As for the home team, the Hokies are coming off a 6-7 season that saw them go 4-4 in ACC play — good for ninth in the conference. They lost to Minnesota in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Head coach Brent Pry is entering his fourth season as Virginia Tech's head coach, with the Hokies posting a 16-21 record from 2022-24.

Metallica, long a Bay Area institution, and Virginia Tech, an unassuming school in the rural South. In the minds of college football fans, however, the two are inexorably intertwined. That's because the Hokies have played Metallica's 1991 hit "Enter Sandman" before their team takes the field for every home game since 2000.