Day: October 25, 2026

Pretty much the greatest day in sports of the year

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was one of those satisfying days of sports where it felt like I was happy with a lot of the results of the games that were happening throughout the sporting world.  I don’t really have a horse in the World Series, but I’m inclined to lean toward the Milwaukee Brewers, and it was exciting to see them overcome an early 0-4 deficit and win game 2, to take a pretty optimistic 2-0 series lead before going on the road.

The one result that wasn’t quite what I had hoped for was the WNBA Finals game between Golden State and Atlanta and yes I am lowkey following the WNBA Finals for reasons beyond that it’s an Atlanta team vying for a championship, and it’s now a 2-2 series in a best of 7, that I am still hoping the Dream can pull off.

But the real meat of the day feast is still obvious college football, and objectively speaking, I have to say that this has been one of the most entertaining seasons ever, in the sense that it feels like every single weekend after the very uneventful week 1, has been riddled with upsets, there is no true team that seems like the obvious world-beating odds-on favorite to win the National Championship, and it seems like multiple top-5 or 10 schools are eating losses and the rankings are shuffling faster than item boxes in Mario Kart.

This is probably the level of parity that the NCAA really was hoping would be the case with the NIL era where talent can transfer and shift at a more rapid pace and help level playing fields across the spectrum.  In the few games that I do watch or catch a little bit of here and there, every time some player makes impact, commentators always seem to be pointing out where a guy used to play, and we’re getting to a point where the majority of active players on teams good enough to be televised all have a history of having played for someone else prior to landing where they currently are.

As for this week’s bloodbath, #2 Brigham Young, #7 Ole Miss, #8 Texas Tech, #11 Tennessee, #15 Iowa and #16 Southern California all took losses, with all of them except Ole Miss dropping to unranked opponents.  Pretty shortly the CFB rankings will assume control over the AP top-25 like it does every year, but there’s little reason to believe that things are going to change much, and that there’s still going to be a notable shuffle in the top-10 much less the top-25 teams in the nation.

Adding to the sweetness on top, is #11 Tennessee’s loss came against South Carolina, and having married into a South Carolina family, this is satisfying to watch for me as well, in addition to the fact that son of Frank, Shane Beamer is their coach, and frankly I just always enjoy seeing whenever Tennessee loses at anything because that’s the power of hate.

But the real reason of this post coming to fruition, and why the sports day was as glorious to me as it was, was because of the game of two unranked scrub schools, resulting in a victory that I’d been hoping for, for nearly 20 years, with Virginia Tech defeating Clemson, 20-16.

To most people, this was a background noise tier game between two schools that used to be noteworthy, but to me, this was the one game of the year that I had earmarked, and was basically my National Championship.  More than the Commonwealth Cup against Virginia, more than the game against Georgia Tech that I always love to smear in the faces of the locals here in Atlanta.

Prior to yesterday, Virginia Tech hadn’t beaten Clemson since 2007, when Tyrod Taylor was a freshman quarterback.  Tyrod Taylor has basically wrapped up a full-ass NFL career at this point, and his alma mater hadn’t beaten the Tigers throughout that entire time.  Dabo Swinney took the helm, and they’ve had a revolving door of outstanding quarterbacks since then, with guys like Tajh Boyd, Deshaun Watson, and Trevor Lawrence to name a few, and they’d been beating Tech like plantation owners.

It didn’t matter if Tech had one of their uprising years like in 2011 or 2016.  It didn’t matter if Tech had the supposed magic of College GameDay on their side, like they did in 2017.  Clemson would beat Tech in the regular season, as well as in the ACC Championships, and there was no team in the ACC that invoked more dread and a pit in the stomach than Clemson did.

I knew that this was a year in which the teams would collide again, but something did feel different.  Clemson’s football program was clearly on the decline, due to the rise of the NIL era starting to pick away at their talent pool, and the slow simmering of angst between their athletic program and Dabo Swinney.  Meanwhile, Virginia Tech seemed to be brimming with optimism, with the arrival of coach James Franklin from Penn State, and the litany of talent that transferred to Blacksburg to follow him. 

Whereas the NIL era was designed to liberate talent hoarded at schools like Clemson, ironically the once-talent rich Virginia Tech was the kind of school meant to benefit from such migrations, and going into the season, a more casual supporter like me didn’t know what to expect from the injection of new names and faces, as well as a new coach and whatever system he was trying to implement.

Obviously, the season started off with a bang, with Tech going 4-0, hanging 117 points on VMI and Old Dominion, before ramping up their difficulty with games against Maryland and Boston College.  But then shades of old Tech began emerging, with their complete failure against Pitt, and perplexing loss to Cal, with their defense glaring as the program’s biggest weakness.  And after a win against Georgia Tech that was mildly satisfying to me, I didn’t like that the box score revealed how hard they tried to throw the game.

So I had no idea what to expect this weekend going into Clemson.  Clemson was clearly vulnerable and not dominating like they used to, and their lack of ranking was appropriate to their performance, but they were still Clemson and I still had a complex built over nearly two decades of losses to lead me to feel dread and apprehension about this game, even if this really were a truly different Virginia Tech team, that had shown some flashes of brilliances.

