered. Ask for disappointments and the 1997 season (7-5 record, Gator Bowl loss to UNC) will quickly come to mind.

It gets trickier when you think about the two most recent football seasons. I think Hokie fans have very different opinions about whether these two seasons were "successes" or "disappointments." How do they really stand up to seasons past?

The trick is to somehow quantify the accomplishments that VT fans care about most. These expectations should reflect the accomplishments that are important milestones for most Hokie fans and are reasonable to expect from the football program each and every year.

1. Finish 1^st or 2^nd place in the Big East conference.

This is a fairly high expectation. Virginia Tech got a lot of mileage from those five consecutive victories over Miami (1995-1999). But Miami has now clearly re-established itself as the premier Big East program and a true national-championship contender every year. Even the most ardent VT fan must acknowledge that it will take a special team to unseat the Hurricanes at this point.

Essentially, this expectation as written here (first or second in the conference) reflects the desire of VT fans to have the Hokies surpass all other Big East programs and battle Miami for the championship every year. Hokie fans expect their program to compete for the Big East championship every season.

2. Finish the season ranked in both major polls.

This accomplishment is not at all unreasonable. A 3-loss or 4-loss team has a reasonable expectation of a top-25 finish. The success of the VT football team over the last 10 years has clearly carried the expectation of a top-25 finish every year. I considered the idea of raising the bar on this expectation to top-20 or top-15, but decided against it. In the end, I didn�t want the feeling that our view of success or failure was so closely tied to what other people thought about our team.

Keeping it simple, it�s a safe bet that at this point in the development of this program any season where VT does not finish ranked in the top-25 will be viewed as a disappointment.

3. Beat Virginia.

Picture me hiding in a foxhole, clutching my helmet with both hands, waiting for the bombs to fall. I expect there is a segment of the HokieNation screaming "Here we go again with this UVa infatuation." Some segment of HokieNation may think that we are beyond worrying about the Hoos as our "rival." Big East games are more important� yada, yada, yada�

Sometimes beating the Hoos has national significance (1990, 1995) and other times it does not (2000 & 2001 come to mind). The Hokies have no control over whether the Hoos put together a formidable foe or not. Regardless, it feels good to beat them. We expect to beat them. We expect to be the premier program in the state. Anything else is a disappointment.

4. Win a bowl game.

This is one of my favorite goals. I remember a time when simply qualifying for a minor bowl was cause for great joy. Our program has advanced to the point where we gripe about lower tier bowls and lesser opponents. After 10 consecutive bowl appearances, we expect VT to be playing in a bowl. The only questions are where, when, and against whom?

Since we already have the expectation to be playing in a bowl game, the next higher expectation is to win it. The bowl game is your last game of the season. It�s the last game for the fans to judge you by. So it definitely has a big effect on how fans will ultimately judge the entire season.

The bowl game increases in importance when your bowl opponent is a nationally known team and one of the better teams you face all season. Due to VT�s scheduling philosophy from the 1990�s onward, VT�s bowl opponent has often been the most appealing out-of-conference opponent of the year. If your team only gets one chance per season to match up with a Texas or Tennessee or Alabama, it is natural that it would be important to beat them to further your national reputation.

Finally, we cut to the chase. I propose that it is reasonable to expect the VT football team to meet at least 3 of these 4 expectations every year. This should define a "successful" season. Anything less than 3 of 4 indicates a season that is probably viewed by fans as a disappointment.

The table below summarizes the VT football team�s performance against these standards over the 10 seasons of full Big East round-robin play.

Many of you surely have other factors that impact how you judge the success of a football season. My purpose here was to define a simple set of standards that we as fans can reasonably expect from the VT football team.

I suspect that many of you may disagree that 2002 was a successful season, especially when compared with the inflated expectations created by starting the season with 8 consecutive victories. I suspect others may disagree that 1994 was a disappointment, since the team�s 2^nd place finish in the Big East led to our first ever Gator Bowl appearance.

In a future article, I will examine each of the last 10 football seasons and why I think the label of "success" or "disappointment" is fair. I will also examine how one game over the course of each of these seasons may have turned the tide in the other direction.

TechSideline Pass Home