Crimson Tide vs. Hokies – Armchair Sports Analysis

Marathon says I should stop making sports predictions. As far as official predictions on this blog, I am 0 for 2. The Cardinals lost the Super Bowl and the Hokies lost to Alabama on Saturday. As my pathetically few amount of “Sports” posts demonstrates, I know next to nothing about most sports or sport strategy. But I did watch the game, so I’m going to put on my John Madden hat.

"Well, you see, the problem is Virginia Tech didn't score as many points as Alabama."

As everyone points out, Tech’s offense made a pretty disapointing  showing. This wasn’t unexpected, but I think most people figured QB Tyrod Taylor would make more gains with his running game. To our credit, Alabama’s compromised of big, hulking dudes. Whether it was them pressuring Tyrod or their O-Line making short work of our defensive plays.

We were actually making a decent showing there in the first half. Which makes the fourth quarter that much more disappointing.

Fourth quarter was also when we decided to shut up ESPN’s announcers.

There’s two ways to perceive announcers’ disdain for VT. One is the outright conspiracy that they hate our black quarterback. The other is the acknowledgment that there is a latent racism in sports coverage that determines which teams get favorable coverage from the talking heads. It’s not explicit and it’s not necessarily active. But no one can deny that when VT makes a good play it’s “surprising” and when Alabama makes a good play, it’s expected.

Whoa! That black guy is PLAYING FOOTBALL!!!

And I’m not making any apologies for Tyrod’s game, but I will see that I didn’t see Greg McElroy make many amazing plays. But he was the one that they were all fawning over.

Now, I understand that I’m biased. And I concede that Alabama is a better team overall. But there was no doubt that it was McElroy who the announcers were stoking up to be Hesiman-level of hype. The fact is that, in college football, ESPN benefits by holding up nice, white, All-American types as the college football messiahs. Matt Ryan. Tim Tebow. Greg McElroy.

I might just be talking out of my ass here, but I can’t remember the last time a black guy was talked about extensively by college football commentators. I invite real sports fans to correct me if I’m wrong or give me good reasons why this is the case.

Anyway, soapbox aside, Alabama DID outplay us and, even without the couple of Alabama penalties that the refs ignored. It’s sad for us, because we, like a good football school, deluded ourselves into thinking we had a shot for the national championship, but this game shows that, while we will probably dominate the ACC, we have no chance against schools of a certain caliber. And, for kicks, I’ll join my actively sports-vocal Hokie peers and blame Brayn Stinespring for this inability to compete a certain level.

Well, I spent longer talking about that than I meant to. Tomorrow I may address the fallout from Obama’s education speech today and the bad turn the healthcare debate is taking. Right now, it’s late and I’m losing at Settlers.

Peace out.