The Big Eleventy Conference 2018

How do the Hokies rank among the most successful college football programs.

The Big Eleventy is a pseudo-conference created from a number crunching exercise at the season's end. It isolates the most successful teams of the past 20 seasons by AP poll visibility. Simply put, if a program is ranked more than half the time, it's in. From there, some statistical and metric comparisons are drawn, and a considerable amount of time is taken farting around in Microsoft Paint.

For the first time since starting this project (following the 2015 season), no new teams were added or dropped from the prior season.

These are the teams that just missed the cut (with their percentage of time ranked, followed by the next season they could "join the conference", in parentheses):

Boise State (46.8%, 2019)
Michigan State (43.4%, 2021)
Oklahoma State (44.1%, 2020)
Penn State (43.6%, 2021)
Tennessee (44.0%, 2024)
West Virginia (44.4%, 2021)

Only one program teeters in danger of dropping out next season. As long as Nebraska can manage two weeks ranked at some point in 2019, they would retain conference membership.

I present to you the Big Eleventy conference; 8-bit version.

Admission Criteria, Entire Seasons Ranked or not, and CFB Belt performance

End of Season Success

Metrics and Winning Percentage

Performance vs. Ranked teams

Round Robin

Key Takeaways: There's no sugarcoating how painful last season felt. Virginia Tech opened its campaign with a solid win over an (alleged) vaunted opponent, only to scrape through to bowl eligibility. This season's Big Eleventy will be the last year in which the results of the Hokies' 1999 National Championship run are tallied, as well.

Being ranked more than half the time over the past two decades is good company to be in.

The Hokies are four unranked seasons away from dropping out of this group.

To put this in context of ACC schools; Miami could fall below this threshold in two seasons by resting on their laurels. Florida State could last one more year than the Hokies; Clemson two. Tech is not in terrible shape from a recent historical perspective.

Two of the eight "blueblood programs" are at risk of dropping below this 50% threshhold as well. Notre Dame has as much margin as Miami. Unless Nebraska stays ranked for more than a week this season they're out. (And unless they stay ranked through the next couple seasons, they'll drop <50% soon enough).

From a short-term perspective, it's pretty simple to recognize that the Hokies are coming off their worst record since Bill Clinton took office. With attrition seemingly common in Blacksburg and the 2020 class seemingly full of missed connections, it would be pretty easy to correlate these conditions with a program that's in dire trouble.

There's a reason many fans are pessimistic this offseason, and maybe that's healthy. They expect better results. And Tech is a much better program than those data points would suggest.

I don't claim to have any unique insight into the program. I'm certainly not overcome with any belief that the sky is falling in on the Virginia Tech football program, either. It speaks to the strength of a beloved program that it has fans who pick it apart with precision, pointing out the potential weaknesses and calling out those who seem to be less worried as "making excuses" and "being apologists". Coming off the last Tech losing season observed since the original Jurassic Park came out in theaters; perhaps that's right where we ought to be.

(Not that we're above calling folks out when warranted)

Metric Scores:

I developed a workaround to take different metric rankings, flatten their natural results curve and renumber the results in a 0-100% format. The FEI (2007) & SRS (2005) results are used as far back as available; the SRS (Simple Rating System from is used prior to that. More detail is available in my Big Eleventy 2017 Rundown.

References: (no longer active; Ohio State currently holds the "belt")
S&P & FEI Metric Data
AP Poll Data
AP Poll
SRS Metric, Team Records, etc...
Big Eleventy Extrapolated (from 1936 to 2017)
Big Eleventy 2017
Big Eleventy 2016
Big Eleventy 2015



Love this stuff Brockman, you're a king.

TTIL the college football belt is no longer a thing.

Great job on this research and work.

Wet stuff on the red stuff.

Join us in the Key Players Club

The belt is still a thing, even if the original website has expired. It's still fairly trivial to track, and aOSU is the current wearer.

Every time the belt changes hands, there will be an update on r/cfb. But the guys started the concept and ran the website let it expire; there's no updated homepage anymore.

