the end of the season came a lot later this year

If there's a redeeming quality to 2010, that's probably it. It had a lot to do with the schedule, too, but last year the season ended on Halloween. I guess the extra three weeks plus the one extra win represent progress. Technically there's still a game left, but you are advised to spend your time convincing any Hokies you know who might be talking trash (while they collect your trash) that the recruiting battleground is tilting back our way, rather than focusing on this particular week.

UVA won't play BC in football again until 2014, which is a shame because it'd be nice to have another game next year to help us remember that we actually play BC; Saturday's game was eminently forgettable. Not in the sense that we saw a whole bunch of things we'd like to forget, but that it's very, very easy to. It's already happened to me. Whatever happened in that game has already blended into the fog, leaving me with little more than an impression of, once again, missed opportunities.

I guess you could blame the referees or ACC review officials if you wanted, for taking away what probably should have been a Dontrelle Inman touchdown to make the score 20-17. Then again, "probably should have" is the strongest case I can muster for it, and they don't overturn calls for that. Anyway, a good team would have found any number of other ways to win that game, so what's the use?

See, I was taken aback in looking at the box score, and not only by the 53(!) pass attempts. Give me that box score without the scoreboard and I'd say we likely won. 400+ yards on offense, one pick by Verica, no other turnovers, single-digit penalties (this is what we call improvement around here) and general statistical wins in most categories. Hell, three sacks even. (I forgot about those just as much as I didn't realize Verica had thrown almost 50 passes.) But there was nobody on offense or defense to step up and do something to turn the game in our favor. Just two not-especially-talented teams, one with slightly less than the other. I'd take a lot of satisfaction in calling the outcome so nearly exactly (the BCI Q&A involved a score prediction, and I gave 20-14, BC, as my best guess) if it didn't mean that what we appear to be is exactly what we are.

Of course, next week's game will hold my interest, as it always does when the University of Virginia fields a football team against the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Pen University, but instead of hoping to win by doing this or that I'll basically be looking for a lightning strike. And then I'll check out the recruiting rankings - did you know ESPN has us 18th?