Tag: hokies

It had to happen eventually

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back when Extreme Championship Wrestling was still a thing, Tommy Dreamer had a feud with Raven that went on for a few years, where no matter what happened in the storylines, whenever they actually had a match against each other, Tommy Dreamer always lost.  It didn’t matter if Dreamer was in control of the entire match, or Raven would squash him, in the end, Dreamer did the job. 

It wasn’t until Raven had been poached by WCW because Paul Heyman couldn’t afford to keep any of the rising stars that he had cultivated, did Tommy Dreamer actually get his long-awaited win over Raven.  And even that was mostly because it was a convenient way to write him out of the storylines because he was leaving, but the point remains it took Tommy Dreamer over two years of jobbing before he finally got a win over his long-hated rival.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the University of Virginia finally defeated Virginia Tech in football.  They won the Commonwealth Cup for the first time since 2003.  As I was watching the score (I don’t watch games, because teams I favor tend to always lose when I do), and it was knotted at 30-30 in the fourth quarter, I couldn’t help but have this sinking feeling that maybe this was the year where the streak had to end.  But who really knew, because over the last few years, there had been quite a few nail biters where the good guys prevailed, including an improbable OT win just a year ago.

But then I saw that UVA went up 33-30, and when it came down to the final drive, it was either going to be a soul-sucking TD win for Tech, or probably a turnover when UVA would inevitably make Hendon Hooker actually have to throw the ball if they wanted to win.  When I saw that suddenly UVA was then up 39-30, I knew what had happened without having to dig.

Anyway, for quite a while, I’ve had this analogy in mind for the day when UVA actually beat Tech.  I think it really came to mind back in like 2014, when the two teams were 5-6, and they were playing not just for the Commonwealth Cup, but for bowl eligibility, and the game was a real nail biter that came down to the closing seconds and a defensive stand by the Hokies in order to win it.  But that was the first time I finally felt like the general invincibility of Virginia Tech over UVA was no longer a given, and I couldn’t help but feel that the proverbial doomsday clock of the Hokies’ dominance was really starting to tick.

Continue reading “It had to happen eventually” →

Not sure how this keeps happening, but I’ll take it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Of all the strange anomalies to ever occur in sports, I think at this point, it should be worth mentioning Duke’s struggles against Virginia Tech: in basketball.  For the third-straight time while Duke was a top-5 ranked team in the nation, they’ve gone into Blacksburg and left losers. 

In 2011, they were #1 in the nation and lost to the unranked Hokies.  In 2018, they were ranked #5 in the nation, only to get upset again by an unranked Hokies squad.  And then came last night, where the #3 Duke Blue Devils, clearly starving for talent because they only had R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish but no Zion Williamson, were clearly depleted beyond survival, and did the job to #20 Virginia Tech.

Full disclosure: I didn’t even watch the game.  I knew it was on, I like college hoops well enough, but Duke is Duke, and Tech is still Tech, even if college basketball is very much their secondary sport.  I figured it would be just another L, which would likely bounce Tech out of the top-25.  Lo and behold, I glance at my news feed in the evening, only to see headlines about how #20 Virginia Tech upsets #3 Duke in Blacksburg, again, and suddenly I’m laughing aloud in my recliner.

Not only will Virginia Tech not be bounced from the top-25, a win against Duke will likely shoot them up a few positions, while Duke will undoubtedly drop, again, hopefully out of the top-5.  This reiterates the sad notion of just how much Duke has put all their eggs into the Zion basket, and despite the fact that they still have two of the top recruits in the nation playing their asses off, it’s like the rest of the entire program has thrown in the towel because Zion’s not there. 

Continue reading “Not sure how this keeps happening, but I’ll take it” →

Positive way to start the season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not really much more to say about this game than this perfect image brought to us by ESPN. 

Usually when commentators always talk about how great of a defensive coordinator Bud Foster is, are games in which Tech ends up giving up like 28 points and losing. But in this game, it was like the entire Hokie defense had the power pill from Pit Fighter the way they absolutely manhandled the FSU line and repeatedly dropped them for losses.  Seriously, FSU probably should have had around 17-21 points based on how many times they had been in scoring position but then either fumbled or simply weren’t smart enough to bother challenging the one sure touchdown they had.

Whatever though, I’m very pleased with the result of this game.  As is often the norm, Tech tends to beat the teams they need to, but then lose to anyone ranked higher than they are.  Sure, it was a #20 vs. #19, but Tech was the lower rank, and I’d have bet money that they would’ve lost. 

