In his presser today, Whit said he wants feedback from the fans, and oh boy do we have some!
Setting aside coaching changes, as I doubt he's going to be receptive to many "Fire Fuente!" or "Fire Corny" emails, perhaps we can channel our frustration into some constructive criticism.
Personally:
1) There *are* far too many walls up around this organization. We can't watch practices, not enough coaches are available for press conferences.
2) Donating to Virginia Tech is way too difficult. The Hokie Club website is confusing and difficult to use.
3) Messaging to alumni is poor. I'm in my 30s and a vast majority of my VT alumni friends do not donate and wouldn't know how to do so if they wanted to
4) Not enough local-VT alumni association support. DC Hokies are active, but I've heard from many other alumni that the associations in their areas are non-existent.
But I'd love to hear more, because I think if we can get some non-fire the coaches feedback we may actually get through...maybe...
Comments
As someone in my 30's who is getting to a point in life (have multiple kids really affects the budget) where I may be able to start donating. The message today was clear that my money is insignificant and does not really matter. Why should I donate to VT aside from the fact that I bleed orange and maroon and will probably do so out of sheer loyalty?
A second question would be -- maybe the administration really believes in Fuente and for good reason. Maybe the administration has very concrete goals that they believe are achievable with Fuente. The reason the fan base is literally about to revolt is that we know almost nothing. We are left to speculation and #sauces that do nothing more than rile up tempers and create infighting in the fan base. Besides making coaches 'more available' what other opportunities can be created for the VT family to actually feel like family again?
Illustrates my message below perfectly.
Right there with you.
Yup. My "insignificant" donation is gone too.
Am I the only person who took Whit's statements about the small donors pulling money as a way to sort of ease the pitchforks? It seemed like his point was "don't worry about the program losing a lot of money because I have faith that most people, and big donors, are going to keep donating." Sort of a way to prevent the vicious cycle of "well big donor A isn't donating, so why should I keep sending in my smaller share?"
I'm sure it could have been worded better but I don't think Whit would straight up thumb his nose at small donors and then explicitly express the need for more small donors later in the same press conference.
So this is sort of in line with my take. Seems like he was thinking "those that give will continue to" and we're not listening to those negative folks that don't.
I mean I get there are plenty of negative folks that do give and what change but it appears that it's just not in the cards right now.
Problem is - like in a newspaper - everyone reads the headlines/articles. No one checks the "corrections" section. And going to Twitter after lobbing a shit-grenade at the crowd isn't going walk it back far enough. As an older alum, I'm fairly sure Twitter isn't The Medium Of Choice.
Twitter is the medium of choice until it isnt
Could somebody embed this tweet in its own thread. The Twitter headline that Whit doesn't want your small donations is wrong. I am sick of seeing it being misconstrued.
Ehh, I'm not so sure after today. Not only did I lose a lot of confidence in Whit, but don't forget that the football Twitter account seems to enjoy antagonizing certain parts of the fanbase (PFF), and the coaches are sub-tweeting all the way up to the regular season.
I'm also in my 30s.
I'll continue donating to other causes I hold dear.
Why bother, its not like anyone in that range would be giving enough money for them to actually care about.
Whit, you said you didn't need my pennies. That's fine. I won't give them. But don't you dare come around here with your hand out when my pennies turn into dollars!!!
Congrats Whit we made the front page of ESPN for football for the first time in a long time.
Politicians have shown you can raise a lot of money with micro donations. Might be a good avenue to increase revenue. Could have micro donors parlay involvement now into benefits a decade or two later.
Sounds like something another orange colored team south of us does. "I pay ten a year".
Only problem is Whit just made it clear that he has no desire to waste time or effort collecting small donations from the whiny peasants.
Hike up to your nosebleeds, watch us give up 600 rushing yards to the 10th best team in the ACC, and shut up!
IPTAY for students was like $300 for my freshman year. Lots of benefits like priority football and bball tix (I didn't use much after the first few weeks once I wanted out of that place). I'm talking micro like $50 max a year then maybe a buy 9 years get one ticket free in year 10? Idk, just spitballing.
Isn't the IPTAY idea to get people donating young and increase with time? Wide nets with the hope of getting a donor fish who's income/wealth/giving ability will blow up one day?
