For better or worse, this is no longer the case.  West Virginia remained in the Big East and there are no planned inter-conference games between West Virginia and VT for the foreseeable future.  I think most VT fans will miss the rivalry in principle but not West Virginia in particular; Besides, you could argue we now have Maryland, the ACCs interpretation of West Virginia.

On the other hand, the UVA rivalry should have been even bigger with them competing in the same conference but instead, UVA has trailed off to become one of the worst football teams in Div I-A.  While rivalries are by their very nature competitive, the UVA rivalry has become too lopsided in recent years in favor of VT for it to register much interest.

VT doesn’t have to be too concerned with losing those rivalries as two new rivalries are starting to evolve from a surprising pair of teams: Fellow Big East -> ACC expansion teams Boston College and Miami.  Boston College has remained a solid, not great, program for many years now, and more noticeably, has been the pest that manages to knock off VT at most inopportune times.   The NFL Atlanta Falcons used to hold a warm place in many Hokie fans hearts with all the VT alumni that play(-ed) there but I wonder how many remain so now that evil wunderkind Matt Ryan of BC and VT-heartbreaking fame is running the show down there.

Possibly a bit more related to national relevance is the Miami/VT rivalry.  Going into the game last week, the VT/Miami was as even as possible: 9-9 wins, with the 18 games also matched at 391-391 points scored… that’s just crazy.  It’s impossible to be even more evenly matched.  In addition, VT & Miami have essentially run over the conferences they’ve been a part of since their Big East days.  Since 1994, VT has won 6 conference champions and Miami has won 5.  As you might expect, this dominance has usually lead to the Miami vs VT games being one of the more important games of the season.

Miami has traditionally been one of those schools you love to hate.  I don’t know any other schools that take pride in being arrogant but somehow Miami fans and athletes did.  For as long as I can remember, Miami has seemed to revel in trying to rub people the wrong way.  With questionable academic standards and over-priced tuition designed to provide a safe haven for undeserving trust fund kids, the whole idea that Miami is the “U” and somehow better than anyone, much less everyone, is preposterous.  Yet, somehow that’s exactly how Miami rolls.

That arrogance made the beautiful 31-7 beatdown VT graciously handed Miami this past weekend all that much sweeter so I won’t complain too much.

All of that said, a new wrinkle has been added to the mix.  I must give props to what appears to be a changing culture at Miami, on the football team at least.  I really like what I hear about Randy Shannon.  He sounds like a class guy that I would be happy to have coaching my own football team.  But I still want to beat his team every year.  That’s what rivalries are all about.

Ever since the news broke two years ago about the dog-fighting charges against Vick, I haven’t really known what, if anything, to say about it.  The cruelty of his actions are beyond comprehension.

Watching Vick in the National Championship game in 2000 is one of my favorite sports moments.   He dodged, weaved, and made even Bowden blush in appreciation for his skills.   He then proceeded to the NFL where he made every opposing team adapt their defense.  He made football exciting.

Yet, I’m also a pet-lover of the highest degree – just ask Argo or Beta about their Twitter accounts.  Trying to resolve Vick the superstar with Vick the dog-murderer is a challenge.  I think I know now how some people felt about OJ Simpson.  I remember wondering at the time how people could possibly think he was anything other than a murderer.  I don’t need to wonder anymore.

The justice system says Vick has served his sentence.  So be it.   I guess if we’re not going to allow people to reform, why release them from prison at all?  It’s time for him to start-over.  Let’s see if he can make amends.

I’m a convert. On the recommendation of a friend after conveying how obsessed I was about the Spelling Bee, I added Spellbound to my Netflix queue. Supposedly, it’s Wordplay for spelling bees and if so, I’m sold.

The #1 draft pick went to Matthew Stafford from Georgia, a nice enough guy with solid skills.  However, he never lived up to his potential at Georgia but somehow, the NFL Draft people all thought he was the second coming.  As impressed as I am with his plate-destroying skills, I suspect Matthew Stafford is very likely to be the next Joey Harrington, a decent quarterback on a bad team who will eventually fade into the background after a lackluster career.

Mark Sanchez from USC is the even more curious case.  He has only one year of starting experience, came out early as a junior, and somehow, had several teams drooling over him.  He seems ready-made for living in the middle of a media storm so I suppose he was rightfully drafted by NY Jets.  As a Redskins fan, I am very thankful Snyder didn’t pull the trigger and do something crazy for Sanchez — I do not think he will have much success at all in the pros.  I correctly predicted the last highly-drafted USC quarterback, Matt Leinart, wouldn’t amount to much and I think Sanchez is just a more charismatic version of him — All pomp & circumstance.  On most college teams, the average player ability is modest.  When an elite player shines on those teams, it’s readily obvious he’s got the goods to play at a higher level.  On a star-studded team like USC however, where every player is good, it can be a bit misleading how talented a specific individual is since the team as a whole is better the majority of teams.  But in the parity of the NFL, which is packed top to bottom with great players, less than great players quickly fall by the wayside.  While I wish Sanchez and the Jets the best, I have serious doubts about the likelihood of his success.

