NCAA Football Virginia Tech Football

For as long as football has existed, it has done so as a collision sport. While advances in conditioning, rules, and protection have limited the grievous and fatal injuries, the gridiron is still absolutely no place for the weak or timid.

And yet elsewhere, an entirely different match of unbelievable athleticism plays out; while it's mainly confined to the edges of the field (and, of course, the SEC), the contest of speed on speed is every bit as integral to a football game as what happens on the line. Indeed, few things are as awe-inspiring as a wideout in full sprint, ball in hand, rendering all the violence and shoving behind him utterly meaningless.

That's why a ruptured Achilles tendon, like the one suffered by Virginia Tech wideout Brandon Dillard, is the cruelest of injuries that could befall such a player. Before Tuesday's injury, Dillard was one of the fastest players in the nation. Once the Achilles ruptured, though, his right leg was every bit as useless on land as a fish's flipper; his foot may as well have fallen off, so useless it became. He's gone, done, finito for the season, and it'd be darned good news for Dillard and the Hokies if he were even at 90% a year from now.

Of course, that's not even the worst of the news.

A number of talking heads believe that the Texans picked Virginia Tech left tackle Duane Brown too early. They believe the Texans could have traded down again and still got their target. Those people would be wrong.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that the Chargers wanted Brown with the 27th pick:

"Funny that the Chargers finally got a tackle with their final pick. They had been stymied from starting off the draft with one when an unprecedented eight tackles were selected before they picked at No. 27.

'We came up one pick short,' said [Norv] Turner, who along with the rest of the Chargers brass watched Houston trade into the 26th spot and take tackle Duane Brown of Virginia Tech."

At the Texans draft party, someone told me shortly after the trade down from 18 that Brown was going to be the pick. I didn't believe it until I heard the pick later. If Brown was the target, then trying to trade down again was going to get too cute.

If the Texans only have offensive line guru Alex Gibbs for a short period of time, you should probably get him the tackle he wants pronto.

Oh, Wisconsin, truly your nonconference scheduling is to be mocked:

The University of Wisconsin's 2008 football schedule, released Friday, reveals that UW replaced an early season non-conference game against powerful Virginia Tech with a regular-season finale against Cal Poly, a Football Championship Subdivision program.

Wisconsin's nonconference schedule is now Cal Poly, Akron, Marshall, and Fresno State. Last year's schedule: Washington State, UNLV, the Citadel, and Northern Illinois. The year before: Bowling Green, Western Illinois, San Diego State, Buffalo.

That's one BCS opponent in three years, and that opponent was Washington State. That might be understandable if Wisconsin was struggling to pick up Motor City Bowl bids, but UW is among the second-tier Big Ten powers and should be scheduling... I dunno, anyone, especially since UW returns the vast majority of a team that won* played in a New Year's Day bowl.

What's the common thread here? Bret Bielema, who evidently learned from the master of puff scheduling as Bill Snyder's defensive coordinator at Kansas State.

(Via the Wizard of Odds, and *correction.)

Everyone lambasted the Hawaii schedule for being so easy and especially for having two 1-AA opponents on their schedule. Who knew they were just ahead of the curve.

Georgia Tech, Clemson, Florida State and Virginia Tech are all struggling to find one more home game. All of them already have a 1-AA team on the schedule. It appears that all four may have to resort to having two 1-AA home games for the 2008 season.

The problems are the usual: last minute buyouts/cancellations, wanting the game to be relatively safe (read, patsy), not wanting to provide a return game, "needing" another home game and/or not wanting to pay the premium price that 1-A guarantee games now cost.

Of course, those were the same problems Hawaii faced. I'm sure the other teams will get the same sympathy and understanding as the Warriors received for their scheduling issues.

Branden Ore's career at Virginia Tech has been troubled, to say the least. Academic troubles led him to take a warehouse job at 7-11 to gain some perspective before he ended up doing it for the rest of his life (redacted joke about VT degrees). When that stuff hasn't been slowing him down, he's often been plagued by injuries, such as the kind this year that limited him to under 4 ypc when he was supposed to be the ACC's premiere back.

