a de facto Coastal Championship Game: in 2007 and 2011, won by Beamer's Hokies; and in 2019, won by Bronco Mendenhall's Cavaliers. In the wake of the 2022 University of Virginia shooting, resulting in the death of 3 Virginia players, the 2022 edition was cancelled. Commonwealth Cup Trophy In 1996, a trophy was created for the rivalry, known as the Commonwealth Cup. The winning team holds the trophy until the next game, which has been held annually since 1970. Currently, the Virginia Tech Hokies football team holds the cup, having won the 2021 edition of the contest. The trophy is constructed of marble and cherry wood, and is four feet high. It also contains the scores of all of the games in the series. The cup is engraved with the names of the two schools and is mounted atop a trapezoidal base that makes up most of the trophy's length. The front of the base features a stylized map of Virginia with Blacksburg and Charlottesville represented by stars on the map.' History The Virginia–Virginia Tech rivalry has existed since the 1890s, but did not reach pre-eminence until the 1980s. Traditionally, Virginia's primary rival had been the Tar Heels of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a game which became known as the South's Oldest Rivalry. UVA and UNC had the most successful football programs of early Southern college football, as the name indicates: between 1889 and 1902, either Virginia or North Carolina claimed a southern championship in twelve out of fourteen years. VPI's rival was the Virginia Military Institute, with whom they shared a military tradition, geographic proximity, and similar acronyms (VMI and VPI). The Virginia–VPI rivalry did have its heated moments, even early on. Hokie Hunter Carpenter, played nearly two full modern college football careers with Virginia Tech and the University of North Carolina. " The Cavalier Daily accused Carpenter of being paid, as he had played college football already for nearly a decade. Carpenter signed an affidavit that he had not received payment to play against UVA in any of the eight years (two of which he actually played for UNC in the South's Oldest Rivalry). After the VPI victory, Carpenter threatened to sue the UVA student paper for libel and UVA refused to play VPI again for eighteen years after, until 1923. Carpenter moved to Middletown, New York and never returned to the Commonwealth.