So...over the course of the past 20 years, VT is has been pretty damn good. Glass half full!!


Agreed!!! So if I had the stats chops, I would like to see recruiting rankings overlayed with this data. My wild ass guess is that we would show up as one of the most successful programs with lower ranked recruiting classes. I guess that's the "punching above our weight class" argument. This seems to be part of our identity as a program, we do more with less. However this identity does not preclude us making the changes necessary to become a program that competes for a national title every once in a while. But what's the threshold to get there, we would all like to get over the hump?

BTW this is some A+ Get after ya content right here!! Well done!!!!!

"Don't go to, go through"

We, like Miami, hit on talent rich hotbeds before it was feasible for the top programs to recruit nationally in the same capacity that they do today. We won a lot of high profile recruiting battles like Kevin Jones and MV7 but we also had a lot of players that would be high four star potentially five star talent. The world is a smaller place because of the internet and so is college recruiting

Recruit Prosim

It's stuff like this that makes me TKP. Well done! I absolutely love the graphics

Think I found a typo/error - VT's record against Michigan is incorrect. Should be 1-0 not 0-1.

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Pain is Temporary, Chicks Dig Scars
Glory is Forever, Let's Go Hokies!!

Our bowl game record is also slightly off. Probably the same error.



This really goes to show the two factions of the fanbase, imo.

One side will say that we should be recruiting and spending money at the top 10-15 level. The other side will say that this shows how much we really have been punching above our weight class. Both have pretty good points.

I mean, it kind of depends what you consider the norm; the last 7 years, or the 13 years prior to that? Regardless, I think this proves that 6 of the last 7 years have been subpar, and that the program is trending in the wrong direction.

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I agree this serves as a good reminder of our program's success. Even with our recent struggles, over the last 25 years, we're still #5 in terms of overall number of wins in CFB. We're no longer "lil ol VT," and are allowed have expectations as such. I'm not saying we're a top 5, or top 15 program, but imposing self-inflicted ceilings that some of our fans do is surprising and frustrating to me. We don't have the history of Michigan, but we've been noteworthy program for 30+ years now, twice the lifetime of the kids we're trying to recruit. To me, there is no reason why VT can't/shouldn't be expected to fund-raise, recruit, have facilities, and function in-line with top 17-28 programs on a very consistent basis.

Yeah but dropping the 'lil ol VT' mindset would make us realize that maybe we should expect more out of this program than annual Top 30 recruiting classes and taking part in a divisional mess that nobody wants to win.


How exactly are fans imposing any such self inflicted ceiling that has any real effect on the outcome of this team?


It would be interesting to see some numbers that could better illustrate this, but being accepting of mediocrity has longer term changes over time. Fewer people go to games, there's less incentive to give big money if you think our ceiling is capped as is, the perception of the program is affected over time. There's lots of effects that the malaise of mediocrity and low expectations can have on a football program, the same way it would have negative effects on any other kind of business. The fans matter in college football, because college football is reliant on booster/alumni donations to help fund and improve the football team. If our fanbase at large thinks we're capped out where is the incentive to invest more into the program? If you stop investing in the growth of your company, customers, industry peers, future business partners take notice.

I think generally the fans and the athletic department lack a killer instinct (for lack of a better term) to be truly successful. I feel like our fans regularly cite variables that are not unique to VT as reasons why we can't be even more successful, such as the school's location making it impossible to recruit, student loans leading to lack of donations, etc., essentially imposing faux ceilings on the program. There seems to be a lot of 'what's in it for me?' when it comes to donating, which goes against the definition of 'donation,' and that attitude can spawn 'we'll never win a championship, so why donate.' Honestly, we've had 1.5 football coaches and 1.5 ADs over the last 30+ years. We've got no idea where the ceiling(s) of our programs are and what new leadership can do to improve upon them.

Again, this is observational and my general opinion.