In spite of the win, the offense was still very suspect; full of some boneheaded penalties or bad snapping, and if FSU should’ve had 17-21 points, Tech really should have had closer to 40.  Killed drives, penalties and a 4th and goal failure all resulted in points left on the board that won’t cut it against teams like Notre Dame and Miami later this season.

Regardless, it’s great to have the college football season back.  Although my hopes for Tech weren’t particularly high prior to the season, a big win against FSU and Miami already shitting the bed renews some reckless hope that maybe this’ll be a fun year overall.

Watch, with me admitting to that, Tech will lose five games and be right on track for another year of like, the Independence or Military toilet bowl games.  But at least we got this shit started on a good note.

BIG DICK SWINGING SPORTS POST

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s busy season at work.  Life itself has been pretty busy too.  Ironically, as busy life has been transpiring, things have been happening all around that have made me feel like writing, but I simply haven’t really had any time to sit down and do any writing.  There’s no downtime at work for me to slop together some words, and by the time I get home, I’m usually burnt out and not wanting to look at any screen other than my phone for my routine-like playing of Fire Emblem: Heroes.

Typically, whenever things seem brog-worthy, I jot down a quick blurb or note in a Google document for me to revisit whenever I have more time to write about them.  However, due to the busy, I simply haven’t had the time to revisit anything, but the list continued to grow and grow, leaving me feeling anxious about the passage of time to brogging dynamic that I’ve been feeling has been slipping out of my grasp lately.

So now that for the first time, I’ve found that I have a moment to do some writing, I thought I’d save myself as well as my 0 readers the trouble of doing a little consolidation, so that I don’t feel like I should be dumping 1,000 words per topic, but instead go for some quick hits that I’ll do my best to get the point across while covering all of the topics that have piqued my interest over the last week and change. 

This makes even more sense, considering that this particular conglomeration of topics all conveniently happen to be sports related, and since pretty much nobody I know except for me actually cares about sports, it’s a win-win for me, that I get to do some writing, and for the zero who will inevitably glaze over this when it’s eventually published for realsies.

And so we start off with the most notable of events, with the boys in Blacksburg, Virginia Tech taking down yet another ranked ACC powerhouse in men’s basketball, defeating the unholy and reviled #5 Duke.

For those keeping track, this marks the fourth ranked ACC opponent that Tech has defeated this year, with wins against (at the times) #10 North Carolina, #15 Clemson, #2 Virginia.  Now as much as I would much, much, much rather see a football season in which the Hokes took down Clemson, UVA, UNC and Duke, I’m genuinely pleased with the basketball program which has pretty much guaranteed a spot in the NCAA Tournament; where they will get likely get bounced in the first round, but making it to the dance is always important.

Continue reading “BIG DICK SWINGING SPORTS POST” →

Writing when it feels like there’s not a lot to write about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like the subject says, I haven’t really felt like there’s been a lot to write about.  It’s times like these when I sit down and try to clear out all the noise in the world and in my head and just see what happens when I open up a Word doc and just start typing.

Usually, I surf a large variety of news sites, local and worldly to see if anything piques my interest.  Then it devolves into sports sites and op-ed outlets, just to see if there’s anything that triggers any sort of writable tangent.  Failing any of that, it’s the happenings in my own fairly ordinary and nondescript life, wondering if there’s anything worth talking about, or anything I actually want to put something down into writing.

My life, hasn’t been particularly interesting for a while.  My days and weeks consist of the same things often, and I’m occasionally fretting over the fact that I feel like I don’t make enough money which kind of puts a damper on some of my ambitions when it comes to things I want to do, or travels I want to indulge in.  I think about spending habits, spending plans and how to shave down the credit card debt that I’ve built back up throughout the moving process, and it frequently feels like an endless cycle that just chews up time and often doesn’t actually pan out like it should.

Like in my current state, I feel like I’d need like 6-8 months to really wipe out a lot of my debt while not having to starve in the process.  I’m sure that some additional sacrifices could be made to reduce my costs a little further, but it just doesn’t feel like it would be enough to warrant the inconveniences.  But really though, 6-8 months?  That’s literally from half to two-thirds of an entire year.  I’m not getting any younger, and the whole concept of getting older is another can of worms that has been on my mind increasingly these days, and I just feel like if I made more money outright, things might improve for the better, overall.

But then I feel like I’m kind of in a rut where my skillset doesn’t command as much money as I hope it would, and I give a lot of contemplation to my own career.  I really like where I work and the team I’m on and the people I work with, but again, money.  I make enough to pay my mortgage and pay my bills, but with the new house, I’m also paying more for a mortgage than I have before, and it’s still an adjustment knowing how much of a larger percentage of my incoming funds are going right back out the door paying for my property.

