A Look Ahead: Virginia Tech vs. Maryland

By Justin Cates

Things finally came together on offense in the Hokies 42-24 upset win over the Miami Hurricanes.

After turning the ball over eight times in the previous two games, quarterback Logan Thomas was nearly flawless in Miami Gardens completing 25-of-31 passes for 366 yards and two touchdowns.

Thomas added another 42 yards on the ground, but for one of the few times this season he wasn't the Hokies' primary running threat.

Redshirt freshman Trey Edmunds exploded with 14 carries for 74 yards and four touchdowns while sophomore J.C. Coleman tallied 22 carries for 68 yards.

Tech also has two breakout receivers in Willie Byrn and Josh Stanford.

Byrn has impressed with his toughness and speed all season, but the light didn't fully come one for Stanford until the last two games.

Against Boston College Stanford finished with 171 yards and the 'Canes were burned for 107 including a magnificent tackle-breaking run on a 32-yard touchdown.

The Hokie offense presented a balanced attack that both exposed weaknesses in the Miami defense and showed what the Tech unit is capable of when not turning the ball over. The trick is maintaining the momentum.

It won't be easy with major questions surrounding Tech's already shaky kicking game.

Kicker Cody Journell was dismissed from the team this week ending his bizarre four and a half year odyssey of occasional on field brilliance and off field stupidity.

That leaves the Hokies (7-3, 4-2 ACC) with no kickers on the roster who have made a field goal in a college game. Ethan Keyserling kicked against Marshall earlier this season but missed three kicks in the rain.

He'll likely get the start but Michael Branthover, Mitchell Ludwig and freshman walk-on Eric Kristensen all got a look in practice this week.

Senior day in Blacksburg will see Tech's senior corners on the sidelines as both Kyle Fuller (groin) and Antone Exum (ankle) won't dress Saturday.

Thankfully for the Hokies, corner is the deepest spot on the team and freshmen Kendall Fuller and Brandon Facyson will start in their places.

They will face a Maryland (5-4, 1-4 ACC) team that has hit a major wall in the second half of this season.

After starting 4-0, the Terrapins have dropped four of the last five with only a one point win over Virginia in that span.

Talented quarterback R.J. Brown just hasn't been the same since suffering a concussion in a 63-0 loss at Florida State, but there aren't many healthy bodies to throw to right now.

Five wide receivers are out for this game including leading receivers Stefon Diggs and Deon Long.

That makes it tempting to lean on the running game and tailback Brandon Ross, but it's a tall order against a Tech run defense currently ranked fourth in the nation.

The Hokies have to win out if they want a chance to make it to the ACC Championship game in Charlotte. They need help too, but a loss to Maryland or Virginia will spell disaster.

An early season match up between these two teams would have looked a lot different. A healthy Maryland offense would have presented an interesting challenge for the Hokies.

As it stands now, it should be a happy senior day in Lane Stadium.

Maryland is Leaving the ACC, but How's Their Math?

It's been a rough week if you're a fan of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

As everyone knows by now, the University of Maryland voted Monday morning to leave the ACC to join the B1G (that means Big Ten plus three).

The Terrapins are of course a charter member of the ACC—founded in 1953—but their athletic programs are hemorrhaging money to the tune of losing $26.8 million last year.

That apparently means that they had to jump at the chance for slightly more television revenue.

The B1G hands out approximately $24 million a year per school versus $17 million for the ACC.

Interestingly, taking a look at the Nielsen numbers from 2011 tells us that the B1G number is about right while the ACC badly botched their most recent negotiations.

For football, the SEC is clearly No. 1 with 4,447,000 viewers. No. 2 is the B1G with 3,276,000 and the ACC is in third with 2,650,000.

The B1G is first in hoops with the ACC close behind. The biggest difference between the two television deals is the B1G deal expires in 2017 while the ACC locked themselves in until 2027.

According to Sports Illustrated's Pete Thamel, the B1G projects to be able to distribute roughly $43 million per school when the conference negotiates its next deal, but that number strikes me as unlikely and based on a lot of assumptions.

The B1G is assuming that the new television markets brought in by adding Maryland and Rutgers—Washington, D.C. and New York City/New Jersey—will give them far more households with the B1G Network on their standard tier 1 sports package.

That would give them tremendous bargaining power when the time to talk turkey comes up again.

However, the way people watch television is changing rapidly and the industry will have to change too if it wants to keep its subscribers.

A recent study suggests that the average monthly cable bill could be $200 by 2020. That's absolutely insane.

Prices are already far above what the shoddy product we receive is worth which has been driving people online for entertainment.

It's not surprising when services like HuluPlus, Netflix, Vudu, Amazon Prime and others are all vastly superior to wildly inconsistent cable connections filled with dozens of channels that go unwatched.

Thus, the thinking is that in the future cable companies will offer broadband connections with more options for à la carte programming and less of the stuff you don't want in an attempt to keep people from going online. 

This is an intriguing issue in and of itself, but my point is simply these revenue projections by the B1G are likely overly optimistic. 

That's especially true when you consider that the league is simply diluting its product by adding two middling football programs and hoping that market share somehow overrides the product on the field. 

It's somewhat sad to see Maryland leave I guess, but they're a mediocre athletic department that brings very little to the table in the sport driving all this conference realignment nonsense, football. 

I'm hoping that ACC commissioner John Swofford holds the Terps to the $50 million exit fee (one they didn't agree to) and finally shows he has some cajones when it comes to negotiating. 

Stick it to the deserters I say, and take your time finding the new member to fill their shoes. Everyone's assuming a school like UConn or Cincinnati is the logical choice, but are both unappealing options. 

I say take that $50 million and pay a better candidate's exit fee from some other conference. 

Or, umm...Notre Dame, are you sure you don't want to play football with us for real? Pleeeeeeeease?