I get the same feeling, but I think a more apt term would be 'risk averse' rather than 'lacking killer instinct.' Hiring Buzz Williams was a risky (or at least a high cost) move; we got the best coach available, and paid top dollar for him, despite owing money to the two previous basketball coaches. However, after getting five seasons out of Buzz, including arguably the best season in modern VT basketball history, both the administration and the fanbase wanted a 'long term' coach. Perhaps in this coaching search, being the best coach and viewing VT as a final destination were not mutually exclusive, but often times it could be.

The obvious place where our athletic department lacks 'killer instinct' or is too risk averse is our (lack of) investment into recruiting. The tough part about diagnosing this problem is that we (as fans) don't know the root cause. I've said this a handful of times here, but if we can't identify where (in the sales funnel) that we're losing recruits, then we can't know how to remedy the issue. Are people on our staff unrelatable, or are we just not reaching out to enough recruits early in the process? These are two different issues that should be remedied in different ways.

Finally, sometimes there's not an obvious decision. When it comes to loyalty versus recent results (aka, should we fire our OC), there's a lot of questions that come into play - how much of the issues was the playcalling vs the players' talent ceiling vs the players' development? How do you compare familiarity in a system against 'new blood' (you could make an argument either way).

I guess I'm just trying to say that it's easy to mistake a calculated, level headed decision for lack of a killer instinct. Unfortunately, sometimes you can't tell which it was until it's too late.

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I agree aversion to risk plays a large role and that might be a better term. Given where we are with revenue, we need to be innovative in how we approach recruiting, fundraising, fan engagement, etc. It doesn't seem like we're willing to take those risks or they may not be a priority. I'm not sure.

Seems to me the biggest risk we have right now is not giving Fuente the time he needs to see the results of his work.

When we committed to Fuente, we needed to commit to giving him the time he needs for his system to work.

Let's not confuse patience with "risk aversion".

What are you referring to when you say "innovation"? Is there an innovative team you'd like to emulate? I don't see too many shortcuts in college football.

I disagree about your biggest risk, but I don't want to derail this thread.


Just saying 'what else could we even do?' kind of falls into the mindset I was explaining in earlier posts. Incremental improvement should always be a focus. There isn't a specific team to emulate. I think we need to think differently across the board and be less reactionary, more forward thinking, and tighten up what we're already doing.

Why aren't we using text alerts or automated payments for fund raising? Asking for money during games, after big wins, after bowl wins? etc.
Increased utilization of social media and especially Youtube to increase fan engagement and help build a brand (I have no clue what our current 'brand' is under Fuente. Is Hard. Smart. Tough still a thing? Is Fuente's regime committed to LPD or is that just hanging on with Bud, etc.)
Are we tracking data and utilizing analytics to give us a better understanding or of what kids may be worth offers? We can't get to every camp, but test results are regularly available. Can we better track hit-rate of recruits utilizing stuff like SPARQ ratings? Are we baselining findings? Have we built KPIs? etc.
Are we utilizing relationships, popular culture connections, NFL alumni, etc. to the best of our abilities? Do we have targeted marketing approaches toward casual fans with the ability to donate, established boosters, students, recruits?

As with anything, minor, tactical improvement in a bunch of areas can yield larger results. Just addressing the questionable timing of some operations - mass emails for donations the day after the ODU loss, releasing a basic .ppt image of the weight room upgrades the day after national buzz from LSU's release, Pete's terrible tweeting and more than questionable content - could help keep stuff from getting lost in the shuffle, appeal to a wider audience, and better resonate with target audiences.

They've totally changed their fundraising approach since Whit came on board.

Yes, we've all noted some stumbles on the PR/fundraising front, and I do agree with you about some of their fundraising emails. But there has been a marked change, even if they had a misstep or two. In fact, the missteps were a result of some of their changes. I don't doubt they can make some more improvements. I see that as a separate topic from recruiting.

As for analytics, that's a great idea. I've got to believe they're aware of it, but I have no idea how much of it they're doing, even if they're not keeping TKP in the loop.

As far as recruiting communications, I've also seen significant changes (and significant improvement) in that over the past few years.


I think most of that has just been trying to catch up from how far we'd fallen behind the times at the end of the Beamer era. Those guys are spitting out some cool stuff now, but I don't think we're really on the leading edge of anything. All big programs are doing this stuff.