Naturally, as is the case with any game I truly care about, I didn’t watch a single second of the game.  I actually went so far as to peace the fuck out as soon as South Carolina hit their game winning field goal against Tennessee, since ESPN switched to Tech/Clemson pretty much immediately afterward, opting to get on the treadmill and watch Landman instead of daring risk jinxing the Hokies with my accursed eyes.

I resisted temptation to check the score or even open the ESPN app to check other scores, because I have a favorite tag on Virginia Tech sports, it would inevitably flash up top, and I’d have ruined it for sure, and opted to watch AAA wrestling and any other television to distract me from what I was really caring about.

And at around 11:10 pm, did I finally open the ESPN app, dreading seeing something like Clemson 34, Virginia Tech 24, and much to my surprise, Tech was not the name and logo in the light gray.  20-16 Hokies; my eyes went wide, and I showed the phone to mythical wife.

Next came the box score; and it was typical Virginia Tech – lead early, the weak defense gives it all back and then some.  But then came James Franklin’s-led Virginia Tech, where the offense that isn’t complete trash fights back, and with 1:44 left in the game, scores a go-ahead touchdown, with just little enough time left for them to actually be able to hold on and preserve the first Tech win against Clemson since 2000 fucking seven.

Needless to say, I was elated.  I don’t care that people may argue that this is on a downward swing for Clemson, and/or that it’s on an upward swing for Virginia Tech.  I haven’t seen this result since three cars ago, three jobs and a freelance career ago, and when I was still in my 20’s.  Fewer teams in CFB have given me a final boss feeling than Clemson has over my lifetime, and I’ll take any win against them and treat it like a bowl victory any season.

I don’t care if they lose to Miami or Duke or Virginia later this season, this was the one game this season that I had earmarked as the one I wanted to see a W in more than any other, and with that succeeded, it really doesn’t matter what else happens this season.  Hopefully, it continues to grow the aura of the James Franklin era, but the season is already a success as far as I’m concerned.

Best season ever.

Glad I avoided that gross bullet

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I did my civic duty today and voted.  Honestly, I don’t like a lot of the candidates that were available to me, but at the same time there are a bunch that I didn’t even know who they were much less know their platforms.  A lot of voting simply based on party and weak hopes and dreams that change might occur.

But anyway, the point of this post isn’t the fact that I had voted, it’s based on the fact that mercifully, I was spared being given the new I Voted sticker that rolled out in Georgia this year, and was instead given one of the “old” stickers.  I actually had this post in mind, should I have gotten the new sticker, but even after getting the old one, I didn’t want this train of thought to go to waste, and here we are.

My knee-jerk reaction upon seeing it was that of feeling kind of skeeved out.  For the last decade or so, for fairly obvious reasons, there’s something about a lot of American symbolism that has turned kind of passively hostile, and almost threatening, like it’s been weaponized.  And I know that the flag in the sticker is a Georgia state flag, and that it’s the State Capitol and not Washington D.C., but there just something about the sticker as a whole that seems more agenda-led versus being a badge of honor of doing our civic duty.

A little bit of cursory research reveals that the new sticker’s design was done by a pretty renown painter; I don’t like to actually write out their name, because I don’t want to give satisfaction of acknowledgement to people I don’t appreciate, but the thing is, most people have probably seen their artwork before.  They are kind of a go-to artist for political artwork, and to their credit, they have done a lot of good paintings throughout history, and there is definite talent in their hands.

I learned that the artist actually lives in Georgia, which explains the connection to why they could be tasked to do such a project like Georgia’s voting sticker, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still get this sense of skeeviness when I look at it, and I’m relieved I didn’t get one, because not only would I not wear it, I was premediating what disparaging places I could put it instead of wearing it, like inside the urinal at a QT or something, even if it would be a dick move to force someone to potentially have to clean it up later, but it’s a moot point because I thankfully didn’t get one.

But back to the artist, as stated, they are basically a go-to artist for the Republican party, and that’s where I realized where I’d seen some of their artwork before.  It didn’t take much longer to realize where this person stood on the political spectrum, but at the same time it wasn’t the least bit surprising, and in a way, kind of interesting to how it was so obvious from nothing but a 1.5” circumference sticker.

We’ve gotten to the point of society, where such lines are drawn so hard, the division is so staunch, and people are so clouded by solely political affiliation, that imagery, symbolism and visual associations have become very prevalent and are easy indicators for sides just from quick glances.

I know Georgia is technically considered a battleground state, but living here and seeing what I’ve seen over 23 years of living here, any shades of blue never seem present until election time, and regardless of result, always seems to shy away and always seem to be in the disadvantageous position in any sort of competitive arena.  I hope I’m wrong about it upon the passing of actual Election Day, but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised to be left feeling disappointed by the night’s results.

Although I was fortunate this go-around, I think it’s inevitable in future voting days that this sticker will become the only option for the foreseeable future, or at least until the supply runs out, and hopefully they go back to something a little more basic and a little more neutral afterward; although I wouldn’t bet on it.