I Hope the Hokies Don't Read Shanoff...

Just a teeny, tiny mention by Dan Shanoff at the tail end of his weekly post on Deadspin.

With even the slightest whiff of expectation, the Hokies have a disturbing tendency to fold like a lawn chair. So, please, let them continue to stay under the radar, reading press clippings detailing their struggles on offense and their rapidly dwindling depth at linebacker (Cam Martin is joining Vince Hall on the sidelines with a recently diagnosed case of mono), steadily moving up the rankings as they take advantage of the fact that they lost in week two of the season, while team after team stumbles in front of them, and all the while hoping that voters will mitigate their lopsided loss in Baton Rouge with the understanding that this is an evolving and different team from the one that got the piping on their Nike uniforms blown off in the Bayou.

Of course, all this will be moot unless:

1) Ore can get healthy to take advantage of the reconstituted offensive line.
2) The Hogs' progeny (though he wasn't a lineman, Donnie Warren was an honorary Hog) fill the void left by the absence's of Hall and Martin.
3) Beamer, Stinespring, and O'Cain can find a way to make teams game plan for BOTH Taylor and Glennon, taking a cue from the Flynn/Perriloux combo that gave them trouble, and demonstrate the offensive imagination that all too often has been missing under Stinespring.

So, root for Ohio State to get buckeyed in Happy Valley, BC to fall in Blacksburg, South Florida to go down on the banks of the Raritan, LSU to stumble in Tuscaloosa (or in the SEC championship), Oklahoma to trip in Lubbock, South Carolina to suffer in Knoxville, Kentucky to suffer a letdown at home against Florida, Arizona State to implode in Autzen, and Oregon to get overconfident at home against USC, leaving VT to try to emerge from the wreckage and curry the favor of the computers and the pollsters. Luckily, no one reads any of this so I can postulate about this in private, without fear of a midge of expectation landing on the neck of the Hokies.