Yeah, that's what I want. But IPTAY actually starts pretty high not at $10 like most people think. We should actually have that really small donation starter ($5 a month or whatever).
IPTAY starts at $40/year for students. Or they can pre-pay $130 for 4 years and get a discount.
Source please. I recall my dad paying $300 for my IPTAY
From the IPTAY site.
It looks like the site has been updated recently because it refers to the office being closed due to Covid-19.
Leg! I'm either misremembering or they've changed it since 2011.
Minimum donation is $60 a year for any benefits. I think Chris was saying to ask for smaller and then every 5-10 years or some other interval you get a ticket to a game. I guess it could be like football ticket layaway.
Football ticket layaway is a great idea. I was going for a buy 10 get your 11th free member vibe but I kinda like the layaway vibe better.
I think it could be something set up in a pledge structure. You tell Hokie club how much you're willing to give per year and then they let you know what you can do. Like if you give $50 per year on year 5 you can get 4 tickets to one of the cheaper/non marquee games. This allows you to start accruing donations and years for future status and let's you bring a family of 4 to a game. It's great for a family that doesn't want to buy season tickets or cannot give enough to get tickets.
regarding points 2 & 3 - I'm curious as to what the difficult part(s) are with the donations. I became a first-time donor this year and I didn't feel that there was anything difficult about the actual donation part. The math that goes behind all the points that accrue over multiple years to factor in to your level - thats a different story.
Maybe they've updated the system but I have heard this complaint again and again from alumni that HC giving is confusing.
2) Donating to Virginia Tech is way too difficult. The Hokie Club website is confusing and difficult to use.
this is a lazy ass cop-out. There are two links on the front page of hokieclub.com that take you directly to how to donate. One of which is literally in the deadcenter of the page.
I was curious, so I checked this. In two clicks I was at the page to enter a donation amount.
There's a ton of dead links.
404 error on Member Benefits page.
Under "Get Involved" the links to "Keep Jumping" and "Why Give" do not work.
I'm no longer a donor due to our series with Liberty, but I'm posting what I have heard from many others that HC is not an easy organization to give to.
Maybe the broswer youre using? the "Make a Gift" link in the center and top right took me directly to the page to enter the dollar amount. Granted, you do have to create an account, but it's up and working. This is likely a trickle down of folks trying only once and never going back.
Donating should be as easy as humanly possible. If it takes me more than one attempt to literally give my money away, then the organization doesn't deserve my free money.
Yes, those links work but in about 30 seconds I found a half dozen that do not.
Can't say I am having the issues you are. I haven't found any dead links from my browser that you speak of. Sorry the links aren't working for you.
So that is something that ANY website trying to generate donations or revenue should be testing out the ass. "It works in my browser X" is never an excuse and should get the developers fired if that is the case.
I'm not saying anything against those of you claiming it works/doesn't work, because you are customers. The business should be testing every possible avenue of access to make sure everything is working. One HTTP 404 or "Oops!" page and you potentially lose a future customer forever.
Also, I understand technical issues arise from time to time, but enough that a community is complaining about the issues is an alarming situation.
The issue is more of how difficult it is do set up the autodraft. One time donations aren't the way to go and I feel like they're easy enough to do online. We need people to set up that auto draft of 10-25 dollars or whatever every month. I had to snail mail a damn form with my routing number and whatnot to the hokieclub. That's the kind of thing that needs to be made easier. I, and I assume lots of other people, don't want to cut a big check at one time, but are perfectly happy sending a little each month.
THIS! If my wife's small non-profit can setup a simple way to accept a re-occurring monthly donation, there is NO reason why a large institution like VT Athletics can't figure this out. Paypal, Apple Pay, Venmo, etc - all these plugins/apps make it so easy!
This is what I did when I started donating a few years ago. It was difficult to figure out, but I did it.
Same. I had to print a form and I remember calling the office twice. They were very nice on the phone though. But it shouldn't have to be like that.
Sending feedback won't matter if he's getting overruled at the top. It sounds like this situation is a complete dumpster fire. So if any of you do send thoughts, you should tag Sands and BOV members too
And I shouldn't have to say this but I will, please be respectful. Firm, but respectful
He wants to hear feedback from the fans? After that?
