The entirety of my sports fandom is steeped in one tried and true tradition — my favorite teams don’t win championships.

Whether it’s the Baltimore Orioles, the Washington Redskins or the Detroit Pistons, my teams simply don’t win titles. The Orioles’ last title came in 1983, the Redskins in 1991 and the Pistons in 2004, before I began rooting for the big red and blue.

It’s the same issue with Virginia Tech. The Hokies have never won a team national championship, and the one time they came close I had yet to start grade school.

The Virginia Tech women’s basketball program carries a unique burden as they advance through the NCAA Tournament. They have the chance to lift the blanket of misery that I, and many others, have repeatedly found in the sports realm.

Let’s be honest with ourselves — Virginia Tech is a long way from the Final Four, let alone a championship game. Four-seed Tennessee might be the worst team remaining on the Hokies’ way to  Dallas, and a trip to the Lone Star State won’t be any easier. All this is why I’m trying not to get out over my skis, but it’s becoming harder and harder to not get my hopes up.

Don’t take this for granted. You are currently witnessing the Gilded Age of Virginia Tech basketball.

For the second time in two seasons, a Virginia Tech basketball team has earned the right to be called ACC Champions. Kenny Brooks and the women’s team ran the table in Greensboro this week, culminating in a 75-67 win over former ACC powerhouse Louisville.

Sunday’s win featured all of what makes this year’s women’s team elite. Georgia Amoore dropped 25 points, despite shooting just 6-18 from the field. ACC Player of the Year Elizabeth Kitley added another 20 points, while the Hokies’ collectively held the Cardinals to just 37.3 percent shooting.

The Hokies are flirting with a 1-seed in the coming NCAA Tournament, something this school has never experienced before.

But if you’ve been paying attention, there have been a lot of things happening in Blacksburg since 2015 that we haven't seen very often.

Brad Glenn (left), Andrew Breiner (center) and Josh Gattis

So much for continuity in Virginia Tech’s football coaching staff.

With Scott Satterfield moving from Louisville to Cincinnati and in need of a play-caller, he decided to poach old friend Brad Glenn from the Hokies – a man he coached alongside at Appalachian State from 2005-08.

Glenn spent 2022 as Tech’s passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach. While on the surface that doesn’t seem like a substantial loss for an offense that had minimal success through the air, Glenn is the only member of Tech’s on-field staff with any experience coaching quarterbacks.

That’s a problem, especially when dealing with such an important position. So the Hokies will have to dive back into the well for another QB guru.

Should we be scared that they’ll fall into hiring someone they know?

With one year under his belt, Brent Pry enters his second season as the head whistle in Blacksburg with plenty of pressure on his shoulders.

Eight losses and a bowl-less December later, there’s no doubt that the honeymoon period is over for Pry and his staff. Virginia Tech needs to generate some positive results in 2023, and that process began this winter.

Pry made a flurry of roster moves to try and fill holes on his roster that were already there, plus some extras that showed up after the season. He spent much of his time on one position in particular, but let’s take a holistic approach and examine each of the position groups on offense.

I swear that I’ve been here before. In fact, I know I have.

On Jan. 24 of last year, I penned a column booking the unofficial end of Virginia Tech’s basketball season. Virginia Tech had just lost to ACC doormat Boston College in the sleepy confines of Chestnut Hill and at 10-8 overall with just two ACC wins, the Hokies were dead in the water.

We know how that turned out.

But now that Virginia Tech is in a similar situation, do I feel differently about the Hokies’ ability to get this thing turned around?

Sadly, I do not.

The Hokies’ maddening defeat to Boston College — why is it always these guys? — on Wednesday night came at a crushing time. Fresh off an upset win over the top-10 Cavaliers, Virginia Tech should’ve rolled back into Cassell Coliseum and blown the doors off a Golden Eagles’ team that is still below .500 on the season.

Instead, Virginia Tech shot just 41.9 percent from the floor, 31.3 percent from behind the arc and missed seven free throws. Tech’s defense was just as subpar, as Boston College shot nearly 50 percent from the floor and made half of their three-pointers.

As bad of a football season as Virginia Tech had in 2022, it at least ended with a victory.

