Guest Blogger: Wahoo Edition

This week's Guest Blogger is Brendan at From Old Virginia. We sent him a few questions regarding UVA and posted below are his answers. The same things will be over at his site later this afternoon. Read below and you might actually learn something (We did!) Enjoy! Post your comments below. Click here to read our Q&A with Brendan.



1. The Georgia Tech/Virginia game is usually a game where the home teamwins. What does UVA bring and what do they have to do to break this pattern and keep their win streak alive?


Frankly, this is because the (Insert Team Here)/Virginia game is usually a game where the home team wins. Our problems on the road run deeper than just Georgia Tech, though Bobby Dodd does happen to bring out this quality more so than most stadiums. From a football standpoint, we have to keep doing what we've been doing: use Cedric Peerman as the hammer and Marc Verica as the staple gun. We need to keep getting better at run-blocking, because we're not good at it. And from a football standpoint, the defensive line needs to occupy the point of attack and not get knocked off the line of scrimmage, which is the entire foundation of the 3-4 defense but even more crucial against the Paul Johnson offense.But our road problems are a source of much lamentation among the Wahoo faithful. Sometimes I get the feeling the game is lost before kickoff. Our success on the road almost always has less to do with the X's and O's and more with the psychological aspect of whatever it is that bothers us away from the friendly confines of Scott Stadium.


2. Al Groh always seems to find himself on the hot seat at some point in aseason. What are your thoughts and opinions on what he has done for the UVA football program.


George Welsh brought the program out of the Dark Ages and through the '80s and '90s....and kind of left it in the early '90s when he retired. Al Groh brought us into the new millenium, and started right away by putting names on the jerseys and those little half-stripes on the helmets. This has been a mixed bag, as his call to the students to stop wearing ties to the game and start looking like football fans has resulted in a serious shortage of sundresses in the stands, which is a tremendous loss to the UVA community.But I think his greatest contribution has been to keep expectations high. He hasn't always met them, but we could have been North Carolina. That used to be a *program*. Then Mack Brown left and Carl Torbush came in; it is hard to replace a coach that's been wildly successful and Torbush wasn't up to the task, and UNC's expectations dropped to the point where six years of John Bunting seemed perfectly acceptable. Groh hasn't let that happen, and it would have been easy to do so when replacing a near-legend like George Welsh. When he leaves, which I think will be soonish, he'll leave behind a quality program and a quality legacy, but a small aftertaste of unmet expectations. Which I think is healthy for the program.


3. The Cavaliers control their destiny. Read their future and predict their next 5 games.


All your readers can play along at home; all you need is a coin and the strength to flip it, five times. I'll take my best stab at this: in the next four, we win at home (Miami, Clemson) and lose the road games (GT, Wake.) I hate to admit it but given our history, this week is screaming loss. GT and Wake are just too good to have bad days against us in their own place. But Miami really isn't a good team and Clemson will probably have mailed in the season by then.Then we have Virginia Tech. Our offense and their offense are equally bad; their defense is better, and we're on the road. That would add up to a loss, but it's way too early for me to get all emo about our chances in a rivalry game like that. So, UVA 7, Virginia Tech 3, for a 7-5 season and a place in some undercard bowl like, oh, the E*****d or Music City.


4. How do you *really feel* about your fight song?


Fight song, or Good Old Song? The thing about this is, at points in the game when most schools are playing a rousing Sousa-esque brass band anthem to awesomeness, we are singing what sounds remarkably like Auld Lang Syne to the untrained ear, except that Robert Burns was a preemptive copycat. The GOS passes for our fight song since it's what's familiar to people, but it's not *technically* the fight song. And I like it well enough that my blog's name quotes it. I mean, it's not just a song, it's a ritual; you might as well ask if they should replace the Ramblin' Wreck with a Ford Focus.The *actual* fight song is called the Cavalier Song, and not widely-known; neither the words nor the tune are well-entrenched in Wahoo lore.