News broke this week that Virginia Tech had decided to cancel the JMU game rather than a different non-conference opponent like VMI to get in compliance with the new nine-game ACC schedule. There was lots of reaction including plenty of disappointment especially from JMU fans and general media along with a smattering of opinions among Tech fans.
While it's a real shame that a quality P4-G6 matchup with some intrigue has been canceled in favor of a rout of a P4-FCS matchup, there's also a financial aspect to this that hasn't been talked about enough.
If anything, the financial error that Virginia Tech has made in canceling the JMU game instead of the VMI game is even worse than the "buzz" aspect of it.
Let's start with the fact that 45% of the ACC's revenue is now unequally shared based on football TV ratings. That total comes from the fact that 60% of the ACC's revenue in total is being unequally shared with 75% of that being based on football TV ratings and the other 25% being based on men's basketball TV ratings.
All of this comes as Virginia Tech is adding $229 million in new funding to the athletic department. A lot of that money is not coming from wealthy donors (though $120 million is expected to come from them), but rather it is coming from student athletic fees at a time when
When you are asking for more money from thousands of people including 18-22 year old students and making clear that VT needs as much money as possible to win, you have a responsibility to help that funding even if it means taking on a tougher and less convenient schedule. To not try to maximize your ACC revenue-sharing potential would be irresponsible.
In canceling the JMU game in favor of VMI, Virginia Tech's football and athletic leadership is choosing to demand students to make sacrifices but not themselves when they easily could and should. That's disappointing at minimum and shameful in reality.
Now some may say that it's a stretch to say that is the case. However, canceling the Week 1 game against VMI opens up VT to play an ACC opponent like SMU. Given the VT debut of James Franklin and the recent success of SMU (a team looking for a Week 1 game with zero non-conference options), that matchup would be a strong candidate for the ACC-dominated Labor Day night spot that has been a ratings boon for schools.
Instead, VT will have a Week 4 conference matchup amidst a very crowded window full of conference matchups across all four Power 4 leagues. There's almost no way that game lands on ABC and the odds of an ESPN matchup aren't good unless it's something like VT at Stanford as a late night game.
Meanwhile, a VT-JMU game in Week 4 could do slightly better metrics than a VT-VMI game, both of which would likely be earlier ACC Network games, though both would have a risk of falling onto streaming only with Week 4 set to be conference-game heavy. Regardless, the difference is minimal between those two games while the difference between a Week 1 ESPN game on Labor Day night and a Week 4 conference game on ESPN is significant.
The data backs this reality that VT has made a financial error cancelling the JMU game instead of the VMI game, costing themselves millions of viewers and likely millions of dollars in TV revenue.
How can I be so confident about that? Well first, let's look at the viewership that Labor Day night games on ESPN have gotten over the past few years.
- 2025: TCU at North Carolina: 6.07 million viewers
- 2024: Boston College at Florida State: 4.44 million viewers
- 2023: Clemson at Duke: 4.39 million viewers
- 2022: Clemson at Georgia Tech: 4.86 million viewers
- 2021: Louisville vs Ole Miss: 3.08 million viewers
- 2019: Notre Dame at Louisville: 5.60 million viewers
- 2018: Virginia Tech at Florida State: 5.58 million viewers.
Only once during this time period did the Labor Day night game dip below 4.3 million viewers. That stood firm even when teams with much smaller football fanbases like Duke and Boston College were involved in the matchup. The overall average for these seven games is 4.86 million viewers, a strong number that would provide a major boost to any ACC football rev-sharing metric.
Now, let's look at the viewership of games on ESPN from Week 4 of the 2025 season.
