This touches on something that has been festering inside of me for a while. I don;t feel the same "passion" as I do for VT football and basketball the way that I used to (e.g., revenue sports). Therefore the wins and losses don;t seem to affect me as much. It has nothing to do with my age or my love for all things VT. It has to do with the growing gap between students and athletes. There has always been a difference; i.e., extra access to tutoring; separate dorms and eating halls; special treatment.......but holy #$@% now they have lounges that rival the best spas in the country, they get courted like the next coming and every decision is a press conference (freak show). I just find that rooting on Saturdays feels like pro sports to me and less of a connection to the university. Athletes routinely bail early for $$$ and fame and decide on schools based on how quickly they can get into the pro levels. The student-athlete is dying; these student-athletes really in many cases (there are a few refreshing exceptions) don't care one iota about the school or university or the student body. This gap is mostly apparent for revenue sports; money corrupts everything. Sometimes, I actually find myself rooting for the Olympic sports success stories more than the revenue ones. I just think the gap between the university/student body and the revenue sports athletes has grown to a point where the connection is really a weak one; they just don't share the same feelings or experiences associated with VT that I do.

The ACC is the better conference for all things associated with a institution of higher learning, where being a student-athlete may still mean something. The SEC is just a Saturday event; and we already have that on Sundays. So I would have to agree.....eff 'em....they are a one trick pony.

Quote Originally Posted by khhokie View Post
...eff them. I have no respect for a group of universities (institutions of higher learning) where football is more important than academics. Where the AD is more powerful than the University President. Tennessee, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina are all Community Colleges. Sure they have Vanderbilt, Florida and Georgia which are good academic schools. The ACC, which is the best academic conference top to bottom, has Duke, UVA, UNC CH, Wake Forest, Boston College, Maryland, GT and VT. Athletics has its proper place at all ACC schools. They can have their superiority but know that we don't pay $150,000 for a DL out of Memphis like Bama did or pay recruits 10K to 15K for signing a LOI like Auburn did according to Terry Bowden. I never want to leave the ACC. We have our path to the BCS Championship and as our program grows we will close the gap, maybe not all the way, with schools like Bama and LSU. On top of that we have a classy coach like Frank Beamer and Bama has that *sshole Nick Saban.