Today’s word is…mythperceptions.

(ΜΨτΗpr-svΘη)

So let us endeavor to clear up some message board mythperception, if you will. Although some of this will prove to be sticky and some of this will prove to be downright adhesive indeed.

And if your feelings bruise easily, or if you are a C.A.T.T. (catty all the time) now might be a good time for you to go Cougar and Maverick, pull the cord, and “EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!”

If however you are a real man with real stones, watch that canopy, turn off that dumbass K.Loggins music, and enjoy the ride.

Here be where real Hokie men congregate …and speak truth to the POWER.

A long time ago in a (gridiron) galaxy far, far away, Frank went all-in.

Ok, so it was really only 2.6 yarns, I mean years ago; even it if seems much further removed than that. Use your mental mouse-wheel and scroll backwards in time with me, to just beyond our final 10-win season, right when things began to slip on-film. Mutually fundamentally and in terms of pure, raw, primal toughness; recall who published this very notion that Virginia Tech -of all the possible things- had indeed peaked. Apparently no one else foresaw this, or at the very least no one else was stoney enough to publish this. However, the true nature of this beast was not found in the beast itself, it was found in the response…

“Try as you might, you can’t coach Hite.”
Circa about 2010, perhaps even before… as the Virginia Tech offense slipped into recession and then nearly into outright clinical depression.

Did offensive changes need to be made?
Hell yes.
Where the changes overdue?
Hell no. They were long overdue!

Even I am forced to “uncle” and simply admit it, and I had plenty of friends on that very Staff.  To say anything else is to bury one’s head in the sands of self-deception and become fully ostrichrageous if you will. Nonetheless, repeat after me as someone said over and over and over again on Espn Radio summer of 2012… “Be careful what you wish for, be careful what you wish for, be careful what you wish for…” …you might just get it.

***

As Virginia Tech and the most loveable head coach in all of D-1 big whistles, pretty much threw the family-first baby out with the bath-water. Entered virgin territory, and suddenly we ran plum off our family-first map. “Here there be dragons”, as any savvy old-world cartographer would warn on the corner of a map, to designate that the navigator was about to enter into foreign or outright uncharted territory. So begins the 2012 spring-practice, and so begins our story after an unprecedented and heretofore unfathomable family-first purge.

Thus timely or not, the Hokie family-paradigm changed forever in the purge of 2012. This is simultaneously the inherent virtue and the very peril of being too close to your employees; or for being family-first. Why? Because correction becomes almost impossible, as correction is too painful and spills too much nepotistic blood. However, the paradigm did more that shift, as longstanding virtues, values, mores, norms and principals, that no one felt would ever be sacrificed, were suddenly and abruptly put to death. More than just the paradigm itself died that day. Whereas before it was never ok to vent, expel or explode –now that the nonpareil top-down loyalty umbilical had finally been cut? A not so funny thing began happen along the way to the candy-store, as bottoms-up loyalty began to bleed out as well. What was once a family-first scheme was suddenly a high octane fear-first business model and business was bearish to be sure. People who did not fit the residue family-first culture were brought in, in with them came “…new minds, fresh ideas” -Petain-

Just like mother Russia, our perestroika reform went too far too fast! You simply can not go from hateful hellish communism to a fully grown democracy (while skipping socialism) overnight. Nor can you go from 23 years of family-first to a big time Bogarting power-conference swaggering  So.Eastern mentally all in one spring. And lookee here lookee here folks… there’s that phrase again: “all-in”.

Frankly speaking? Frank went too far too fast in his paradigm shift, and he went too far too fast, too late! Simple as that. So where you stand is where you sit and right now we are barely sitting on .5oo. Nevertheless, here is where the lesson in applied sports-psych ends, and the mythperceptions begin.

• No “i” in team? Well, if you look closely, there is now a tEaM, if you see what I mean. No mythperception here, as there are more individuals out there playing hero-ball and/or at least one playing to preserve himself for next year. Coach Foster was right to hold their individual feet to the collective fire post-game after the drubbing otherwise known as Miami.
• Mythperception via omission as nobody seems to be covering this tag-line: some of this is the inherently troubling nature from several upperclassmen and their got sat down ego’s. That got sat down by underclassmen or imported (transfer) ballers mind you. Not all is sunshine and puppy-dogs when you feel like you’ve paid your 3-5 year dues in full and a first year or rookie hire takes your job away.
• Medical staff=fine. Actually, that’s a lie, and we all know, “…lying is for rugs.” As this is an elite medial staff that spearheaded (pardon the pun) the helmet technology development, the aqua-treadmill preHab and reHab movement among many other innovations. However the mythperception here is found in our “all-in” paradigm shift. Red-shirt? Injury? Does that mean more or less to a short-time coach? You do the maths, as the mantra is “win now”, if you can help at all, you play!
• Which makes for quite the post-game interview disconnect; what with Frank telling everyone about being real good next year. So which year are you playing for, playing injured kids for, and ripping r-shirts for?

