Tony Elliott and the Virginia Cavaliers took their first loss of the 2026 campaign on Saturday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, falling to West Virginia, 38-27, as the Mountaineers brought the physicality to the ’Hoos the same way UVA had done to NC State and Norfolk State to kick off the season. As much of a surprise as it was to see an old, experienced Cavalier team get pushed around the way it did, it was equally, if not more, surprising to see just how lopsided the crowd was as it all went
down.
Milan Puskar Bank of America Stadium looked and sounded like a West Virginia home game from the moment the tailgate lots opened and stayed that way all night.
WVU has one of the best fan bases in college sports, to the point where I’d liken it to an SEC school in more ways than one. Just remember what that place looked like for a stretch of baseball games last spring. They care… a lot. So, it’s no surprise Mountaineer fans were juiced and traveled well for their football team at the start of a promising second act for head coach Rich Rodriguez. I would be crazy not to tip my hat to them. They brought it. Credit to them.
UVA struggling to bring fans to neutral-site games, or road games in general for that matter, isn’t a new thing by any stretch when it comes to football. But coming off the program’s best season in school history, coupled with two dominant wins to begin this season, you’d expect some progress. If you brought someone who didn’t know any better to Saturday’s game and asked them which fan base was the one taking over the stadium — the one repping the team that won 11 games and nearly went to the College Football Playoff a year ago, or the one that went 4-8 and 6-7 its last two years? I’m pretty sure that person wouldn’t have guessed the latter.
Geographically, it takes just under six hours to get from Morgantown to Bank of America Stadium. It takes just under four and a half hours from Charlottesville. This wasn’t Iowa traveling down to North Carolina. For the stadium to look like 85-90% WVU fans just doesn’t add up based on the location alone.
From a player standpoint, especially for those who transferred in and recently played their first game in front of a jam-packed, electric Scott Stadium, I imagine it had to have been a bit shocking to see an overwhelming (which is still an understatement) majority of WVU fans with how good a start the ’Hoos were off to. You can’t say that the lack of juice inside a stadium didn’t matter, even in a game where you know you aren’t in front of a home crowd. Tony Elliott mentioned weeks ago how much the team fed off the energy in the NC State game and how important the fans were — the ’Hoos starved in that respect Saturday night.
And for years it has made sense. Why travel and spend the money to watch a bad football team? But one would think last season would have injected a little more juice and excitement going into this year, where the 2026 ’Hoos are, despite losing this game, a solid and competitive team that legitimately has a chance to win every game on its schedule this year. Tony Elliott and this group deserve a raucous, all-in fanbase!
It’s a bummer, but if we’re being fully honest, UVA is just a bad match for these kinds of games, whether they’re in Brazil, Nashville, or Charlotte. It’s not worth scheduling them if nobody will show up. Charlotte looked like Morgantown; might as well schedule a home-and-home and play in Morgantown instead. At least UVA would get a home game and wouldn’t lose the chance to host a recruiting weekend in that hypothetical.
Sure, UVA had many, many more fans the last time they played in Charlotte for the ACC title game, on a day when there was also a men’s hoops game in town. But for a team that is looking to build itself into somewhat of a mainstay in the ACC, during a stretch of time when taking hold of a top-five spot in the league is as open as ever, is that type of electricity really only going to show itself when the stakes are at the highest in the history of the program’s existence?
And yes, of course, there’s one big reason these games exist at all. You can’t ignore the dollars.
Money has never been more important in building a winning program and a capable roster on a season-to-season basis than it is today. It obviously matters as much as anything. UVA is set to make at least four million dollars from this year’s game and the 2032 game against the Mountaineers. That’s certainly far from nothing. At some point, though, with the lack of fan support and the effect that plays and will continue to play in the future on the team’s performances in games like these, you have to ask at least the question on the other side of the “take all the money you can and run” vantage point…
How much is the embarrassment of your fanbase not showing up on national TV worth?
