Six college football morsels, one for each of the six desolate weeks remaining until the season kicks off.
Will Hokies start fast?
Virginia Tech has not closed September with a winning record in any of Brent Pry’s three years as coach, and a reversal in 2025 feels essential, despite an early schedule unique to the Hokies and quite unusual for any ACC program.
An opener versus South Carolina in Atlanta and Week 2 visit from Vanderbilt mark the first time in school history that Tech has started a season with two SEC opponents. Moreover, the Hokies are the first title-eligible ACC team in 51 years to begin a year with back-to-back tests versus SEC foes.
I say “title-eligible” because Georgia Tech was admitted to the ACC in 1978 and started the ’79 and ’80 seasons against Alabama and Florida. But the Yellow Jackets played only a combined three ACC opponents in those years and were ineligible for conference honors.
The most recent full-fledged ACC squad to open against two SEC opponents was Maryland in 1974, versus Alabama and Florida.
Starting a season with two nonconference games from any power league is unusual among ACC programs. Pitt in 2022 (West Virginia and Tennessee) and North Carolina in 2016 (Georgia and Illinois) are the most recent examples.
In 34 previous seasons as a member of the Big East (1991-2003) and ACC (2004-present), the Hokies had never opened a season with two nonconference opponents from power leagues. The timing of this year’s rarity is suboptimal.
David Teel: Brent Pry on Hokies’ spring transfer additions and Metallica
Entering a critical season for Pry, Tech desperately needs some early momentum, and though the Hokies will be favored in Weeks 3 and 4 against Old Dominion and Wofford, they close September at NC State.
Dukes-Flames reunion well-timed
Among the 68 Football Bowl Subdivision programs outside the power conference universe, only six have won at least eight games in each of the last three seasons. Two of those top-shelf programs reside in Virginia.
The Sun Belt’s James Madison and Conference USA’s Liberty have authored remarkable transitions to the FBS, and both appear primed to continue their success in 2025.
In seven years of FBS competition, the Flames have yet to endure a losing season, and they’ve won at least eight games six years running, the longest such streak among programs in a Group of Five conference.
Entering their fourth FBS season, the Dukes have posted marks of 8-3, 11-2 and 9-4, the latter capped by last December’s Boca Raton Bowl victory over Western Kentucky — WKU, Tulane, Ohio and Boise State are the other G5s to have won at least eight games in the last three years.
ESPN analytics guru Bill Connelly projects JMU and Liberty to qualify for their respective conference championship games, and both figure to lean on 757 products.
George Pettaway (Nansemond-Suffolk Academy) led the Dukes in rushing last year (980 yards), added 200 yards receiving and shared the team lead in touchdowns with seven. Coastal Carolina transfer Ethan Vasko (Oscar Smith) likely will succeed Kaidon Salter (transferred to Colorado) as the Flames’ starting quarterback.
All of which makes this the ideal season for JMU and Liberty to renew an 18-game series that began in 1980 but has been dormant since 2014. The Dukes and Flames play Sept. 20 in Lynchburg.
Another rough road for ODU
Liberty and JMU have something else in common: Both play ODU this season, part of another rigorous Monarchs schedule.
ODU opened last year with a 23-19 setback at South Carolina, a team that nearly reached the College Football Playoff. The Monarchs sacked LaNorris Sellers — he later was named third-team All-SEC behind Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart and Texas’ Quinn Ewers — four times and harassed him into 43.5% passing accuracy, a season-low.
Their 2025 opener, at Indiana, could be equally challenging. Under first-year coach Curt Cignetti, formerly of JMU — Google him, he wins — the Hoosiers won a school-record 11 games last season before falling at Notre Dame in the opening round of the CFP.
Indiana is among six ODU opponents this year that finished with eight or more victories last season. Liberty, JMU, Marshall, Georgia Southern and North Carolina Central are the others.
Spartans prime-time attractions
Norfolk State dropped a 28-23 decision to visiting Towson last October, one of four Spartans setbacks by seven points or less. The contest drew a sparse crowd of 5,003 to 30,000-seat Dick Price Stadium.
Imagine the attendance contrast Thursday, Aug. 28, in prime time on an ESPN network, when NSU welcomes Towson for Michael Vick’s debut as the Spartans’ coach.
Tribe-Pirates farewell?
William & Mary travels to Hampton on Nov. 15 for each team’s penultimate regular-season game, the fourth and final time they will meet as Coastal Athletic Association rivals.
W&M football is moving to the Patriot League in 2026, but here’s hoping these 757 neighbors schedule a nonconference series. The Pirates, then in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, and Tribe met in four consecutive regular seasons from 2013-16, plus in 1997 and ’98.
But their most memorable encounter was unscheduled, in the first round of the 2004 NCAA playoffs at Zable Stadium. W&M prevailed 42-35 in a game featuring 962 yards of offense and two kickoff returns for touchdowns.
“Now was the time”
With a transfer class ranked among the nation’s top 25 and ACC’s top four by 247 Sports, the key to Virginia authoring its first winning season since 2019 is clear: Effectively mesh those 32 transfers with program veterans and 19 high school signees.
Fourth-year coach Tony Elliott described that task as “critical because at the end of the day teams win. You have to have talent, but talent alone doesn’t win. Teams win, and team is the talent coming together and maybe putting aside personal objectives for the team goals.
“Now we’ve been building to this. … The high school guys in our program, they want to win, so they’re very open to the acquisition of talent, and now was the time to capitalize (in the transfer portal) because a lot of the guys who were here from the previous staff now have graduated.”
The Cavaliers have added 13 transfers since spring practice, arguably none more important than offensive tackle Makilan Thomas, a three-year starter at Arkansas State. He projects to fill a void created during spring drills, when Louisville transfer Monroe Mills sustained a season-ending knee injury.
“If you’ve followed the evolution of the program since we came in, the one area we’ve been desperately trying to turn over has been the offensive line,” Elliott said, “and that’s been the hardest position for us to fit.”
David Teel: [email protected]; @ByDavidTeel