I meant to write this this morning, but mornings have a way of getting away from me. In general, all increments of time do.

Anyway, a lot of stuff left over that I either that I didn’t get to this week. Without further ado…

1. On myajc.com, I wrote about how Georgia Tech has requested to not have a Thursday night home game next year and also how the ACC athletic directors adopted recommendations regarding scheduling going forward, one of which was to spread out the non-Saturday ESPN games among all the ACC schools. If that’s the case, Tech might have two of those every three years, which is way off the pace from the past.

Tonight’s game will be the 19^th ESPN Thursday night game that Tech has hosted, the most of any team in the country. There’s a lot of pluses to it – namely the national platform – but as many of you know, it’s a pain for fans to get to and coordinating logistics with campus isn’t easy. Tech has been a very willing partner to this point about these games, perhaps realizing the benefits. There was a New York Times article in August about how Louisville’s athletic program can trace its rise (National champions in men's basketball, women's basketball Final Four, Sugar Bowl champions, College World Series in 2012-13) to its willingness to play football on almost any night of the week for ESPN.

But the athletic department is ready to share that burden with the rest of the league. There are nine of those windows that the ACC is obligated to fill annually – the Labor Day game, three Friday games (one of which has to be the day after Thanksgiving) and five Thursday games.  Associate AD Ryan Bamford said that for Tech, hosting a Friday night home game is out of the question out of deference to high school football.

I would suppose that at some point, Tech will be involved in a Friday night away game. The last Friday game Tech played (not counting bowls) was the 1994 Georgia game.

Also, even though the AD’s passed the recommendations from the scheduling sub-committee (Bamford was a part of it), it doesn’t mean that it’ll fly. ESPN pays a few shekels for rights to broadcast ACC games and so they have a good bit of influence over how the schedule is shaped. Something tells me they may not be too keen on being told that they should include home games at Wake Forest or Duke as part of the non-Saturday package. (Though Wake played on a Thursday not so long ago.)

Another recommendation that was passed – all non-conference games should be played either in the first four weeks of the season or the final two weeks. Given that ESPN can’t dictate non-conference scheduling (at least not directly), that has more chance to actually happen. Obviously, there are games on the books that will have to be played out before this can be put into effect, and I’m not sure how or if Notre Dame fits into this equation. The Irish are obligated to play five games against ACC opponents starting in 2014, and I’m guessing they wouldn’t want to play four of those games off the bat and then the fifth the week before it plays USC.

But, I’m guessing, one thing it would address to some degree is teams having byes in the second week of the season, like a certain team based in Atlanta did this year.

Tech’s other requests besides no Thursday night home games for 2014 – a bye week or an away game in the middle two weeks of October to accommodate fall break and scheduling the Clemson game later in the season, which would enable the ticket office to keep the game in packages for longer. Those are not nearly as much of a priority as the no Thursday home game, though.

This isn’t to say that any will be granted. Tech requested to have a bye after the BYU game and didn’t get it, which I think is a little bit of what precipitated all of this.

2. If you haven’t read the story by Norm Wood of the Daily Press about Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster and his preparations for the game and other things, you should. Anyway, in it, he talks about his respect for Paul Johnson and how before games, “I let him know how much of a pain in the tail he is for all of us to prepare for.”

One thing Foster said he did (and you may have known this already) was that after Iowa beat Georgia Tech in the 2010 Orange Bowl, Foster went to see the Iowa coaching staff to get ideas on how to stop the Jackets (which is a common practice among college coaches. Visiting other staffs, that is, not visiting Iowa's in specifc.). One of the big takeaways for Foster was the importance of getting as many athletes and good tacklers near the line of scrimmage as possible. That’s a principal reason why cornerback Kyle Fuller moves to the “whip” linebacker position for this game every year.

Anyway, Johnson feels the same about Foster. I asked him if he looks more at tape of the Hokies’ previous games this season or at last year’s Tech-Virginia Tech game. His response:

“I think you have to do both, because it’s always evolving. They’ve played out of the same type shell every year but always have change-ups. They’ll change up coverages, they’ll change up who’s got what, they’ll change up the way they do things. But Bud does a great job. He’s smart. He can look at what you’re doing and come up with a scheme that makes it hard to do what you like to do. You’ve got to have answers for what they do. That makes it hard for you. And it’s like move-counter move.”

3. Hopefully you read the story I wrote about how the original west stands from Bobby Dodd Stadium are under the current west stands. (Not to plug the story, necessarily, but you can buy a daily pass for 99 cents.)

Anyway, in my reporting, I looked at old Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspapers on microfilm to read about the team and the first game at the field. It was educational and rather entertaining – the news judgment was a little different back then. There was a story on the front page of a 1913 Journal (or possibly 1904) about a 62-year-old man who was tired of being a bachelor and wanted a wife who was a good cook. He said that his wife could be as ugly as a mud fence so long as she could cook.

