Virginia Tech accidentally declared it beat ODU, and look — I get it

You’re aware that Virginia Tech lost to Old Dominion this weekend. That happened. The 0-3 Conference USA team beat the perennial upper-tier ACC contender, whose fans then got really upset, and then the Hokies kicked one of their best players off the team.

Nobody expected it, least of all Virginia Tech. The Hokies were 28.5-point favorites. This was the biggest upset of the year so far. And in a press release pertaining to a game weeks later, the Hokies’ communications team revealed that it wasn’t really prepared for a loss:

This is at least the second thing Virginia Tech’s excised from the internet in the wake of the shocking loss. The first was this tweet from two years ago that I’d argue isn’t even bad, but just constitutes light trash talk of an in-state opponent:

Anyway, it’s gone now.

Virginia Tech being blindsided by giving up 49 points in a loss to ODU is funny, but full disclosure: I very much understand this struggle.

I can’t count how many posts and tweets I’ve written in my day that involved me leaving a score placeholder and writing ahead as if a result was a foregone conclusion.

Don’t forward this to my bosses, but I’ve published several posts on this very website that have noted “Team X beat Team Y by an XXX-YYY score,” or whatever. I have published things early, published things with the wrong names in the wrong places, and made every manner of conventional mistake you could imagine at least once. My mom has texted me about enough of my typos that she should probably be on our payroll as an editor.

So I’d never begrudge Tech for this error, as funny as it is.

The 2-1 Hokies return to action against No. 22 Duke on Saturday. With Josh Jackson injured, Justin Fuente announced that ______ would start at QB.