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When Virginia Tech takes the field for Wednesday’s New Era Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, they’ll look a bit like the home team.
The football team revealed its uniforms on Twitter the night before the game, and the helmets include the Yankees’ white interlocking “NY” outlined in Hokies orange on the maroon headgear.
The gesture is similar to caps the Virginia Tech baseball team wore in March 2008, when the Yankees visited the Blacksburg campus for an exhibition game. Following a mass shooting on the campus on April 16, 2007, the team made a $1 million contribution to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund.
Also on Tuesday night, the Empire State Building glowed in the colors of Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland as the respective clubs made final preparations for the game, which is scheduled to kick off at 2:15 p.m. ET. New Yorkers could spot Virginia Tech’s orange and maroon alongside Maryland’s red and gold atop the iconic 102-story skyscraper.
“I can’t say enough of how we’ve been treated,” said Virginia Tech interim head coach J.C. Price. “The Yankees and everyone have been gracious hosts. This has been one of the best-run bowls I’ve been to in my 20 years as a player and as a coach.”
“It’s been a privilege to be a part of this experience this week,” said Maryland head coach Michael Locksley. “Thanks to all that have been involved putting this thing together. I’ve been to a lot of bowl games in my career, and I can tell you, this one has been put together first-class.”
As part of this week’s festivities, members of both teams took in the sights from the top of One World Observatory and experienced the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Virginia Tech visited on Sunday, and Maryland appeared on Monday.
“It was definitely the most impactful part of our visit,” Price said. “To watch our players go through that museum, and the time and detail those guys took to read those things, I think we probably could have spent eight hours there. That was very moving. It will probably be something I’ll keep near and dear to my heart forever.”
Virginia Tech is making its 34th all-time bowl appearance (13-20) and first in the Pinstripe Bowl. Continuing a remarkable run of sustained success, Virginia Tech has been bowl-eligible for 29 consecutive seasons (since 1993), the longest streak in the nation.
“In a lot of ways, this is a preview for next year’s football team,” Price said. “There’s going to be a lot of young guys. The receivers have gotten a lot of the attention, but there’s going to be young guys running down kickoffs. There’s going to be more young guys on special teams.”
Maryland is set to play in its first bowl game under Locksley. Dating back to 2002, the Terrapins are 5-4 in bowl games.
The 28th bowl appearance in program history will be the Terrapins’ first at the Pinstripe Bowl, as they become the seventh different Big Ten team (in seven games of the bowl’s partnership with the conference) to play in the game.
“The big thing this time of year for us is about developing your team fundamentally,” Locksley said. “We see this as the start of our ’22 season, not the finish of our ’21. So we’ll try to do a really great job of developing some of the younger players in our program that haven’t had a chance to play. They’ll get opportunities tomorrow.”
The inaugural Pinstripe Bowl was held in 2010, and the winner of the contest receives the George M. Steinbrenner Trophy. The game’s most valuable player will be awarded the David C. Koch MVP Trophy.