Bowl season means more to U.Va. than most other teams

On Thanksgiving weekend, when Virginia got smacked 38-0 by Virginia Tech, only two other bowl-eligible college football teams lost by such a dramatic margin.

U.Va. had particularly dubious company. UCLA lost 50-zip to Southern Cal. And Penn State was a 45-7 loser to Wisconsin. But those programs are in conspicuous disarray. They face regime changes and a hard reconstruction, whether they rebound to win their bowl games.

Virginia and head coach Mike London, though, are not supposed to be scrambling and searching. Staff intact and recruiting improved, the Cavaliers (8-4) are supposed to be the up-and-comers, resurgent in the state and in the ACC.

That's their pitch at least, and they're sticking to it.

That's why the Cavaliers' effort against Auburn (7-5) in Atlanta on New Year's Eve looms as significant as anybody's during this silly bowl season.

The Chick-fil-A Bowl, U.Va.'s first postseason appearance since 2007, is hardly a superfluous exhibition for the Cavaliers. The fact is, a strong showing is critical to what U.Va. says it wants to do and what it wants to be - a physical and consistent presence in the college game.

The Cavs, 1-1/2-point underdogs, don't have to necessarily win. But London's team, which has jumped up and then backslid before in the coach's two seasons, has to look like it belongs.

It has to compete against an SEC-tempered program that, while retooling post-Cam Newton, is still just a year removed from winning the national championship.

A month after that four-turnover debacle at home against the Hokies, the Cavaliers need to show fans, patrons, recruits - and themselves - that they've processed a thing or three about protecting the ball, their quarterback and battling a tough, quick team along the lines.

Because two steps up and one back still leaves you ahead in the big picture. Two up and two splayed pratfalls dumps you back to where you were, at best.

"Everybody has those games in their career, when you know you didn't play as well as you should have," said former Tidewater Player of the Year Perry Jones, a junior running back from Chesapeake's Oscar Smith High.

"It's going to be up to us just to have the mind-set to not have that game again."

That could almost be U.Va.'s rallying cry: Never Again. And Tuesday during U.Va.'s bowl media day in Charlottesville, a handful of players said similar things about licking wounds, stomaching harsh game video, recalibrating fundamentals and steeling themselves from their program's first home shutout defeat in 27 years.

London, too, touted the importance of practicing through the last month, a benefit available to teams, obviously, with a game still left to play.

"The more time you do the drills and the fundamentals, the better you should get, and I think that's been happening," London said.

Still, as London noted on an afternoon set aside for talking, "the proof will be in the pudding on the 31st." That is to say, talk is cheap.

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.com