I didn't say "cutting edge", did I?

I said "significant improvement".

A agree with most of what you have on here, especially the fundraising, which we are not good at. However, none of this seems like it should be top priority for a coach, except maybe the analytics in recruiting, which I think should still be lower priority than analytics in play calling and play design. Which is likely part of the problem. We need to pay for the right people to help us raise enough money to pay for the right people.

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own

Sorry if there was confusion. None of what I've been posting in this thread is specific to Fuente (or any head coach) in any way. I'm talking about the athletic department and football program at large.


I have an innovative idea around recruiting that I'm pretty sure our team (or any team) isn't doing, but EVERY sales team in America does. We should keeping detailed stats on every phase of each recruiting class:

  • Awareness - How many recruits are aware of us in each class?
  • Interest - How many athletes are interested in us?
  • Evaluation - How many of those athletes receive offers from us?
  • Consideration - How many recruits' top-whatever lists do we make it on to?
  • Decision - Of those recruits who are considering us, how many choose us?

Beyond that, we need to know how much time/money is associated with each recruit and each phase of the funnel. The goal of this is two fold:

  • It helps us build out some sort of model that weighs the cost of each recruit against that recruit's value. Given that we have limited funds/man-hours, we cannot afford to break the bank chasing one five-star recruit, and ignore everyone else.
  • This sort of data would tell us where we need to make changes. For example:
    • Let's say that only 1% of athletes that we offer actually consider us, but 30% of the athletes who are considering us actually sign with us - that indicates that we need to engage with more athletes at the offer stage. To address this, we probably need to hire more support staff to scout and initiate contact.
    • Let's say that we are only signing 3% of the recruits who consider us - that indicates that we're failing to close, and we may need to spend more money on position coaches who can recruit.
    • In a third scenario, let's say that we have 200 kids on our radar for the next recruiting class, but only 100 of them are aware of us. This indicates that we need to spend more on marketing.

Without this information, it's really tough to understand where we should focus our efforts. This is something innovative that our department could do that could improve recruiting and financial decision making.

EDIT: gotta second everything OutOfTowner listed above. Our administration - whether that's Whit or Fuente or both - needs to get aligned on:

  • Our team's mission
  • Our athletic department's operational strategy
  • Our fundraising strategy
  • Our spending strategy

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Just based on the changes that I've seen, seems to me that both Whit and Fuente are pretty aware of these things.

I don't know how much data they have or buy (in the analytics sense), but they do have a recruiting strategy, they do have focused communications with recruits, and they do have a fundraising and spending strategy that we've seen some fairly drastic changes to over the past few years.

I think both Whit and Fuente work their asses off, I think they're both pretty smart in a strategic sense, and I think that hard work will pay off in the long term.

I don't doubt Fuente or Whit's efforts, but it's gotta start working soon, and before our rivals start clicking. I've said it in at least 5 different comments, but the last 15 months have been awful. Fuente needs a big win - on and/or off the field - to give the fanbase something to be excited about, and something to restore hope.

I have faith in Fuente, and I think he's the man for the job, but my confidence is definitely wavering.

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At least Clemson isn't in our division. Right now the Coastal is a mess waiting for one team to put it all together. With the dysfunction in this division, the first one that does might vault themselves to be the chased team for the next decade. We have to be that team. We can't just be content with being a part of the chaos, we must be the ones to rise above it, and it has to happen soon.


It's absolutely bewildering that Miami has not been able to pull a Clemson-esque takeover of the Coastal division. They definitely have the most talent in the division, but have somehow managed to toil below their talent level for over a decade. That said, I love it, and it lends to your point that there is a golden opportunity for us to reclaim the spot as the dominant Coastal program amidst the chaos and mediocrity. However, we have to do that before one of the other teams does first. That's where being on the cutting edge on the field, on the recruiting trail, and in branding the program is so important in the next few years.

I'm wondering how we lost our grip on it.

We do need to get that back, and soon.

