All the Marbles

Whelp.

Here it is.

Biggest game of what?  The last decade?  The last two decades?  The last 30 years?

Streaking the Lawn calls it "The Game of the Century."

I'm of the opinion that nothing really matters in college basketball until you get to the Big Dance; that the regular season is merely a means to an end, the "over the river and through the woods" before you get to Grandmother's house.

The Bengals' humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chargers in the wildcard round of the playoffs was my most recent (incredibly painful and frustrating) reminder that the regular season don't mean shit.  The 2011 season of Virginia Football was the same sort of thing.

But the reality is that this game against Syracuse is our first chance to make this super-special season actually mean something.

It's a chance to hang a banner in the JPJ rafters.

I don't care how unbalanced the schedule has become, or how fat and soft the conference midsection has grown, an ACC regular season title means something.  The last time Virginia won an [outright] title was 1981.  That's a long freaking time.

If you believe the reports, a UVA/Syracuse ticket is the most valuable ticket we've seen in the Commonwealth, maybe ever.  From the Daily Press report:

SeatGeek, one of those secondary-market ticket brokers, revealed Thursday the average ticket price has more than quadrupled in the past month, going from $79 on Jan. 26 to $339, thus making it more expensive than the cost of a U.Va. full-price season-ticket package and the most expensive ticket the broker ever has recorded in the state of Virginia.

I wonder if UVA fans have been hungry for a winner in one of the "big-two" revenue sports.

Yeah, this game against Syracuse is a pretty big deal.  It's for all the marbles in the ACC, in the ACC's first season as a 15-team conference.

It's a huge game.

And I think we'll win it.  God damn it, we're due.  We've paid our karmic debt.  It's time for us to cash in.  We have a date with destiny; we're aiming for history.

If, that is, our team and fans can find the... ahem... marbles... to go out there and deliver the goods and take this fucking thing away from the Orange in favor of the orange and blue.

Go Hoos.

Virginia 59, Syracuse 51