A New Strategy Pertaining To Virginia Tech Football Scheduling

The 2011 Virginia Tech Football Schedule has been released and for those who have looked at it carefully, especially as to how it compares to recent years, it clearly includes a different appearance. This is mainly as it pertains to the actual out-of-conference portion of the schedule where the athletic director as well as coach have more control (as opposed to the ACC conference schedule that is much more pre-determined).

In recent years, Virginia Tech has featured a big name opponent in an out of conference game. This game has frequently been at the beginning of the season, even the first game of the year. This had been true this year when the Hokies took on Boise State at FedEx Field in Washington DC. In 2009, Virginia Tech did something similar by playing Alabama, the ultimate BCS National Champion within the Chik-fil-a Classic in Atlanta. The Hokies have had similar games recently with LSU as well as USC.

This year, the actual Hokies open up the season with Appalachian State, at East Carolina, Arkansas State, and Marshall. While ECU is really a good program in Conference USA and should worry Hokie fans some, not one of those competitors are ‘featured match ups’ similar to the ones discussed from prior years and give the Virginia Tech 2011 Football Schedule a very different feel. Virginia Tech vs Appalachian St football tickets will be easier to find compared to Boise State or even Alabama seats were in previous year.

While the out-of-conference games with large showcased competitors have provided excellent pre-season build-up and drama with regard to both fan bases, the Hokies have come out on the losing end of just about all of them. This has placed the Hokies behind when it comes to group goals for the season right away (generally knocking them out of the National Championship picture) really prior to the season can even begin.

Now that doesn’t mean they were nevertheless poor ideas. The teams and coaching staffs will most likely tell you that those early premier match-ups provide many benefits when it comes to pre-season and off-season determination. They additionally provide the school incredible promotion in that the actual games are usually made for TV events that can only help the program. As a leading program, Virginia Tech likely really wants to perform in these types of games to be on that stage.

However being beaten in a number of these games in sequential years, this year will be different regardless of whether intentional or not. The beginning of this year, with 4 out-of-conference games against non-BCS conference schools allows the Hokies to build in to the season more gradually. In a year where they're breaking in brand new quarterback Logan Thomas, that is probably not necessarily a bad thing. It will have a part in terms of strength of schedule if the Hokies end up watching the BCS standings at some point.

Whether this can be a permanent change to scheduling philosophy or not remains to be seen. The proven fact that Virginia Tech recently announced that they plan to play in an additional Chik-fil-a Classic against Alabama in 2013 obviously means they are not leaving these types of games altogether. But the 2011 schedule definitely will have a different feel to it than prior years.

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