2011 Virginia Tech Hokies Football: Va. Tech @ Virginia

When the Virginia Tech Hokies defeated the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets back on Nov. 10, it appeared obvious that the Atlantic Coast Conference’s best team over the past eight years would defend its Coastal Division championship and return to the ACC title game on the first weekend of December. Virginia Tech won the ACC in its first year in the conference (2004) and has subsequently won four division championships in the six-year existence of a 12-team, split division league. Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech were the only two Coastal teams to have won the division since 2005. It didn’t seem as though any other school was going to get a word in edgewise.

The Virginia Cavaliers, however, have spoken. They’ve spoken well enough and long enough to be heard. This weekend, at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Virginia, the team affectionately known as the ‘Hoos will try to steal the Coastal crown from Virginia Tech and complete one of the most remarkable one-season journeys in all of college football.

Over the past two seasons, Virginia didn’t even sniff a bowl game. The program crashed and burned under former boss Al Groh in 2009, and then Mike London inherited Groh’s mess in 2010. Virginia seemed to have a long-term reclamation project ahead, and without a big-time quarterback, it seemed that the Cavs were going to slog through 2011 without the passing game which would allow running backs Perry Jones and Kevin Parks to flourish.

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However, London has worked his magic in Charlottesville. The obvious choice for ACC Coach of the Year has placed a great deal of emphasis on the defensive side of the ball. As a result, Virginia was able to hold down Georgia Tech and Florida State in a pair of season-changing, landscape-shaping upsets that have the Hoos at 8-3 entering their final regular-season game. Standing at 5-2 in the ACC, Virginia has overachieved beyond any reasonable measure. Amazingly enough, the Cavs’ two losses came to two of the less impressive teams in the conference: North Carolina and North Carolina State. Against the big boys, London’s lads have regularly delivered the goods. Now, if they can ambush the biggest and baddest boy on the block in the ACC, they’ll win their first-ever division title and will have a chance to improbably earn a spot in the Orange Bowl.

This is an over-the-top scenario emerging in the shadows of Monticello. Virginia was once ranked No. 1 in the country in 1990, but Georgia Tech quickly put an end to the Cavs’ dream of a national title when UVA was coached by George Welsh. Virginia made the Sugar Bowl that season, and that’s the last time Virginia was relevant on a national scope and scale.

Now, the Hoos are back in the spotlight, and if they can max out against coach Frank Beamer’s Virginia Tech juggernaut, they will author one of the most amazing narratives of a 2011 season that has exploded into chaos.

What’s a little more anarchy in this deliciously wild college football campaign? Virginia hopes to make life even more messy for the pigskin punditocracy… and the archrival Hokies who will be staring across the way on Saturday.

Virginia Tech Hokies @ Virginia Cavaliers Preview