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Bingo. The 8 teams in your first column will finish ahead of us. Take 2 of the 5 you listed that "might" finish ahead of us, and that equals 10 spots. We are 10th now and as I eluded to earlier, we will finish around 20thish. But, that's very impressive in an of itself because....
1. In Coach Fu's first true recruiting class, he's landed a top 20 class at a program which was mediocre for the previous 4 years prior to him taking over and we are suffering and trending down and down in recruiting with the mediocre records, lack of trust with VT's offensive system across Virginia, Coach Beamer's likely retirement-pending retirement, etc. Bottom line, we should NOT have a top 20 class in Coach Fu's first recruiting year at VT with the variables that were in place above. That's incredible.
2. The real kicker that many need to be positive about, yet looking at it on the surface, it seems negative right now, BUT IT'S NOT. It's to our advantage in the future. I am talking about in-state Virginia recruiting. Folks, he is landing a top 20ish recruiting class that is the most non-state of Virginia filled recruiting class in the history of the school's football program. This means.....he can recruit. His offensive system is not turning off recruits like the past offensive system and Beamer. In state kids always come back home when you are winning, and when TRUST is gained by Virginia High School Coaches with our offensive system. That was severely hindered with our past system as I wrote about many times on this board. It was so severely hindered that the current generation of players in high school in Virginia (sophomores, juniors, seniors) that are offensive players had likely already looked elsewhere. It will take 3 on the field coaching seasons at VT to regain the trust in Virginia among many coaches for kids on the offensive side of the ball.
3. What the above means is.....we have a top 20ish class with mostly out of state talent, but top 20 recruiting largely equals 9 and 10 win seasons. Add to that a modern day offensive system, and you have the kids in Virginia stay home and we land top 10-15 classes regularly. Next year's recruiting class will be a top 15 class with a little more Virginia kids in the mix compared to this year, and the year after that (if Coach Fu is still the Head Coach) we are competing for our first top 10 class ever as the offensive firepower from the Tidewater area comes back home like it was in the year of 2000. If you can land three top 10ish recruiting classes, you are realistically considering a possible national championship. The future is bright for VT in football if we can hold on to this coach