But anyway, one thing that struck me was that, in some ways, my job hasn’t changed very much. One of the big stories leading up to the first-ever game at Grant Field wasn't about how wonderful the new field would be, but instead the injury status of a star freshman back named Jean Patton. He apparently got injured at the start of the preseason and there were almost daily updates the week of the first game about whether or not he was going to play. It amuses me to think that my predecessors were asking the same fairly banal questions – “Did Patton practice today? Do you think he’ll be able to play Saturday? Who would go in his place?” – of John Heisman, Paul Johnson’s predecessor and merely one of the game’s all-time legends, that I ask of Johnson, probably not so far from where those interviews took place 100 years ago.

Interestingly, Patton was first reported to have a “charley horse” only to have it later revealed that he had a ruptured blood vessel in his knee, which makes me think that perhaps Coach Heisman was about as coy about injuries as Johnson can be. The other interesting thing about this matter is that Patton, who apparently was a huge get for Heisman, never lettered, according to the Tech media guide. I’m going to guess the ruptured blood vessel had something to do with it, although there was one article that said he’d had it before, so I guess it wasn’t necessarily a career-ender. At some point, if I just run out of things to do, I’m going to back to the refernce section at the Decatur library and read what happened to him.

Something else interesting that I found while doing some research in the Georgia Tech archives – my thanks to Jody Thompson, head of the school's archives and records department – a 1905 contract between the athletic department and two concessionaires (A.G. Allen and S.W. Mays) that granted them rights to serve concessions at the Tech “Athletic Park,” meaning the field (the original Flats) that would later become Grant Field. Tech got 20 percent of net receipts.

It goes to show, yet again, that the notion that college football was once innocent and unencumbered by money is totally false. Heisman himself was drawn to Tech in part because he was guaranteed 30 percent of the football and baseball gate (which makes me think that part of the reason for the contract with the concessionaires was to generate more revenue to offset the gate percentage given to Heisman).

4. Also interesting – John W. Grant, the Atlanta philanthropist who gave the $15,000 gift to Tech that paid for the original stands for Grant Field, was actually a Georgia grad. However, his family made several gifts to Tech and he eventually became a member of the Tech board of trustees. The field is named after his son Hugh Inman Grant, who died at the age of 10 after contracting appendicitis.

The Grants, as you might guess, were a pretty wealthy and notable Atlanta family. Hugh Inman Grant’s mother was a part of the Inman family for which Inman Park was named. His father built Atlanta’s second skyscraper, the first steel-frame structure in the Southeast. He had an uncle whose home became what is now the Swan House at the Atlanta History Center. A cousin born after him later married Ivan Allen, the 52^nd mayor of Atlanta (and a Tech grad). The Grants’ home was on West Paces Ferry Road and is now the home of the Cherokee Town and Country Club.

Grant's giving to the stadium was not complete with the original gift in more evidence that some things don't change, in this case, the Tech athletic department's continual fiscal challenges. A real estate company of some sort (the Peters Land Company) leased the northern half of Grant Field to the athletic department and had some sort of purchase agreement that the athletic association was unable to (or didn’t, at any rate) fulfill, so Grant had to come through with another donation ($50,000) to purchase the rest of the field. That was on top of $35,000 to build the stands. I hope, at the least, he got a suite on the 50 out of this.

This is kind of random: I got a tweet this week from a reader who said that his family sold that piece of land to the Peters Land Company.

5. Ted Roof on Domonique Noble, who may well start against the Hokies because of Jamal Golden being ruled out: “I was really proud of him and I told the team, he was a guy that was, being from the state of North Carolina, didn’t play as much as he probably would have liked in the game against Duke, but what he did, instead of sitting around pouting and being one of those guys that sits in the locker room and complains, he had his best practice week since he’s been here – since I’ve been here anyway – and so he was ready when his time came and took advantage of it. Thank goodness he prepared himself.”

6. About the throwback uniforms: They are from the early 1950’s. Judging from what I know about uniforms from that day and have heard, they will have gold pants with stripes down the side. From pictures I’ve seen, it looks like the helmets didn’t have the “GT” on them.

7. Some credit for the 100^th year anniversary celebration that fans will be able to take part in Thursday night goes to former associate athletic director Wayne Hogan. I remember going into his office last fall and he was already making plans for the event. Among other things, he half-jokingly said that it would be great if Tech could somehow bring the actor Hugh Grant to the game (because the field was named after another Hugh Grant). A friend and someone I’ve always enjoyed talking to, Hogan completed his Tech employment over the summer.

8. Frank Beamer is 9-1 in games when his teams have had less than a full week of practice. … DeAndre Smelter has six catches for 100 yards, all of which have gone either for first downs (four) or touchdowns (two). … Tech can tie the school record for most consecutive ACC wins with seven tonight (held by the 2009-10 teams) … The two teams have met 11 times and five of them (including tonight) have been on Thursday and another on a Monday. … Hokies assistant coach Shane Beamer was on the Georgia Tech staff in 2000.

“I always enjoy playing at Georgia Tech. Their fans get into it. Always when you play away, it’s a fun place when the fans are actually excited and ready to go, so I enjoy playing there and I obviously love playing at home in front of our fans. I don’t know if that has a direct connection, but I just enjoy playing there.”  -- Virginia Tech QB Logan Thomas