But nothing quite like this has come up yet. As is the case, when you're riding in a car with crack cocaine that isn't yours, Ore was scheduled to testify in federal court regarding an occurrence in 2006 when he was riding shotgun in a Cadillac that was determined to have contained 23 grams of crack cocaine. To wit...

Blacksburg officer M.P. Czernicki thought the Cadillac's windows were tinted too darkly, according to court documents. He asked Majette for a license and learned (Tony) Majette's license had been suspended and that Majette had a long string of violations. The officer arrested Majette for driving with a suspended license and took him to his patrol car, court papers said.

While Ore will likely be in and out in a jiff, things aren't as rosy for Majette, who took the Michael Irvin/Shaggy approach to legally defending one's self to accusations of drug possession. Ore beasted out in the Orange Bowl, scoring a touchdown with 116 yards on 23 carries, but due to said injuries and serious character concerns, he's coming back to Blacksburg for his senior season for sure. All the better to play mediator in the inevitable QB dispute between Sean Glennon (unless he's planning on following through with his draft prospects- ha!) and Tyrod Taylor.

Great- unless Virginia Tech happens to have a guy named Ronnie Vannucci buried in their depth chart, looks like no more The Killers cracks at their expense. Not after Brandon Flowers confirmed long-standing suspicion that he'd be shuffling off to the pros even if he wasn't projected as a first-round guy.

The NFL Advisory board projects Flowers as a second-round pick, but the only thing that makes me wonder is how totally sweet being on the NFL Advisory board that projects draft status. And that they feel the need to circumvent Mel Kiper. But either way, the two-time All-American Flowers appears to be less of a character risk than recent Hokie DB's of note such as DeAngelo Hall or Jimmy Williams. I mean, god only knows what could go down if the Falcons take him as well. You might find the Buccaneers or Panthers scrambling to draft Matt Ryan. And just so you're prepared to slag on the ACC one more time in 2008, VT will now replace seven of their eleven starters on defense, and it's more than likely the guys you've heard of. And yet, they're likely STILL far and away the frontrunner in their division. And you thought the pre-2007 Big XII North was a hoot...

"The story is a sad one told many times/the story of my life and trying times."- R.E.M., "How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us"

That's the first thing that comes to mind when reimagining the whole ACC/Big East switcheroo of a few years back. To recap, ACC commissioner John Swofford, stuck off the realness of having a Florida State/Miami conference championship game in sold-out Alltel Stadium year in, year out, raids the Big East for Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech (due to near-extortive tactics by Virginia government) to pad out its roster to twelve teams. It's also worth noting that Syracuse was originally tabbed to jump ship.

On the one hand, it struck a chord with people who were looking to prove that the conference could be a legitimate stronghold, since the past couple of decades had proven the ACC to be Florida State and a bunch of teams that would usually get a Bowden smackdown when they thought they could snatch the crown (the exceptions being the 1995 UVA team that tied for the conference championship and 2001 Maryland, which still lost to FSU). But the other way of looking at it was that the ACC is first and foremost a basketball conference, and this expansion would wreak havoc on scheduling. Frankly, it's a shame that some kids just entering college might have to wait years before they see their squad go to the Dean Dome or have Duke come to their house (truly a great experience no matter how good they happen to be at the time). Moreover, there were questions about how these schools fit in to the profile of the ACC, generally considered the province of academically esteemed, mid-sized flagship universities and smaller, prestigious private schools that all tend to have well-balanced athletics. I'll leave it at that.

Picture the scene... you're sitting around your house on a Saturday morning and your girlfriend calls you and asks if you want to have brunch with her family. Normally, you'd be fairly amenable to free silver dollar pancakes, even if it means enduring some awkward conversation, but today is not a normal day. It's the high-school all-star game. Sorry, tootsie, but home boy has a date with Tom Lemming today, and no amount of waffles or eggs Benedict can interrupt.

If any of this made sense to you, congratulations, you're a junkie.

Just to remind you all, this game is sponsored by the U.S. army, so the over/under on lame Army commercials is like a million.

A lot of these blue-chippers will be announcing their college choices. When that happens, I'll put the contents in bold face, so you can skip over my pithy commentary and get right to the commitments, if that's your thing.