BCS Gets It "Right"; Hokies Go To Sugar Bowl!!!

I never thought I’d say this, but thank goodness for the BCS system.

I’m not talking about the massively flawed computer metric that spits out the top two teams and then leaves everyone guessing about the method.

I’m referring to the system that rewards a team fresh off an embarrassing loss but with excellent fans to back into my favorite bowl game, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, LA.

Fresh off a vomit-inducing 38-10 thumping at the hands of Clemson in the ACC Championship game, the 11-2 Hokies find themselves with an unbelievable date January 3 with No. 13 Michigan in the Superdome.

Plenty of folks are saying the Hokies don’t deserve this, perhaps not, but it does make up for past injustices. I can now almost forgive the 2001 Fiesta Bowl for stupidly picking No. 11 Notre Dame over a No. 5 one-loss Hokie squad led by Michael Vick.

This must be what it feels like to be ND actually, getting favorable bowl bids based purely on past reputation. Virginia Tech has clearly arrived as a program.

ESPN can suck it!

It’s comical to watch Kirk Herbstreit pontificating about how mad he is that the Sugar Bowl chose teams simply to put meat in the seats and make money. That’s what it’s all about Kirk!

The entire BCS is a wild money grab run by greedheads and fools. It’s designed only to pick the top two teams (it can barely accomplish that) after that the rankings barely matter.

This is the system we’re always told works best, so I don’t need to hear the talking heads at ESPN cry foul when the BCS selections upset them.

The Hokies defeated six teams selected to bowl games this season and another eligible team not going to the postseason, Miami.

Assuming that bowls represent some level of accomplishment as we’ve been told they do—despite the fact that there are 35 bowl games this season featuring 70 teams—the Hokies must have been pretty good to knock off all those capable squads.

There are many illustrious bowl games such as the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl or the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, but there’s no question that for a Hokie the Sugar Bowl is as good as it gets.

Tech’s best moments have come in New Orleans. In 1995 an upstart Hokie team rebounded from an 0-2 start to stun Texas 28-10 in the Sugar Bowl. The Hokies finished in the top ten for the first time with a 10-2 record and loads of excitement.

Tech returned with much more at stake for the 2000 BCS national championship game against Florida State. Redshirt freshman Michael Vick dazzled the nation and elevated the program to a new level despite losing 46-29.

Michael Vick had the Hokies on top 29-28 at the start of the 4th quarter

In 2005 the Hokies won the ACC in their first season and earned a match up with an undefeated Auburn team left out of the BCS national championship game. Tech mounted a furious comeback behind ACC player of the year Bryan Randall, but lost 16-13.

This season, the stakes are high again. This is a de facto “must win” for Tech. If the Hokies falter, the national perception of not being a big game program will continue to fester and frankly, there will be plenty of truth to it.

If Tech wins, idiot brain morons like Herbstreit and Pat Forde will continue to say the Hokies didn’t belong while simultaneously saying the BCS got it right with a national championship rematch no one wants to see.

But I just don’t care. Right or wrong the Hokies are in the Sugar Bowl and few things could be better.

So as Frank Beamer once eloquently stated, “I want to know how many of you are coming to New Orleans?!”

1995 Sugar Bowl: Virginia Tech vs. Texas

The 1995 season started the same way 2010 did, with two unnerving Hokie losses.

Tech fell to Boston College in the '95 opener then got blanked 16-0 by Cincinnati—incidentally the last time the Hokies were shut out.

0-2 is bad enough, but far worse when the Miami Hurricanes are next on the schedule. At that point, the Hokies had never defeated Miami.

But in traditional Hokie fashion, Tech rose to the challenge and won 13-7, then went on to reel off 9 consecutive victories to win the Big East championship and earn a birth in the Sugar Bowl against No. 9 Texas.

The Hokies came in ranked 13th, but were big underdogs. Tech trailed 10-7 at halftime, but stormed out of the locker room scoring 21 unanswered points largely due to the play of wideout Bryan Still (above).

Still was on the receiving end of a 54-yard Jim Druckenmiller touchdown pass and returned a punt 60 yards for a touchdown.

The win was most certainly the biggest in Tech history to that point and put the program on the map nationally.

Others to keep an eye on in this video are No. 58 Cornell Brown ( who most certainly would have been called for roughing the QB a few times if he played today), No. 81 Bryan Jennings, No. 42 Dwayne Thomas and current Hokie defensive backs coach No. 14 Torrian Gray who tracked down two interceptions in the contest.

Brian Kelly to Notre Dame; Officially Unofficial

The University of Cincinnati has yet to officially confirm that their head football coach Brian Kelly has accepted the head coaching position at Notre Dame, but that's clearly the case and all signs point to an official announcement tomorrow.

After winning the coach of the year award on ESPN's awards show Thursday night, Chris Fowler tried and tried to get any sort of answer from Kelly on the matter, but to no avail.

The Cincinnati players have done what Fowler couldn't however which is get an answer as Kelly told the team in a closed door meeting following their team banquet that he had indeed accepted the job at Notre Dame.

Senior standout receiver Mardy Gilyard walked out of the meeting after just 1 minute and was clearly upset.

"I heard everything I needed to know: 'I accepted the Notre Dame job,'" Gilyard said. "He went for the money. I'm fairly disgusted with the situation, that they let it last this long."

"I feel there was a little lying in the thing," Gilyard added. "I feel like he'd known this the whole time. Everybody knows Notre Dame's got the money. I kind of had a gut feeling he was going to stay just because he told me he was going to be here."

Gilyard wasn't the only Bearcat feeling the sting of Kelly's departure.

Star quarterback Tony Pike explained that Kelly told players last week that he was happy at Cincinnati.

"The Tuesday when we were practicing for Pittsburgh, he said he loves it here and he loves this team and loves coaching here and his family loves it here," Pike said.

I'm already decidedly on the record as not being a fan of Kelly, and I won't rehash that here.

However, while I understand the need and desire to keep the process quiet, misleading your own players is pretty low.

Sure, word would have leaked out had they known, but tomorrow at his Irish press conference, it will ring a bit hollow when they speak of Kelly's honesty and integrity.

Maybe I'm wrong and Kelly actually is a really nice guy. But his public perception is curious at best. There seem to be more than a few negatives out there, but he will be given a chance to change that at Notre Dame.

Kelly will almost certainly not coach his undefeated team in the Sugar Bowl, and they will get trounced because they just aren't that good.

The book is still out on Kelly.