Virginia Tech’s bowl picture after Week 1 is messy on paper and pretty clear in spirit: the Hokies are being treated like a team that’s going somewhere in December, just with nobody agreeing on the destination.
Four national projections have Virginia Tech scattered across four different bowls - San Diego, Annapolis, El Paso and Charlotte. CBS Sports’ Brad Crawford has the Hokies in the Holiday Bowl.
ESPN split its picks, with Kyle Bonagura landing on the Sun Bowl and Mark Schlabach choosing the Military Bowl. Bryan Fischer, updating Sports Illustrated’s projections Monday morning, plugged Virginia Tech into the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
The disagreement is less a contradiction than a reflection of where this team stands after one week. The only hard data point so far is a 70-point win over an FCS opponent, and that doesn’t tell you much. The rest of the opening weekend around Virginia Tech, though, did shift the board.
Clemson, which hosts the Hokies on Oct. 24, was blown out by LSU 51-10. Georgia Tech, which comes to Blacksburg on Oct. 17, lost at home to Colorado 14-13.
Cal, Virginia Tech’s Oct. 10 opponent, dropped a home game to UCLA 45-24. Boston College, the ACC opener on the road Sept. 26, fell at Cincinnati 34-15.
Those were four of the games that looked like toss-ups or close to it before the season. After Week 1, all four opponents opened with losses.
The one game that got tougher was Pitt, which hammered Miami (Ohio) 59-0 behind seven touchdown passes from Mason Heintschel. That meeting comes to Lane Stadium on a Friday night, Oct.
Miami is still Miami, and it would take a lot for me to flip my prediction to a Hokie victory.
Still, the weekend nudged the outlook enough to matter. I had Virginia Tech at 7-5 in our staff predictions, and one week usually doesn’t move me much. This one does, because every bit of movement pointed the same way.
That’s the backdrop for year one of the James Franklin era. Franklin has taken a team to a bowl in 13 of the 14 seasons he coached start to finish, with the only miss coming in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.
He didn’t finish the 15th, after being fired at Penn State at 3-3 last October. He arrives with 128 career wins, and he kept Brent Pry as his defensive coordinator.
So the path is easy enough to sketch. The four safe wins stay put.
Cal and Georgia Tech look more reachable now. Then you take one of Clemson or Pitt.
Then Virginia at home on Nov. 28.
That leaves Old Dominion on Saturday as the real swing point. The Monarchs beat Virginia Tech 45-26 in Blacksburg last year, a loss that got Pry fired. If the Hokies drop that one, this projection gets shaky in a hurry.
Bowls aren’t assigned by record alone anyway. The ACC and its partners also weigh quality, travel, TV appeal, geography and a preference for not sending a team back to the same bowl in back-to-back years.
That last piece matters here: Virginia Tech went to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl after the 2024 season, the Military Bowl after 2023, and didn’t make a bowl last year. Charlotte and Annapolis are both in play.
Even so, the strongest case is for a better destination. Virginia Tech at 8-4, in the first year under a coach who was on a national semifinal sideline 20 months ago, with a fan base that travels as well as anyone in the league, is exactly the kind of non-playoff draw the ACC wants on television.
Bowls don’t always reward the best team. They reward the best inventory.
That makes Orlando the cleanest fit. The Pop-Tarts Bowl sits near the top of the ACC’s non-playoff pecking order, pairs the league with a Big 12 opponent and kicks off Dec. 29 on ESPN. It’s also a bowl Virginia Tech has never played, which only helps its case.
The ceiling is 9-3 and a trip to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville on Dec. 30. The floor is 6-6, which could send the Hokies to the Fenway Bowl in Boston or into ESPN’s rotating bowl package.
The last time Virginia Tech played in a bowl, John Love drilled a 60-yard field goal in a game the Hokies lost by two touchdowns. He’s still kicking. Almost everything else about this team has changed.
In Other News...
Virginia Tech Still Has One Big Quarterback Decision Before Old Dominion
Virginia Tech heads into Week 2 with one of the more practical questions of the early season still hanging over it: who settles in as the backup quarterback behind the starter. James Franklin said Bryce Baker has put himself in the conversation, and that battle for QB2 has become part of the buildup to Old Dominion, even as the Hokies try to keep their focus on the larger shape of the season. Franklin also spent time praising the defense and talking through the value of how future games are scheduled, a reminder that the first few weeks can shape more than just the win-loss column.
Old Dominion brings a little extra edge because of what happened a year ago, but Franklin made clear the Hokies are treating this matchup as its own test rather than a chance to relive last seasons loss. The result is a familiar early-season mix of urgency and evaluation: Virginia Tech wants to clean up the details, keep building confidence on defense and, at the same time, sort out a quarterback depth chart that could matter later even if it does not decide Saturday. [Read more 🡒]
Virginia Techs Quarterback Battle Isnt Over Behind Ethan Grunkemeyer
Virginia Tech left its season-opening win over VMI with one part of the quarterback picture looking settled and another still very much in motion. Junior Ethan Grunkemeyer handled the job well enough in the opener, completing 17 of 20 passes for two touchdowns, and the Hokies got the kind of steady start they wanted from the top of the depth chart.
The more interesting question now sits behind him. Head coach discussed the quarterback situation after the game and made clear the backup role is still a competition among Bryce Baker, Kelden Ryan and Troy Huhn, with Baker getting into the opener but no definitive No. 2 yet named. For a team trying to build early-season rhythm, that kind of uncertainty matters, and it gives the next stretch of practice a little extra edge. [Read more 🡒]
Virginia Tech Gets A Charged Reunion With One Painful Opponent
Brent Prys return to Virginia Tech has already added an unusual layer to James Franklins first season in Blacksburg. Fired as the Hokies head coach in September 2025, Pry is back on the staff as defensive coordinator, and the schedule wasted little time in putting him in a spotlight game with extra meaning. Virginia Tech hosts Old Dominion on Sept. 12, 2026, with both teams off to 1-0 starts and the Hokies installed as the favorite.
The matchup carries an edge beyond the usual in-state intrigue because Old Dominion was the team whose victory helped trigger Prys dismissal. It is rare enough for a coach to return to the same program after getting let go, and even rarer for that reunion to come against the opponent most closely tied to the end of his first run. For Virginia Tech, it turns Saturday into more than an early-season test. It is also a charged reminder of how quickly the narrative around one program can turn. [Read more 🡒]