Thanks for the explanation. I think this can be a very good discussion. I can't speak for all fans but I can speak for me. I will lay out a few of my opinions:

- I prefer to cheer my team versus criticising it. I perhaps put too much faith in the leaders of the program, but my assumption is that they want success even more than the fans, and they have a lot more information to go on than we do.

-I generally think patience is a trait lacking in collegiate and professional athletics. Players improve every game and so do coaches. My belief is that a coach is more likely to turn his own program around than expecting a whole new staff to do the same. That doesn't mean that things can't spiral beyond repair and warrant a change.

-I would separate fundraising and attendance from that of fan expectations. I think most fans have high expectations, some are just more willing to be patient with the process. I for one can't imagine a point where I am not excited for VT football.

-As far as recruiting, I don't think there is a simple answer of more money or more coaches or more effort. That equation just has way too many variables. I do think there is such a thing as momentum, and that is something worrying me right now, but not something I would demand change for just yet. Like mentioned, we arent all that different from any other P5 power (non blue blood), so lets not expect results in recruiting that are significantly better than those same peers. Suddenly top 25 recruiting is frowned upon, but there is a ceiling there, like it or not, that is probably closer to 25 than 10.


If I had tried to compose my thoughts they would have been very similar but less well written. I think fundraising, attendance, and fan expectations do have significant over-lap in the long term.

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own

I agree with the ceiling you've imposed of consistently being an all around top 17-28 program. It's a realistic ceiling.

15 Straight

I think our floor is 22-27. In the mid 2000s we were absolutely functioning like a top 10-15 football program. I don't think our athletic leadership at the time was prepared or capable of running an enterprise at that level. I think we're capable of returning there.

I agree with your main point, but to nitpick just a bit we were closer to top 5 than top 15 from 1999-2007-ish. We made plenty of appearances in the top 5 during that time.

And unfortunately, like most teams I think our floor is WAY lower than 22-27. Even mighty Alabama had 4 losing seasons between 1997 and 2007, with two 7-5, a 7-6 and a 6-6 season thrown in).


I mean, you only have to look at 2018 to see that our floor is waaaaaaaaaay below 27th. And looking the last 7 seasons, we probably averaged outside the top 30, so even our long-term floor is lower than 27th.

We may have sniffed it, but we never functioned like a top 10-15 program. We were more like a top 20-25 program. We never quite won those big games with any regularity, and were never a consistent threat at that level.

We did prove the concept that we could compete with the best on our best day, but it's a LOT harder to do it consistently.

So if we ever get there consistently, it will be because of long term planning and execution, not some instant fix. You pick a goal and you constantly pursue it. You don't try something and abandon it if you have a bad year.

I couldn't disagree more. I think you're forgetting just how good we were in the late 90s through the mid- to late-2000s.

We recruited big time players like Michael Vick, Kevin Jones, Xavier Adibi, Bryan Randall, Marcus Vick, Macho Harris, David Wilson and Ryan Williams. We won a ton of games, beat some big-time programs (Texas, Alabama, Miami, LSU, Texas A&M) with regularity, and we used to absolutely kick the shit out of lesser teams on a regular basis.

We had big-time name recognition, a massive home-field advantage, a great reputation for travelling to bowl and away games, and we had an awesome brand of football based on toughness, physicality and intimidation.

From 1999-2005 we spent a total of 59 weeks in the AP top 10, and 34 weeks in the top 5. We were in the top 5 at some point in 6 of those 7 seasons. There is not a shred of doubt that Virginia tech was a top-10 program during that time, and as I said above, I'd argue we were actually closer to top 5 for roughly a decade.


I'm one of the biggest VT fans there is, and I know for a fact that we didn't win the big games needed to make that claim of being a top 5 team. How many top 5 teams did we beat in those weeks? How many top 10 teams?

Rankings are often misleading. Those certainly are. When it came time to defend those rankings, VT came up short time and time again. We never quite managed to turn that corner without Vick. You want to make that claim, you have to be consistent and win the big games when they come around.

Top 20, sure. Top 10? For a decade? If I put on my realism hat, I can't defend it. We just didn't get those big wins with any kind of consistency.

