Getting to know U(niversities): The University of Virginia

Perhaps normally an ACC team with little to no chance of jumping to the Big 12 wouldn't be that interesting to get to know, but Virginia is the first real opponent that will be gracing the new Amon Carter Stadium (Grambling doesn't count) and they have a long (if not all that glorious) history on the gridiron. With that in mind, make the jump as we take a look at TCU's first FBS home opponent of 2012, the University of Virginia.

Tale of the Tape: University of Virginia Cavaliers

Location: Charlottesville, Virginia

Stadium: Scott Stadium (Named after donor Rector Frederic Scott- Man, that sounds like a guy who would go to Virginia, doesn't it?)

Overall Record: 618-540-48. Wow, that's a whole lot of football games.

Championships: Three conference championships (One Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, two ACC.)

Conference History: Cofounded the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1894, left to cofound the southern conference in 1921, left for independence in 1937 before cofounding the ACC in 1953.

Traditions: Having a whole lot of nicknames for their teams: Cavaliers, Wahoos (hoos for short), V-men,Virginians and Old Dominion. They also have a Wah-hoo-wah chant which sounds a bit too much like TCU's Riff ram bah zoo to me.

Rivals: North Carolina Tar Heels, Maryland Terrapins, Virginia Tech Hokies. One of the perks of being a really old university is that you tend to have played your rivals a whole heap of times. Consequently, Virginia and North Carolina have played the fourth most times in college football (though they'll soon be #2 due to the ending of the Kansas-Mizzou Border War and the Lone Star Showdown having its last day) and as a result of this familiarity (and the whole "Public Ivy" business) there's some decent hate there. There's also hate between Virginia Tech and the Cavaliers, though not so much that UVA didn't go to bat for the Techsters to get them admission into the ACC.

You may remember them from such TCU games as: TCU has only played the Cavaliers twice, once was the beatdown in Charlottesville that was part of the 2009 Frogs squad's scorched earth campaign, while the other was a 20-10 Cavalier win in the 1994 Independence Bowl- galling for me as that was the first TCU bowl game I was old enough to remember (our first since 1984).

What else is "need to know" about the University of Virginia?: They're really, really smart. Despite that, they're not traditionally that good at football, sporting a losing record in all three of their main rivalries (despite only Virginia Tech being considered anything resembling a football power) and HawkeyedFrog will always be kind of bitter about the 1994 Independence bowl.