My feedback is: Don't ever ask me to donate another dime to this program.
We're literally talking about donations. People choose to give you their hard-earned money and you chastise them for not being important enough to complain.
And I don't want to hear his BS Twitter excuses ("we look up the people complaining and most of them give $0"). You take the time to look up every dissatisfied Twitter account or emailer to determine their giving level? I don't believe that for a second.
But you're in luck, Whit! Because I will stop wasting my small donations on this program and I will stop complaining about the predictably poor results. Because it's crystal clear that you don't need my money, and the apathy is setting in and pretty soon I won't care enough to complain.
Whit was reading from his notes when he said that too, for those that think it might've been an off-the-cuff faux pas. Guy planned on saying it.
My follow-up questions to Whit based on presser:
regarding point 2:
well, OK. but what about those of us that do donate (small amount) and want change?
Is this twitter account actually Whit Babcock? I've seen some interactions before this between him and others that makes me question it.
pretty harsh contrast to earlier this year
I'm beginning to question if whits family is tied up in fuentes basement and being held hostage. Someone get him a breathalyzer test asap he seems delusional
Send feedback to Sands instead. He is crushing the heart of the school, losing its identity as a land grant college, and about to torpedo athletics. He just wants to raise enrollment.
Sands sucks.
I hear this kind of stuff a lot about Sands and I'm not sure I follow. Outside of making the school better, what has he done that's so offensive?
The campus in Arlington is going to be a huge boon for the school for example.
Cutting funding to Ag and traditional land grant college programs, the new VT logo that is universally reviled, expansion for expansion's sake, etc. I feel like the university's identity has completely changed compared to when I graduated 10 years ago.
What has he done expliticty to make the school better?
I haven't seen anything about specific cuts to ag, but again the NOVA graduate campus will be huge for attracting talent (and money!) to Virginia Tech, even if it isn't in SWVA.
I think the logo concerns are hugely overblown. I don't like it either but I also don't really care.
Depends what 'better' means - more profitable? better student experience? better job prospects?
When I think about higher education objectively, I know the field is ripe for disruption, and I wonder if the VT that we all know and love has a place in the world in 20, 50, 100 years. Why should a student go to the middle of nowhere for an education, when they can get it online, or in a major metropolitan area where they easily network and/or do a work/study program.
I love Virginia Tech, and I want it to always remain close the values and culture that I experienced there, and for that reason I hate what Sands is doing. But I also understand that the need to evolve in order to stay relevant.
Can you tell me what you mean by this?
Can't wait until Fuente loses to upstart VT-Arlington in 2030.
More likely, if Sands has his way, Virginia Tech's main campus football program, based in NOVA, will beat Fuente's VT-Blacksburg team in 2030.
He wants the cage lot to have Mercedes and Lexus' from daddy's trust fund.
Not my Kia I got when my dad passed, or my roomate's beat up explorer back when we were freshmen in 2004.
And don't get me started on the "we need more foreign students" line. I understand the money part, but it did not not land well.
Is the school better? Pretty sure it's dropped in the rankings under his tenure
It has? If so, I'm not sure anyone seems to notice. VT still has a first rate reputation academically.
I think the transition from "Invent the Future" to "know your place" is pretty symbolic of his tenure
1 Beat the teams that you're supposed to beat.
2 Don't act like there's nothing wrong when I can call the plays from home.
3 Recruit smart players that will run through hell for their coach and teammates.
4 Players who never quit like I saw at home to Duke last year.
5 Players who are pissed and apologize to their teammate when they missed their assignment and cause him to get blown up.
6 Players who are as proud of their school as the alumni.
7 Never have another post game presser like Pitt where the coach shows that he's beat down and doesn't know what to do about it.
8 See number 5 inserting coaches.
9 See number 6 inserting coaches.
Q&A's with 1-2 players and 1 coach each month. Different players and coach each time. As has been stated by many others, if we are to regain trust in our program, we need to know the vision and get that family feel back. More access to the Program is step 1. For goodness sake openly invite former players to every home game. Let them roam the sidelines and be seen by recruits. These two things can get us going in the right direction. Winning is always most important.
