VT Blog's Take on the GT Game

Squints

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,254
Duke also won 10 games and represented the Coastal division in the ACCCG last season. They're also a 4-0 this season and ranked. I'm going with more recent history...and more recent history shows that Duke isn't as bad as GT fans want to make them out to be. If anything is crazy, GT fans crapping on Duke is crazy.

Last year means nothing to this year...and certainly anything past that means even less. Otherwise, we should have folded the tents Saturday with CPJ's 1-5 (with a 4 game losing streak) record versus VT up until then.

Why is it crazy? Tech fans more than anyone should know a single ten win season doesn't mean anything for you in the long or short term. It should take more than a single season where you thread the needle to get respect. They still have to prove last year wasn't a fluke. And until they do why should they be thought highly of?
 

Minawreck

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
623
Coach Johnson said it best, "And we can get soooo much better." Because we can.

Saying VPI gave us the game assumes we played a perfect game and we most certainly did not. We still did well enough to win, and got a huge psychological boost. We can beat and lose to every team remaining on the schedule, just have to keep taking care of the ball, and stay focused.
 

DTGT

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
530
Duke also won 10 games and represented the Coastal division in the ACCCG last season. They're also a 4-0 this season and ranked. I'm going with more recent history...and more recent history shows that Duke isn't as bad as GT fans want to make them out to be. If anything is crazy, GT fans crapping on Duke is crazy.

Last year means nothing to this year...and certainly anything past that means even less. Otherwise, we should have folded the tents Saturday with CPJ's 1-5 (with a 4 game losing streak) record versus VT up until then.
I seem to remember Duke getting crazy lucky with scheduling/injuries/suspensions in 2013. They may no longer be a cellar dweller, but 2013 looked like a middling team that caught every lucky break possible. They are a good team that will compete for the Coastal often, but win it much less often.
 

AE 87

Helluva Engineer
Messages
13,015
Duke also won 10 games and represented the Coastal division in the ACCCG last season. They're also a 4-0 this season and ranked. I'm going with more recent history...and more recent history shows that Duke isn't as bad as GT fans want to make them out to be. If anything is crazy, GT fans crapping on Duke is crazy.

Last year means nothing to this year...and certainly anything past that means even less. Otherwise, we should have folded the tents Saturday with CPJ's 1-5 (with a 4 game losing streak) record versus VT up until then.

Okay, I did not mean for my removed post to be condescending. I apologize. I was wrong. I was sincere with what I wrote and did not intend it as a personal attack, but @John has rightly told me that telling you that is not my place.


Still, I think it is important that I respond to this post again and clarify why I found it offensive. You see, even though you are replying to my post by quoting it, you aren’t replying to what I said. Your post ignores the topic of the comparable reactions of GT and VPI fans and complains about fan attitude to Duke this year. The very thing that I said I was not talking about, as I will try again to make clear.


However, my biggest problem with your post was that by quoting me and saying, “I’m going with more recent history,” you introduce two misleading ideas: (1) that I introduced the reference to the years of “CPJ’s tenure,” when it was actually you, and (2) that I was on the side of those “crapping on Duke.” Both of these ideas are false.


Now, this last point is not an idle point. I had someone say the following to me in a GTSwarm Conversation about this post from you:

Again, I see this as a fair point. You are saying look at history. He is saying history doesn’t always predict the future.

You see, this person understood my position as the opposite of yours rather than what I actually said.

So, let me unpack my thinking in case others also misunderstood me. You wrote this:
Their fans sound a lot like some of our fans when we talk about certain teams (Duke...ahem). It comes from them owning us during CPJ's tenure. Maybe we should win more and the rest will fall in place.

It seems to me that the substance of this post is not simply, some VPI fans don’t take us seriously like some GT fans don’t take Duke seriously but also that this occurs, as you say, “from them owning us during CPJ’s tenure.” I understood from this post that you were saying that VPI “owning” GT from 2008-2013 was a comparable reason for the VPI dismissive attitudes to GT as GT over Duke over the same time period is for GT dismissive attitudes toward them. So, in my response to this post I challenged the logic of this comparison:
C'mon man. From 2008 to 2013, the average point differential of GT-VPI was -4 and of GT-Duke was +19. The highest margin of victory for VPI was 11, us over Duke was 39. The closest Duke came vs us was 7 in 2011.

