The first month of the 2003 Virginia Tech football season is in the books. As we usually find ourselves at the end of September, Tech is undefeated and in possession of a very high ranking. As is also the case, it is the remaining months in which we will find out whether that ranking is justified. The first four victims were not the toughest collection around, but neither were they the easiest. Tech avoided getting MAC'ed and have at least given the indication that their lofty ranking is much more justified than, say, that of Kansas State. From here on, things will get a bit more interesting.

Tech has run out of home games for a couple of weeks, meaning, among other things, that both the football team and I head to picturesque New Jersey this week, Tech to play Rutgers and me to watch the game Saturday after being dragged kicking and screaming Friday night to Broadway to watch �Chicago.� Actually, I don�t mind attending the theater, especially those located on Broadway and although I will never admit it, I am rather looking forward to the musical, just not nearly as much as I am the game.

It will be our last trip to Rutgers for what is likely to be a good long while. While a good chunk of the remainder of VT's schedule will cause us to hear �traitor� more than a time or two, this will be one of two road games where it will be flung around [the other? Pitt. Given the way Temple has started their season, there are only likely to be a few thousand Hokie fans in that brand spanking new stadium by the time Tech hits town]. Get used to it. What will be amusing hearing it from the Dear Old Rutgers Knights of Scarlet is that it will be tinged with just a bit of envy, as I can think of no team that would be a better fit for the elusive ACC 12 spot were it not for the fact that the Dorks have been so miserably bad for the last couple of centuries. It�s their own fault, not Tech�s.

This game might not be the cakewalk odds makers and many Tech fans anticipate, as there are rumblings out of Piscataway that the �potential� label that has adorned Rutgers football since the latter part of the Nineteenth Century just might be coming to fruition. The Knights have blown through that murderer�s row of an OOC, dispatching traditional powers Buffalo, Army and Navy, and claim to be ready for heartier fare. A massive crowd, by Rutgers standards, of near forty thousand will be on hand, and Tech can expect to see that rarest of New Jersey phenomena, something close to a real college football atmosphere.

It will be fairly important to display something other than the marked disinterest that characterized the team�s play for much of the UConn game and demonstrate very early on to Rutgers that the rash of upsets that has heralded, or plagued, depending on your ranking, this season will not happen today. This will not be the game or the place to let the other team hang around in the game, as was the case against the Scarlet ones last year in Lane. I know how �Chicago� will end and would just as soon have only slightly more drama at the football game.

Speaking of Chicago and making an attempt at a segue, I notice that the school that advertises that city as its primary media market (along with all the other ones) has been in the news concerning our new conference. Someone in the ACC office either blabbed the news or made a carefully-orchestrated leak that informed us that Notre Dame was on the way to become the ACC�s twelfth member unless they were not, in every sport but the one in which they are needed.

ACC commissioner John Swofford could have saved himself a lot of time wasted negotiating with the Irish by simply asking the two schools queued up at the front door awaiting entry into the exclusive club exactly how well things work out when the Irish are members of one�s conference for everything but football. The short answer is: Not too good.

On the surface it would seem that once again Big John is making deals that his bosses will not honor, as the ACC Presidents Council quickly shot down the notion of a partial membership for Notre Dame or anybody else. While this would seem to be a state of affairs good enough for the likes of the Big East, it would open a can of worms nobody in the ACC wants crawling around. One can imagine how conference brass would go about explaining a Notre Dame membership without Irish football to Duke or Wake Forest, who for years have been trying to end the annoying requirement that they actually field football teams to keep their other sports in the ACC. Duke especially, for while the Deacons actually have somehow managed to field a competitive team as long as the coach doesn�t have to make difficult decisions such as what to do on fourth down while leading by three [here�s a suggestion, Grobe: kick the field goal], Duke has discovered that attempting most anything, including setting new conference records for consecutive losses every time they take the field, cannot get them out from under the stipulation that they continue to play the darn sport. Coach K is still rather ticked off that his conference has been sullied by the likes of we mountain folk and those south Florida hoodlums and would not take kindly to Notre Dame grabbing a share of the huge ACC basketball revenues that are largely generated by Duke while giving the Devils zilch from their horde of football cash. That ain�t likely to happen, and shouldn�t. If Notre Dame wants to play ball with the ACC, let�s play with all of them.

What is more likely in the ACC/Notre Dame media flash is that the Irish are not particularly pleased with what is likely to be the new configuration of the L�il E, the one that has them in the Western Division of the league that has, incredibly, seemingly found a way to make itself even more convoluted than before. I would have bet good money that would not have been possible, and I would have lost if this goofy sixteen-team amalgamation comes about. ND desires to go east and play basketball in the brighter media lights, and this was their little way of letting the L�il E know that they might have other options. Not much has changed in what can�t become our former conference soon enough; it�s still all about Notre Dame. Y�all have fun.

As side-splittingly hilarious as it is to observe, kow-towing to Notre Dame is now somebody else�s problem. The problem facing Virginia Tech is to travel one last time to Rutgers and avoid being upset in what is going to be, given our respective conference situations, a very emotional game for the Knights. If Tech matches the opposition�s level of intensity, they should win.

The consequences of an upset are too disastrous to contemplate, so I won�t. That is the problem of the team and staff. Mine will be finding somewhere to have a late dinner in the theater district and then dragging myself Saturday morning to the stadium for another cursed noon kickoff. This will be my third trip to Rutgers to watch Tech play the Knights [I do believe I am in a tiny minority of Tech fans that have actually seen us lose to Rutgers], and the previous two involved using New York City as a staging area and were lots of fun [except, of course, for the 1992 loss]. Come to think of it, there is at least one thing I will miss about the Big East.

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