Willie Byrn: "It's ACC Championship or Bust"

As Mark detailed yesterday, Willie Byrn is focused on helping Virginia Tech return to its winning ways. The longer quote below from Byrn was said during the playing interview portion of ACC Kickoff. It's worth sharing.

Q. You talked about going from good to great, 21 straight years in a bowl game but it's been a few years since it was a big bowl game. Are you guys feeling that drought, the program?

Yeah, we definitely -- it's not to our standard. When you first came to Virginia Tech, all I knew, the year that I red shirted, we won the ACC Championship, went to the Orange Bowl. The second year we lost in the ACC Championship, still got there, only lost to Clemson going into the Sugar Bowl, and we got to the Sugar Bowl. All I knew when I was younger was BCS bowls and big-time stages.

So it's definitely -- I definitely don't like being in this -- we've had just good seasons. We need great seasons.

The 10-win season streak thing that we had going was great, and it was a nice stat, but I never was a big fan of that being the standard of our success because I don't really think about number of wins. I'm thinking about it's ACC Championship or bust, and I think our whole team has that sense of urgency throughout these summer workouts and everything. If one guy takes a play off or anything like that, he's getting yelled at, and it's an urgent yell. It's not a desperate yell, but it's an urgent we don't have time for this, we've got to get rolling because we've got to get back to where we were.

If that's the mentality, all 70 guys are going to have, then we're going to do some good things.

That's an encouraging remark. Tech's schedule provides the opportunity for a 10 win season and trip to Charlotte. If everyone else on the roster is indeed as determined as Byrn, the Hokies might just bump their heads on the ceiling.

Byrn reiterates his remark again during a segment with the ACC Digital Network.