Who Dares Challenge the Virginia Tech Hokies?
Rivals make us step up our game. That’s why you often hear pairs of brands. Coke and Pepsi, Uber and Lyft, McDonald’s and Burger King, Platinbet betting and bet365 – you cannot help but think of one while you are in front of the other. Do the Hokies have someone like that?
The Virginia Tech Hokies football team competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision of the NCAA. Over the years, they have amassed impressive achievements, including the fact that they won in over 700 games, and ranking 23rd for most wins. We are dedicating this piece, however, to their biggest rivals. We will talk about Virginia, West Virginia, Miami, and Georgia, as they are the biggest adversaries of the Hokies.
Virginia
The Hokies are long-time rivals of the Virginia Cavaliers, and not just in football. This college rivalry extends to all revenant sports, including baseball, basketball, softball, tennis, and lacrosse. They were taking each other on in the Commonwealth Challenge in 2005 and 2006, though due to the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, all future clashes were dismissed entirely – at least until 2014 when their encounter was dubbed the Commonwealth Clash. Interestingly enough, to this day, Virginia was unable to defeat the Virginia Tech Hokies in football. The rivalry is strong, but so is the animosity between the two.
West Virginia
Though they first got together to play one another was just before WWI, it wasn’t until the 70s that the two teams battled each other on the football field on a regular basis. One of the more notable games of the rivalry happened in 1979 when the Mountaineers were down 23-6 at halftime. All seemed unsalvageable until Oliver Luck proved to be deserving of his name and the second-half touchdowns he scored led the team to victory with the final score being 34-23 for the Mountaineers.
Ever since they started their battle, the two teams only had one tie in history. The score was 13-13, and the game was played in Blacksburg, Virginia. West Virginia has won against the Hokies 28 times and lost 23. The Virginia Tech massacre postponed their games until 2017.
Miami
The Hurricanes have encountered the Hokies for the first time on their home turf in 1953. Fans of the Hurricanes might argue that it is really not much of a rivalry, considering that Miami had more wins (22-14), the longest winning streak with 12 victories and that they currently have the upper hand. To them, we say: “What about the greatest victory?” In 1999, just at the end of their winning streak, Virginia Tech won with 43-10.
Georgia Tech
Finally, we have the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Though the teams have met only 16 times so far, the competition is present and going strong. Of those 16 times, the Hokies won 9 matches, had a winning streak of 4 games and in 2005, they wiped the floor with the Yellow Jackets with 51-7. Even the Hurricanes weren’t beaten so badly. The next time these two are scheduled to meet, at the time of writing, is in November in Atlanta, Georgia. We’ll see whether the winning streak of the Yellow Jackets will match that of the Hokies. Go, team, go!
