America’s Team, aka every American lawyer’s favorite football program
After a painfully familiar nine-month period of existential dread filled with endless buzzwords backed by zero substance, Tech returns for the 2024 campaign with… actually wait. My apologies. I accidentally used the opener for the preview of this year’s uNC defense. Lemme start over:
(ahem) It’s been a while since Tech headed into the season with genuine, justifiable hope. And yes, hope is always a mistake, but whatever. The Jackets are fresh off their first winning season in five years, and while a challenging schedule and a rebuilt defensive front will make the feat tough to repeat, it feels… possible. And either way, this team is shaping up to have a very fun offense across the board. And that simple combination has made this team genuinely fun to follow again.
For extra fun, Tech gets to open up a week early this year, traveling across the pond to Dublin for the first time since their 2016 season-opening win over Boston College. That game was colloquially called “Georgia vs. Boston” by locals who meant well but did not realize what they had done. For even more fun, imagine if they were to do something similar for this year’s game.
This time the Jackets will take on Florida State, the defending ACC champs who also happen to be hell-bent on leaving the conference they just won. Years of saber-rattling have unveiled no viable route for FSU to leave the conference or find a way out of the fact that they willingly signed over their TV rights to the conference along with everyone else in the early 2010’s. But that hasn’t stopped them from complaining or filing lawsuits. Billable hours: forever undefeated.
But hey, so far they’ve only been battling on American soil and in American courtrooms. Maybe the change of scenery will give them new ideas, like… I dunno, could they join the Gaelic Athletic Association? Even with the slight handicap of not being located in an Irish county, their odds of cracking the All-Ireland Gaelic Football tournament might still be higher than their odds of getting into the College Football Playoff.
On the note of Irish sports, if this game plays out like last month’s absolute classic of an All-Ireland hurling final between Clare and Cork, we are in for quite the treat. It doesn’t look like it’ll be quite that compelling on paper, as FSU is favored by 11 or so points, but… between being each team’s first game and being overseas, there’s a lot of room for chaos here.
Also, FSU has turned its back to the rest of the ACC. And if one thing is universally true about Coastal Chaos, it’s that it is never more powerful than when someone decides they’re beyond the reach of its powers.