Multiple "best program of decades list" have us in the top 10 for 2000's.

No orange and maroon glasses necessary for these neutral sources to rank us as a top 10 program.

7th in 2000's per Bill Connelly's best ten programs of each decade piece

CFN has us at 9 for the 2000-2009 range

Consistency was the name of our game, and we won a solid number of conference titles. We definitely fell short in the biggest games with regularity, but this is our seasons by year if you want to look at it yourself.

Well, we did make it to the national championship that one year, so it should count for something.

And there is some justification in all those weekly ratings. Who would I be to bash my own team? But when I look at the post-season rankings, we only ended up in the top 10 during five of those years.

To claim we were top 5 still seems a stretch to me. Even staring at the numbers, looks like it evens out higher than top 10. Top 15 maybe. But I'll have to trust the analytics of Billy Connelly. If he says 7th, so be it.

We had some good years, that's for sure.

While I largely agree with your post, I think there's a fine line between settling for mediocrity, and understanding/explaining the challenges the program is currently facing.

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Maybe TKP could sell some "Make VT Football Great Again" hats?

Fully agree that low expectations can be long term detrimental. The crux of the matter is making decisions based on expectations that are high but realistic (i.e. if you aren't an aTm machine, you cant just go out and hire a proven national championship winner.)

I agree with your perspective.

Not losing our minds over a bad season or a recruiting class is different from having lower expectations.

My expectations are pretty high, but my time frame may be longer.

Have always been proud of how we've punched outside of our weight class for so long. Our coaching staff has made developing performance output higher than recruitment ratings a norm, rather than an exception. And while the last 6+ years have been difficult to watch at times, I well remember when our seasons were defined by 3 good quarters of football (and wishing the 4th quarter didn't count) and an entire season's success defined by upsetting UVA and/or WVU. But with what CFB established and Coach Fu is continuing, at some point it'd be nice to actually increase in weight class too. Besides, if you don't dream high, what's the point?


Holy batman

Hokies, Local Soccer, AFC Ajax, Ravens

That Clemson bunch better be on their toes or they'll be relegated!

Amateur superstar and idiot extraordinaire.

Where's UVA in this thing?


15 Straight

19 of the Ws in our W-L record, that's where they are.


We don't love dem Hoos.

QB Eagles is a beast in this game



The Tecmo Super Bowl graphics are sweet. Great idea!

They were a lot of fun to make. I was a geo-bachelor over the fall/winter and spent a bunch of time making the templates. The Oregon & Michigan helmets glitched a little bit when I changed the background from black to blue- I had fixed it but somehow the glitched version looked like something you'd find in an 8-bit game. I changed it back.

Great job. I'm pleasantly surprised. This would be good stuff to show recruits. That said, we must not be satisfied.

Graphics are great


Now THIS is how you do an off-season thread.

You can even do this from a commodore 64 if you really have to.

Do you plan to award any bonus for making the playoffs? When do you think you will start incorporating playoff appearances/records into the data?

Whatever. It was one bad year.


Ideally once 20 seasons of data are available; but it'll probably become it's own category after 10. As for now, playoff games are still incorporated into the "NC Game Wins" and "Bowl Game Wins" categories (if a team advances to the National Championship game, both of the postseason games are counted in the "Bowl Game Wins" category).

I would like to give the OP a leg but it doesn't appear to be available.

-Stan Lee

-Ron Swanson

"11-0, bro"
-Hunter Carpenter (probably)

This is one of the best posts I've ever seen on this site. Bravo, brockman, if I could upvote this post I would. Not sure why I can't, are you staff?

I think it got pinned to the front page, making it like staff.


I came to this site for the gifs, but have kept coming back for quality content like this. Thank you!

so our best record is against a team that is set for relegation (Nebraska, 2-0). Our next best is a tie between Miami (10-10), ND (1-1), and anOSU (1-1). Two of those teams are also at risk of getting the boot in the next few seasons. we gotta pick our game up if we're going to move up the TECMO BOWL Big Eleventy rankings.