And we can’t talk about money and not talk about the correlation with time, and then the endless debate of money versus time.  I certainly value my time, and often times more than money, but at the same time, there are certain things that cannot be accomplished without the need for money.  And then it rotates in this perpetual cycle of feeling like I have enough of either, and then I begin to wonder if I may be bordering on the lines of a slight depression.  Which is a maybe.

It would be nice to just win a substantial lottery.  That just might actually make things improve for the better, contrary to the notions that huge influxes of money have accomplished in ruining several people out there.

But really, I can’t really complain that much about my life in some regards.  My life itself isn’t at all terrible, aside from the fairly minor gripes I have that I’m not unaware that there are worse people out there that would love to have my gripes versus their own more substantial issues.

I think I feel like what drags me down is my empathy for others, to where I always feel like the problems of others become problems for me.  I don’t think it’s untrue either, because there are people out there that are close to me going through some rough patches, and I feel helpless that there’s nothing that either I or anyone else can seemingly do about them, and I empathize for their sadness and grief with my own.  Obviously, I won’t get into the business of others, but they are substantial problems, and I’ve come to the realization of the increasing difficulties of life that come with getting older, and that things just might not get better any time soon for the people all around me.

And that’s not even taking into consideration the shitty cesspool of a world we live in, full of rotten corrupt people, politicians, terrorists and mentally deranged people who somehow all seem to have way too large caches of firearms.

Continue reading “Writing when it feels like there’s not a lot to write about” →

I like Deshaun Watson

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Good people just get it: Texans rookie quarterback, Deshaun Watson donates his first NFL paycheck to NRG Stadium workers affected by the flooding of Hurricane Harvey

Seems fitting to talk about this since we’re on the eve of the biggest college football game of the season for me, when #12 Virginia Tech hosts #2 Clemson, where it just might be a good game, but nobody on the planet can defeat Clemson, so it’ll be the that game where Tech stumbles and falls far in the rankings before dropping out outright by season’s end.

But in spite of my general disdain for Clemson, and how they have owned Virginia Tech for the last five years, I have to confess that I’m a Deshaun Watson fan.

At first, I hated the guy for being so good and just so far beyond everyone else on the field, and thanks to his talent, Clemson’s success never wavered while he was at the helm.  I rooted for any team to beat him; NC State, Boston College, Auburn, Alabama, and even teams that I really don’t care for, like Georgia Tech and even fucking Florida State.  But that’s just how much I wanted to see Clemson knocked down, because if they didn’t take some losses, they were always a threat to the National Championship, and they were about the last team I wanted to see winning one.

Continue reading “I like Deshaun Watson” →

THE Ownedhio State – love it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know why it is, but I always take a tremendous amount of satisfaction whenever Ohio State loses at any collegiate sport, especially football.  On a day in which I did absolutely nothing and it was everything I thought it could be except watch movies and football, I was certainly pleased to see Virginia Tech beat an unranked Delaware and I even took some enjoyment in watching South Carolina beat Missouri since I kind of root for them now.  Through great pain, I watched Auburn fail to move the ball, at all, against Clemson.  And I took great pleasure in watching the always-overrated Notre Dame fall against, Georgia; whose fans basically dominated South Bend, and should be an embarrassment to the Irish, frankly.

But no other college football game gave me as much pleasure to see the end result than #5 Oklahoma taking down #2 THE Ohio State, in Columbus.  I don’t really know why, but I just love to see whenever Ohio State loses at anything.  I’m pretty sure, it stems from the royal THE that their fans and supporters are adamant to preface Ohio State with, but maybe it’s because they’re legitimately good at sports and they’re the titan that I personally just like to see get taken down from time to time.  Regardless, seeing them choke at home and lose in just the second week of the season is pretty much all I needed to see to feel that this is going to be a fun season.

You know, my general animosity towards TOSU probably stems from the egregious amounts of arrogance displayed by TOSU, whether it’s their legions of obnoxious fans who have to use the THE, or like when TOSU tried to copyright the acronym “TOSU” despite the fact that there are two other NCAA programs whose abbreviated name is also TOSU.  But in the case of their fans, nothing is more satisfying than knowing that every choad, broad, bro and douche that were at College GameDay, obnoxiously being TOSU fans and talking mad smack about Oklahoma is feeling that hangover of arrogantly supporting a loser.

Continue reading “THE Ownedhio State – love it” →