For those of you clamoring for a "name" opponent on the football schedule (and we all want that), Dave Braine has announced that a four-game series with N.C. State will kick off in 1999. N.C. State has been one of the schools thrown around as an example of a regional opponent who's a little down on their luck right now but would still be a nice notch on the Hokies belt. Of course, a lot can change in two years, but let's hope that this deal holds up. I thought the Virginia Tech/N.C. State rivalry of the late 80's and early 90's, which had its origins in the 1986 Peach Bowl, was a great one. Never a boring game in that series, and it was always very competitive.

Dave has also asked the Big East to put together a home-and-home, made-for-TV series with an intersectional team like a Big 10 school or a Pac 10 school. Dave would like to see a matchup with somebody like Stanford, USC, or Illinois, for example. But, and every Hokie will back Dave up on this, he is not interested in a matchup that is not on TV and does not involve an equal number of home and away games.

So there. Dave is working on it, folks. It's just hard to get big-name teams to agree to that sort of deal with us. I call it "The ECU Effect." Most big-name teams won't touch us, because we're tough as nails and the big-name teams argue that they stand to gain nothing by trading games with the Hokies.

Other items from the show:

• Starting next year, football and basketball season tickets will be offered at a discount off the cost of single game tickets (FINALLY!!!). In other words, it will be cheaper to buy season tickets than it will be to buy individual game tickets for every home game, and this is the first time that will ever be true. The lack of a discount for buying season tickets has been listed as one of the reasons that Tech doesn't sell more season tickets, so at least we can retire that excuse now. Me, I'm happy, because I would have bought the darn things anyway. Dave stated that next year's goal is 20,000 season tickets sold (we sold about 16,000 this year).
• The scheduled completion date for the Merryman Center is July 1, 1998. Knowing the way construction goes, I would be impressed if it was ready for the start of the 1998 season. Hopefully, it will be ready by then.
• There will be a new scoreboard system in Cassell Coliseum next year, and this one will be suspended from the center of the ceiling, instead of being located at each end of the court like it is now. Dave didn't divulge any details, but when Tech redid the roof of Cassell last summer (at a cost of over $3 million), it was beefed up and equipped to accommodate a scoreboard suspended from the ceiling.

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