This. I live in Leesburg, and the Loudoun Chapter is non-existent. Disclaimer: I'm a former Chapter President that worked to revive a local chapter after realizing there were a lot of alumni in the area, but no engagement. After we moved away, my successor has continued to grow and engage the Hokie community. It's a beautiful thing.
just checked the novahokieclub.org site - the last post was from January, and the last tweet from the account was on Feb 6th??? WTH?!?!?!
Alumni associations are run by local alumni. In Michigan we had an active association until about 2000 when our chapter president was relocated. It died and was revived after the auto industry recovered around 2010. We've been very active since.
Come on man, don't be part of the mob. No criticism! Stay positive! Don't forget to donate!
Tell him a big congratulations on hammering the final nail to the coffin. Tell him angry fans will turn into apathetic ones. Tell him people thinking about donating, whether small or large, won't be after that debacle of a press conference.
Fuente is a failure. A failure that is now costing a once-proud program everything. He is a disease that should have been eradicated today along with his buffoon of an OC. But instead they are allowed to continue to fester.
Can agree - Tidewater is nonexistent
I dont have a solution its just a statement about the 757, I dont know about the peninsula but the southside has maybe 1 event a year...
I dont know how to fix it..............but Aaron Rouse?
Idk if this belongs in this discussion, but schedule at least one bball game a year in DC. Alternating home-and-home series with GMU and Georgetown (not UMD or GW) would cover it or a neutral site game against a good opponent. And market the hell out of it.
2) Donating to Virginia Tech is way too difficult. The Hokie Club website is confusing and difficult to use.
Regarding this, I donate to the Hokie Club and manage the donations for another university for my family business and I just disagree with this. VT uses the exact same platform and it's actually a lot easier to make a donation to the Hokie Club. It's never taken me more than 5 mins to make a donation.
Maybe I just crush it as a computer user but the portal is so intuitive I don't honestly see how you come to the conclusion that it's difficult.
See afreitas112's comment:
Or jmecca's:
So, I'm pretty sure those third party services take a cut, which is probably why athletic departments don't use those pay services. But setting up a monthly recurring donation again took about 5 mins of my time and a credit card
That is how I pay my donations and tickets. Plus I get the miles...
What about autopay? Seems easier to set up autopay for my AT&T bill than for HokieClub donations.
Isn't autopay a marketing strategy for businesses to get paid and get paid promptly? Seems like it should be the same for gathering donations early and often.
It's pretty straight forward to setup a payment schedule if you're trying to budget out the donation and spread it over multiple months. I've got beef with the HokieClub website but the payment side isn't that jacked up.
If you set aside the time, I fully agree, its really not hard. But lets say you're jacked up reading a football article, you decide to give 10 bucks, you hop over to the portal and you're like, welp there's 10 different funds to give to and I don't know which one is gonna help pay for the recruits' strippers. You throw your hands up in the air cause you're a millennial and say "I aint got time for this shit right now Ill figure this out later." Bam, you forget and its another 2 months before you repeat this process. Only by the 5th time do you get enough gumption to click on the Hokie Scholarship Fund and read between the lines of the three sentence paragraph explaining that this is indeed the place to send your money for the strippers.
It really isnt hard, but it is 100% deterring a non-trivial amount of funds. I want to see a Venmo or Paypal tag where I point my phone at the computer, enter a dollar amount and then one-click my money away. I want to be able to impulsively donate with the same efficiency that I blow off my work by opening up the message boards.
With regard to point #2, I just sent an email to HokieClub because my account has been scrubbed. Again. This is at least the second, possibly the third time that I have attempted to check on my status and determined they have no account associated with my email. I don't know what to do at this point, its like they actively don't want me to donate, which tracks given what Whit stated on his presser today since I'm just a small-time donor.
