redskins4ever wrote:It was my understanding that OU was bought out of their contract with VT after VT saw what happened to Pitt... the 300K that they got for not having the game was suppose to help them land a 500K road game... 800K for one game isn't too shabby...
did anyone see that San Jose State lucked into get Stanford to come to their place, because Stanford didn't believe their stadium was going to be done on time?
Anyone who thinks Virginia Tech was backing out of having to go to Athens (as in Athens, Ohio, not Athens, Georgia) after OU beat Pitt is only kidding themselves. The Hokies agreed to a 2-for-1 with Ohio because it meant three wins for Tech and two home games in Blacksburg. What happened was Ohio started second guessing the deal after it played the first game in the series, a road game in Blacksburg, and accessed the remaining two games under contract and felt it would be a better situation for them to scrap the home game with VT in search of other non-conference games in order to one, help finance the ongoing renovations at Peden Stadium, and two, provide a less formidable opponent. Now they don’t currently have a big-time pay game on schedule yet, but they should get a somewhat decent payout for their road game at Missouri. Plus, they’ll be adding another decent pay game now, likely West Virginia or possibly Illinois. That will aid them better than having to provide a payout a guarantee to Virginia Tech for a home game. Funny enough, at one time, it was rumored that Ohio was going to try playing at a neutral site, even in Washington DC, for its proximity for a large neutral venue for the Hokies (not the Bobcats), in order to try and cash out a better gate receipt because it was an Ohio home game. It never got off the ground.
But about the San Jose/Stanford game, yes, I did see that the Spartans got a home game out of that deal. But Stanford and San Jose State pretty much have been playing each other every year anyway, so it’s not a big surprise to see them go to San Jose. They actually played there a few years ago, and in fact, San Jose State won like four consecutive games against the Cardinal in the late 1990’s and Stanford was looking to possible stop playing them. There’s a thread on here at AZZ about that Stanford Stadium renovation. It’s amazing, Stanford is building an entirely new stadium on the same site as the old one in one off-season. I’ve never seen or heard of that happening before. When I was at Virginia, we did an endzone renovation/addition and it took two years. That was just one endzone, they are doing an entire stadium from scratch! They are doing construction nearly around the clock and it’s amazing to think they’re going to have a new stadium in place in less than one year.