I always liked to laugh at the differences between Boston College and Virginia Tech.
Only in college football, I said, could a private Jesuit university located in the heart of a major metropolitan city compete on an equal playing field with a public land-grant institution situated in the mountains near the West Virginia border. Students at BC, I laughed, easily travel through the city by utilizing a public transit system that's simultaneously breaking down on a daily basis, and anyone heading to Virginia Tech required an hour's drive from Roanoke along an east-west highway linking interstates.
I loved seeing Boston's skyline from my seats at Alumni Stadium, and I remember having conversations about how Blacksburg's 40,000 residents had a modest downtown area devoid of our skyscrapers.