I'm not saying that Duke isn't better this year or that we should just look past Duke, but suggesting that any kind of comparable situation is crazy.

First of all, I want to make clear that I was not calling you crazy. I was calling the particular suggestion that VPI-GT was comparable to GT-Duke as a basis for fan reaction crazy. I did it based on the data I provided. “During CPJ’s tenure” to use the language that you introduced, GT has played VPI to -3, +5, -7, -11, -3, -7 before this year’s +3. So 5 of the six years were decided by a touchdown or less. In contrast, “during CPJ’s tenure” GT has played Duke to +27, +39, +10, +7, +18, and +14. So, I used average margin of victory between these two series to explain why I considered your suggestion that these two situations are similar to be crazy. A series in which 5 of 6 games are decided by a TD or less seems to me to be much less “owning” than a series in which 5 of 6 were decided by 2 scores or more, and by 3 scores on average for the six games.

Then, if you look again at my second paragraph, I also tried to make clear that I was not using this to suggest that Duke hadn’t got better or that they wouldn’t be a challenge for us. My post was not directed to any conversation about where Duke is at now. Frankly, I don’t know how I could have said that more clearly, but both you and @John failed to understand it, so that could be on me.

My post was simply a response to your post comparing some VPI fans to some GT fans based on relative “owning” of another team “during CPJ’s tenure.”

So as I hope to have made clear, I was bothered by your post because it implied (as my conversation partner affirmed) that I was saying something that I wasn't saying and ignored what I was saying. Still, @John assures me that posts that are misleading in this way are fine while posts like my first one which engage the substance of a post with data are suspect if they use that terribly offensive word, “crazy,” when referring to someone’s opinion.

Anyway, in case others failed to follow the logic of our brief conversation, I wanted to clarify what I was saying. Again, I did not mean to disrespect you. I consider it respectful to take someone’s point seriously and engage it, whether positively or negatively. I reacted the way I did because I considered your post disrespectful since it ignored the substance of what I was saying and gave the impression that I was saying something I was not.
 

dressedcheeseside

Helluva Engineer
Messages
14,027
I love that (we) finally caught some breaks ...
The biggest break, imo, is one that very few folks remember or realize. It happened on our game-tieing drive, after the 4th and 15 and before the td. This particular play would have ended all hope of a victory and should have been made by VT. Anybody care to guess?
 

dressedcheeseside

Helluva Engineer
Messages
14,027
easy they missed the tipped pass INT. I was about to cry
Bingo! That ball was right in the bread basket of the defender and he dropped it. He let the game slip through his fingers. The interesting thing is that Waller was wide freakin' open on that play and if not for the tipped ball, would have scored easily. It was reminiscent of the 4th and 2 where Waller was wide open for a td earlier. Waller couldn't catch a break.

Imagine how the message board would have reacted had we lost the game. CPJ would have been the goat, as usual.... the team would be considered worst in the league by many, as usual..... and the season a lost cause, by many........... as usual. That doomsday scenario was foiled and all because this one play went in our favor..... definitely NOT as usual.
 

Northeast Stinger

Helluva Engineer
Messages
9,563
Bingo! That ball was right in the bread basket of the defender and he dropped it. He let the game slip through his fingers. The interesting thing is that Waller was wide freakin' open on that play and if not for the tipped ball, would have scored easily. It was reminiscent of the 4th and 2 where Waller was wide open for a td earlier. Waller couldn't catch a break.

Imagine how the message board would have reacted had we lost the game. CPJ would have been the goat, as usual.... the team would be considered worst in the league by many, as usual..... and the season a lost cause, by many........... as usual. That doomsday scenario was foiled and all because this one play went in our favor..... definitely NOT as usual.
Yes! Football is a game of inches but we extrapolate miles of conclusions off those few inches.
 

danny daniel

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,476
I find similarities in this game and the Ugag loss from a year ago. Both games had multiple plays that if just one broke our way, we'd have won. Well, several broke our way against VT.... several did not, as well, but just enough DID.
Exactly. And that is why you cannot pre-judge a win or a loss with anybody. Like coach says "you have to play the games".
 

txsting

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
129
Agree, good news is we are very improvable.
I'm encouraged about the upside. We have WRs running free, best A back edge blocking I have seen, and a game changer at QB. Laskey is excellent. Somebody is going to run into us on a day we have it together, and it is will be carnage. The next week we may fumble twice, have a tipped pass pick 6 and all of sudden we suck again. Going to be the most fun in years!
 