Harken back to a few weeks ago when the Hokies upset future Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze and the Liberty Flames in Lynchburg. The upset wasn’t historic, but it at least felt meaningful at the time.

With the Commonwealth Clash canceled and no bowl game to look forward to, however, Tech has moved on from 2022 already. Players have entered the portal and are pursuing other opportunities while the Hokies eagerly look for young men to take their spots.

It’s almost like the win didn’t matter, which is a shame.

But before burying this dreadful season in a shallow, unmarked grave in the swamps of Back Bay, I think it’s appropriate to take a step back and take inventory of Virginia Tech’s 2022 season with an eye toward the future.

On a morning when I thought we’d be getting ready to watch Virginia and Virginia Tech play football, I find myself instead thinking of a time back in 2007.

It was a day when the television trucks had finally left Blacksburg after round-the-clock coverage of the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus. The dead had been buried. The memorials had been planned. The who, what, when and where’s of the situation had been fleshed out.

No one, however, ever answered the why. And because of that, as people were saying it’s time to move on and start healing, many of us didn’t.

Those next couple of months, I recall, is when it really got tough. The lives of both young and old were gone, including the shooter. The warning signs that went unheeded were identified. Each day bought more information, but all the data did was add to the grief and recognition that this was a senseless tragedy that could have possibly been averted.

I found myself postponing chances on several occasions to go back to the campus after that. Visiting Virginia Tech for decades had been like going to visit an old friend. The times were always fun, the memories were warm, and it reminded me of younger days when you could have fun in the safety of the cocoon of a college campus, far, far away from the pressures of going to work, paying a mortgage and being an adult.

Virginia Tech’s loss to the Yellow Jackets last Saturday was emotional for me.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one.

As I lamented another deflating defeat, I stayed in the stands and tried to come to terms with what just happened. Virginia Tech had blown another two-score lead and for the second consecutive week, the Hokies lost by a single point.

I was surprisingly shocked. I never thought Virginia Tech would fall to 2-7 in my lifetime.

Also seemingly stunned was sixth-year defensive end TyJuan Garbutt. He sat on the ground on the sideline after the game, watching Georgia Tech celebrate a come-from-behind win. Garbutt looked exhausted in every possible way — physically, mentally and emotionally. People on the sideline did their best to lift him up, but Garbutt had reached the end of his rope.

Fourth-year player Josh Fuga wasn’t far from Garbutt, except Fuga’s emotions ranged from angry to inconsolable. Multiple people tended to Fuga, but the emotions flowed nonetheless.

If it’s possible to find both hope and discouragement in the same football game, I managed to do so watching Virginia Tech’s 22-21 loss to NC State last night.

In a season where it now seems like half of Hokie fans (mostly the younger ones) want to fire new coach Brent Pry, and the other half (the ones referred to in posts that start out with “OK, Boomer”) want to give him 7 years to turn things around, I’ve been looking for the one sign you tend to see when a new leader is about to get a turnaround going.

Which in the third quarter, I thought I saw.

That sign is one of a team believing in its leader, and that leader in turn believing in its team. It’s an overused expression coaches use all the time, and the sign I’m talking about is something you don’t see in media interviews and other off-the field activities, because to be honest, talk is cheap.

You instead see it in the play calling. Particularly as it relates to the offense.

Following Virginia Tech’s 22-21 defeat in Raleigh Thursday night, I packed up my car after a poor night of league bowling and set up Spotify to console me on my half-hour drive home.

In eerie fashion, Spotify began playing “Something Has to Change” by The Japanese House.

Who knew Spotify could be so aware of my emotional state?

Much like they have for most of the season, the Hokies found a new and yet equally heartbreaking way to lose. Thursday’s loss was the Hokies’ fifth in a row, all but locking Virginia Tech out of a bowl game for the second time in three seasons.

Virginia Tech may have played three uninspiring quarters of football against Miami last Saturday, but they roared back in a last ditch effort in the final period and in the process, gave Hokie fans some hope.

What about that fourth quarter breeds optimism that Tech’s current run of four straight losses will come to an end sooner rather than later? Allow me to dive a little deeper and separate the wheat from the chaff.