That's really interesting, because I hadn't donated in 5 years, started donating again this year (always been a small time contributor) and my only issue was resetting my password. All my history going back to 2004 was there still. Crazy
It baffles me how everyone's experience is so different. A few years ago it took me 3 hour long calls to get my account setup correctly (it said I had an account, but wouldn't let me reset my password. I don't recall setting up a prior account because I was too poor to donate). After that got worked out, I had to send the auto-draft form twice because the first one "got lost". After that was setup, the monthly $100 donation worked for 3 months before it stopped working. I called twice to get help setting it back up again. Each time I was transferred around until I could no longer stay on the line because of a work meeting. After that I stopped trying. I was prepared to give $1200 a year, but I became frustrated with all the time I wasted. I thought someone would reach out to see if I needed help, but that call/email/text never came. I guess $1200/year donors don't matter either.
This is so frustrating to read. I've experienced the same thing. Apparently I have two accounts but I never created a second account. The first time I tried to buy season tickets, I had to call the ticket office during my purchasing window because they didn't have a record of me ever making a donation since I was apparently trying to buy tickets with the wrong account. So they passed me along to the Hokie Club, who moved the donation to the correct account, and then I had to call the ticket office again to purchase my tickets.
Every time I donate, I have to reset my password and I don't see any prior donations on my account. I'm assuming my donations are going to my "other" account again. I too have tried calling the Hokie Club and gotten nowhere.
A few months ago I tried to participate in the "per touchdown" pledge but I couldn't log onto my account. I called the Hokie Club and nobody picked up, so just I gave up. I'm not willing to put much effort into giving my money away.
I'm never sure which e-mail address I'm supposed to use for any Tech stuff, because they did something to the old vt.edu accounts a few years after I graduated so I got all of those messages forwarded to a gmail account. Now there's a certain set of e-mails that I always get twice because it's sending to both.
Tonight I've been poking around the Hokie Club site to learn about it. I was able to log in, because I gave some money a couple months ago as part of the virtual sell out. But I can't find that listed anywhere. I don't know if that went through the Hokie Club or something else. Meanwhile, I decide to click on the "Driver for 25" link under "Get Involved", because it might be nice to try to understand some of the logos we have painted on our football field. Yet every time I click that link, I get redirected right back to the main page.
I also get 2 of every email they send. Pretty sure I called and had my gmail and .edu accounts merged or something but that didn't stop it. I also updated my mailing address but I still have stuff getting forwarded to me from my old address.
Also, donated $25 to get the commonwealth cup magnet, tried several times and the website never loaded. Almost gave up, then switched browsers and it finally worked. It shouldn't be this hard to take my money.
I have not donated a ton, but maybe they decided to shut down my account because I donated twice during the Duke game last year with a note stating "Fire Fuente". That said, I still received a Key in the mail this year, and then participated in the Virtual Sellout and the Personal Cutout promos they ran this season. So three things that signal to me that I'm still involved post Duke game but no record of my account.
I've only donated once to thank Whit for canning ECU and it took me about 15 minutes after at least a few beers. The site sucks but it's usable.
Implement a "Tech Tax", every purchase at a bookstore or participating restaurant/shop asks you if you want to round your purchase up to the nearest dollar. /s(ish)
Edit: places that ask for donations get a lot more favorable response by me when asking this way. Small amounts of money over time.
That's a really good idea.
Would you like to round up to support the Hokies scholarship fund?
My post presser feedback to Whit:
Point number 2 all the way. I gave up a couple of times when trying to give money initially out of confusion (by that I mean the couple minutes I set aside on my lunch break after reading the boards). But still, if at any point in the process there is confusion on which fund to donate to, the system is not maximized for getting as many donations as possible. The longest part of the process should be entering your credit card number.
My feedback for Whit is that if Sands really wants to be a leader, he will create a University that allows for all different types of people from different socioeconomic status to succeed. VT can't forget where it came from and why its meaningful.
Agreed! Who is going to pay for that! Our multi-billion dollar endowment? Oh wait....
Agree with all of your points, but what's with wanting to watch practices?
Now Scott Satterfield is on Packer and Durham TV show too. I think going to Whit's point about Justin... it would be good to get him an interview on this show like some of the other ACC coaches.
Dear Whit,
We know somewhere in the university there is a secret cloning laboratory. Please make as many clones of Mike Young as possible and make them all know football. Then have a football staff of 20 Mike Youngs.
Sincerely,
Master Syfo-Dyas