Techster

Helluva Engineer
Messages
17,716
Still, I think it is important that I respond to this post again and clarify why I found it offensive. You see, even though you are replying to my post by quoting it, you aren’t replying to what I said. Your post ignores the topic of the comparable reactions of GT and VPI fans and complains about fan attitude to Duke this year. The very thing that I said I was not talking about, as I will try again to make clear.


However, my biggest problem with your post was that by quoting me and saying, “I’m going with more recent history,” you introduce two misleading ideas: (1) that I introduced the reference to the years of “CPJ’s tenure,” when it was actually you, and (2) that I was on the side of those “crapping on Duke.” Both of these ideas are false.


Now, this last point is not an idle point. I had someone say the following to me in a GTSwarm Conversation about this post from you:



You see, this person understood my position as the opposite of yours rather than what I actually said.

So, let me unpack my thinking in case others also misunderstood me. You wrote this:


It seems to me that the substance of this post is not simply, some VPI fans don’t take us seriously like some GT fans don’t take Duke seriously but also that this occurs, as you say, “from them owning us during CPJ’s tenure.” I understood from this post that you were saying that VPI “owning” GT from 2008-2013 was a comparable reason for the VPI dismissive attitudes to GT as GT over Duke over the same time period is for GT dismissive attitudes toward them. So, in my response to this post I challenged the logic of this comparison:


First of all, I want to make clear that I was not calling you crazy. I was calling the particular suggestion that VPI-GT was comparable to GT-Duke as a basis for fan reaction crazy. I did it based on the data I provided. “During CPJ’s tenure” to use the language that you introduced, GT has played VPI to -3, +5, -7, -11, -3, -7 before this year’s +3. So 5 of the six years were decided by a touchdown or less. In contrast, “during CPJ’s tenure” GT has played Duke to +27, +39, +10, +7, +18, and +14. So, I used average margin of victory between these two series to explain why I considered your suggestion that these two situations are similar to be crazy. A series in which 5 of 6 games are decided by a TD or less seems to me to be much less “owning” than a series in which 5 of 6 were decided by 2 scores or more, and by 3 scores on average for the six games.

Then, if you look again at my second paragraph, I also tried to make clear that I was not using this to suggest that Duke hadn’t got better or that they wouldn’t be a challenge for us. My post was not directed to any conversation about where Duke is at now. Frankly, I don’t know how I could have said that more clearly, but both you and @John failed to understand it, so that could be on me.

My post was simply a response to your post comparing some VPI fans to some GT fans based on relative “owning” of another team “during CPJ’s tenure.”

So as I hope to have made clear, I was bothered by your post because it implied (as my conversation partner affirmed) that I was saying something that I wasn't saying and ignored what I was saying. Still, @John assures me that posts that are misleading in this way are fine while posts like my first one which engage the substance of a post with data are suspect if they use that terribly offensive word, “crazy,” when referring to someone’s opinion.

Anyway, in case others failed to follow the logic of our brief conversation, I wanted to clarify what I was saying. Again, I did not mean to disrespect you. I consider it respectful to take someone’s point seriously and engage it, whether positively or negatively. I reacted the way I did because I considered your post disrespectful since it ignored the substance of what I was saying and gave the impression that I was saying something I was not.

Sorry dude, but when you out and out insult someone, I'm going to tune you out. I'm sorry if you don't understand that. You may make some good points, and you do, but when you become condescending and insulting...which I guess @John agrees with or else he wouldn't have erased the post, you undermine what you say and make it personal. That you need to continue that tact even after John pretty much told you to "cool it", shows that you obviously have problems with what's appropriate and what's not appropriate.

To that end, have a good day. I am going to enjoy talking GT football with fans who don't try to escalate every conversation into something personal.
 

John

Peacekeeper
Staff member
Messages
2,400
which I guess @John agrees with or else he wouldn't have erased the post, you undermine what you say and make it personal.
Keep in mind that this goes both ways. More than one post was removed from this thread.

Having said that, seeing as how both of you had an opportunity to get whatever you had in mind off your chests, my suggestion to both of you is that we move on from this back-and-forth, and stop talking about Duke until 10/4 after the final whistle.
 
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