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1980VT of the TSL pay-side message boards astutely writes…

“Football Coaches and players have “rifts” all of the time. Fist fights even. I’ve even seen winning football teams have “rifts“.

Yah; typically speaking, you’re not ‘rong; however, not so much at Virginia Tech.  As this fractured response mentality is (mostly) new to us as these sorts of things (mostly) did not exist under the family-first template. All fingers point to that.

What 1980VT authored is indeed true. No mythperception need apply here; well, not unless you are Virginia Tech. As that’s just not the family-first way folks. We were never that cutthroat, though we are now; we were never that belligerent, though we are now, we were the more synergistic middle-drill, whereas we are now the more individualistic bull-n-the-ring dogfight. We were never this pitting or vis-à-vis or baiting or snippy or snarky. We hung in there and we hung together. Mostly for better, and occasional for the worse; although we did it, together.

So in conclusion…………we are now a truly mixed motive squad, player and Staff alike. Check it…and consider all of this to formulate a truly measured opinion…

1. This is a 3-part Staff:
   part I: original-school Frank Beamer, and similarly first-school Bud and Wiles, been there, done that, been there a long long time. Vaguely newer-school and holdover offensive refugee coach Stiney.
   part II: Transitory coaches: Coach Gray (who is so good someone is gonna offer him up), coach Brown, the other coach Beamer.
   part III: new power-conference sophomore coaches, great Scot, A.Moorehead (who I super like), and rookie year coach Stacy, all BIG time guys from BIG time programs, with BIG time resumes at little ole Virginia Tech. See what I mean? We’ve got a trifecta of a staffing amalgam that is growing more and more heterogeneous and less and less homogenous day by day. In point if fact, it is splintering into run-first, pass-first and why are you taking my player(s) camps as I type.
2. This is a 2-part Team:
   part I: the upperclassmen, who did win 10 games in 2011 and a few as well in 201o. Who came in under family-first Frank, and then got Oklahoma Drilled.
   part II: the first year up through third year guys who have heard of family-first, prolly did sign up for family-first, and yet have never ever known seven consecutive 10-win seasonal success. They do however know, average, as that is all they have ever know –that is the first parts new norm, that is the second parts only standard.
3. This is a 2-part Jamerson:
   part I: there are a few pure Franklin disciples left in key places. David Everett, Lu Merritt, John Ballein and Bruce Garnes all come to mind. These are  longtime Beamer loyalists.
   part II: the top however is brand spanking new and Whit does have some of his people surrounding him, that and the Weaver refugee era stalwarts (like John Moody) are in flux, nearing retirement or not long for the Hokie sporting world. (and the vibes say that the Top is pissed!)

See what I mean?
This is an unaligned, disparate, and far less than uniform lot. Which set of competing ideas do you dare say wins? Be that on team, on staff or over in Jamerson? If you were wise then you did vote all three in the most recent poll. Cus when you add them all up, it surely looks like we’ve got at least seven moving parts, which leaves one questioning just how many are moving in the same direction?

Ugly as this is gonna read, to paraphrase Churchill; this is the beginning of the end; all the more so with the Bowl-streak finally going “snap” or merely via a villein hooVa power-tools finally going Win. IF, either/or happen mythperception need not apply and to be 100% direct, it is now officially difficult to expect these seven moving parts to all septa-return. We’ve got too many chefs spoiling the gumbo on no less than three full layers with four full sub-divides. Accordingly, -be this Whit-down or a voluntarily exodus inside-out, I expect this once “proud” Staff to break-up and I expect there is a chance that at least one of the top-2 could be gone, sans a finishing at least 3-1 while beating uva.  There, I said it.

That being said, be twice “proud” of what Frank has accomplished at and for Virginia Tech, be that VT.edu, men’s football, or the New River Valley in mercantile terms. Be “proud” of this golden era of Virginia Tech football as it draws to a close.

If parting is truly “…such sweet sorrow”, let appreciation be your methodology for the remaining four football games folks. Leave the rest to myth…

 

 Layers=3, subdivisions=4, the future=???

“LETS GO!”

“Hokies!”

bourbonstreet**