College Gameday Crew Makes Their Picks for Virginia Tech vs Stanford Matchup

Will Virginia Tech beat Stanford today?

Jan 1, 2024; Pasadena, CA, USA; Rece Davis on the ESPN College Gameday set at the 2024 Rose Bowl college football playoff semifinal game at Rose Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

College Gameday is in California this morning, but they are not there for Virginia Tech vs Stanford. They did pick the game however at the end of the show and everyone decided to pick the Hokies, except for Kirk Herbstreit, who rolled with the Cardinal. Because they were in Berkeley, there were of course a lot of boos whenever Stanford was picked.

Here's how you can watch, listen to, and follow along with today's matchup between the Hokies and Stanford.

TV: ACC Network

• Play-by-play: Chris Cotter

• Analyst: Mark Herzlich

• Sideline Reporter: Coley Harvey

• Mobile App: SlingTV, Fubo, ESPN

• Online: ESPN.com, ESPN mobile app, GETACCN.com

Radio: Virginia Tech Sports Network

• Play-by-Play: Bill Roth

• Analyst: Mike Burnop

• Sideline Reporter: Zach Mackey

• In Blacksburg: ESPN Blacksburg (93.1 FM, 97.1 FM, 105.9 FM, 810 AM)

• Across the DMV: Visit HokieSports.com for station affiliate list

• Mobile Apps: Virginia Tech HokieSports, TuneIn, 106.7 The Fan, Audacy

• Online: ESPNBlacksburg.com, hokiesports.com

• Live Stats: HokieSports.com

This has not been the start that the Hokies wanted to the season, but they have a chance to start to get things back on track if they can win on Saturday. While they did lose to Miami last week, the Hokies showed signs of being the team that was getting so much hype at the beginning of the year. They were running the ball very well, getting pressure on the quarterback, and forcing turnovers against one of the nation's best offenses. The question will be if the Hokies can put the ending of last week's game behind them and go to the West Coast and get a win against a Stanford team that has been competitive in every game they have played this year.

Virginia Tech is the favorite coming into this game and Bleacher Report's David Kenyon has the Hokies winning, but by a closer margin than the spread would have you believe. Kenyon is projecting a 31-28 win for the Hokies.

Bill Connelly's SP+ has Virginia winning by nine points on Saturday. SP+ is projecting that Virginia Tech wins by a score of 32-23 and it gives the Hokies a 72% chance to win the game on Saturday.

What exactly is SP+? Here is how Connelly himself describes it:

"As always, these are based on three primary factors: returning production (final rankings for which you can find at the bottom of this piece), recent recruiting and recent history. How good have you been recently? Whom do you have coming back? How good are the players replacing those you don't have coming back? That's loosely what we ask when we're setting expectations for a team; it's also what these projections attempt to do objectively.

As always: SP+ is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date."

What the Hokies have to try and do now is to take the good things they did against Miami and improve upon them while not letting the end-of-the-game decision by the officials linger and affect them when they travel to Stanford next Saturday. This team could still have a nice season, even though the margin for error has shrunk pretty drastically over the first five weeks

There is a reason this team is 2-3 though and part of that is inconsistency. The ending of the Miami could be a galvanizing moment for the team for the rest of the year or they could have it affect them the rest of the season and put a bowl game in jeopardy. That is the No.1 thing to watch with this team going forward the rest of the way.