On the other hand, you have Pat White — this guy is amazing and was the most successful of any of the quarterbacks in the draft this year.  However, because he doesn’t match what is considered a typical NFL quarterback, he was drafted as a “specialty” player.  Lucky enough for him, he got drafted by Miami who more than most seems willing to give a player like that a chance.  I don’t know if White will ever amount to anything in the NFL but I would rather take a chance on him than some of the other quarterbacks taken well above him.  Even if he did go to West Virginia.   Along the same lines, I like Freeman going to Tampa Bay and Nate Davis to the 49ers.  I would wager one of the three (White, Freeman, or Davis) has a better NFL career than Sanchez or Stafford.

Enough with the quarterbacks.  I love RB Donald Brown to Indianapolis, WR Crabtree to the 49ers, WR Maclin to the Eagles, and TE Pettigrew to the Lions.  Pettigrew is the kind of player that could help prove me wrong with Stafford above.  I love any team that drafted linemen early — I love the skill players but it’s hard to get them the ball without a good O-line much less when the defense can’t get the opposing offense off the field.  Seattle had the easiest 1st round pick with LB Aaron Curry.  T Oher’s rise from nothing may have been talked about a bit overmuch but I’m still sold on him going to Baltimore.  T Monroe is going to a solid player for years.  I hate the Darrius Heyward-Bey pick by Oakland but that seems to be a universal feeling.  I have my doubts about Percy Harvin going to Minnesota.

As for my hometown team, the Redskins had a decent, boring draft.  Whew!  Their 1st round pick Orakpo fell into their laps — A blessing as any ‘Skins fan lives in fear of what sort of crazy, wasteful trade Snyder is going to pull next.  When Orakpo was available, it was a gimme pick at a position they needed.  I don’t know anything about the other players they drafted but I am very intrigued by an undrafted guy they picked up: QB Daniels from Missouri.  Daniels is very Pat White-esque in that he was extremely successful in college but somehow didn’t seem NFL draft-worthy.  The current Redskins QB Jason Campbell is by all accounts a nice, decent guy with a reasonable skill set but I never understood why he was considered an NFL franchise quarterback.  He’s been solid but unspectacular as the ‘Skins QB for a few years now and it seems like he’s on the way out at Washington.  I feel sorry (well, as sorry as I can for a guy who will never have to work again) for him as he does seem like a genuinely good guy but as a ‘Skins fan, I am looking forward to the next chapter for the ‘Skins at QB.

Along the same lines, I’m the sort of person that finds reading the game recaps online much more interesting in general than watching the games live.  So Saturday night before bed, I brought up Sports Illustrated and ESPN to read their draft summaries of the first & second rounds.   For two companies that usually take the lead in adopting technology into their coverage, they really need to get rid of one really annoying and out-of-date feature they have on their pages:

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”120″ />

For those who aren’t programming nerds like me, that little tag in the head section of an HTML page forces the page to refresh the page every 2 minutes (120 seconds). It’s very difficult to read down through a page when the page refreshes and moves back to the top every X seconds. Both SI and ESPN have this annoyance turned on.

I want my content to be as fresh and updated as possible but that’s why years ago, people started using XMLHttpRequest — it allows you to load the content dynamically without forcing a page refresh. Then, use a little styling and coloring to indicate updated content. Easy enough.

SI, you’re behind the times. You too, ESPN. End Web Developer Rant.

After that point, however, the three-way match became a bit of a crapshoot as the blinds grew and grew while we were unable to do anything but move the chips around from person to person.  Eventually, a hand saw all of put our money in the center and ended the tourney when my hand knocked out both Mike & Jason at the same time.   The victory did nothing to reduce my renewed interest in poker.

The poker tournament had dropped to 3 people around the start of the Superbowl and didn’t finish until The Boss was singing at halftime… an epic finale, at least in duration.  Fortunately, much like last years Superbowl which was extremely boring until the last 2 minutes, this years Superbowl was pretty dull until the final quarter (the remarkable play to end the 1st half not-withstanding).  Arizona had a remarkable rally in the 4th and looked set to upset the Steelers in a game that until that point, had looked like the one-sided game many of us thought it would be.  When Fitzgerald was running in his second TD reception with 2 minutes to go, all of us were on our feet.  As it turned out, Pittsburgh answered in dramatic fashion and quieted all of us underdog fans.  The better team won on Sunday but Arizona gave us something to cheer for.

Enter ustream.tv.  Ustream and others like Mogulus (shout-out for Dan!) are a new breed of web application and the ease with which they make webcasting available is nothing short of astounding.  Using the iSight on my MacBook, my upcoming Fresno State/New Mexico State game will be broadcast over the web for my other friends to watch on the newly formed gergi TV.  

Granted, the scale of nerdiness here is a bit high.  Not nearly as high as setting up the webcam to watch my cats sleep all day long… which I did today.   Nor as high as setting up Twitter accounts last night for both Argo & Beta.   That said, I have a project in mind that will put all of these nerd endeavors to shame.  Cats and blatant misuse of technology will be involved if I can find the time to work on it.