#30 Virginia Tech $56.2 million (-2)
A disappointing season in which Justin Fuente lost his starting quarterback in the 3rd game ended 6-7. The Hokies still made $26.1M in profit.
https://www.pennlive.com/pennstatefootball/2020/03/which-are-richest-and...
[Mod Edit: Link to actual source and provide relevant excerpt.]
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Teams we lost to in 2020
Teams we lost to in 2019
Teams we lost to in 2018
But if you listen to the administration and some of the fanbase, it's a money issue...
I don't disagree that money is used as a crutch for lack of wins but this is contextually misleading imo. There are two mutually exclusive truths about money in college football:
1) Money wins championships. eg. Clemson
2) Money doesn't prevent losses. eg. Texas
Thus: VT has enough money to be a winning program but is not guaranteed. VT does not have enough money to win championships.
So in context to your point, is whether we are talking about money to be a winning program or money to be a championship program. I think that's where the conflicting opinions come into play.
you have just highlighted the single most infuriating thing about college football for me. We could be rollin' (not sorry) in cash, and it wouldn't mean a single thing. It might mean the ceiling is raised a bit. But Texas and Tennessee show us that it doesn't raise the floor along with it.
I don't disagree with anything you just said, I think your second point just highlights my point. In that some people believe that we are losing games because we dont have the resources/money. When in reality, as you show, having money does not gaurantee 9-10 wins/season. What I was implying is that money isnt our issue, it's something else.
Now, what that 'something else' is is a different argument.
coaching, duh
1) Money wins championships. eg. Clemson
Clemson is ranked 3 spots ahead of us with about 5 mil more gross revenue. I think the main takeaway is that we have the money - we haven't been maximizing the potential of that money.
Very interesting. I would like to get my hands on the actual reports to see the football budget relative to our total athletics spending. And also the value of capital assets (facilities) won't show up on an income statement and certainly represent significant program value.
But still, no matter how you slice it, I don't think things aren't as perilous as many, including the administration, want us to believe. We are only slightly behind Clemson in our total budget. This tells me either 1) we aren't allocating enough to the football program and have over invested in other sports, or 2) we are significantly underperforming in football relative to our level of spending.
I think both are true.
I made a thread a day ago with numbers. Its very hard to compare budgets because the numbers don't match up well.
I think this is more an accounting exercise than it is an actual comparison between teams. One - I doubt UVA spent the exact same down to the dollar in football and basketball that year. Two - the difference between us and West Virginia in last, is the same as #16 Iowa and us. Iowa at $80m is barely half of Texas, which hasn't exactly performed well recently.
Sure I think the money issues are overstated, but I think you'd need to take a more complete look at the budgets to see where money can be better spent.
Edit: Where are you guys getting budget figures from? All I got from this article was a blurb about UVA. Is there a de facto annual report or budget for Virginia Tech athletics - because I'm dubious of some of these spending claims between VT and Clemson. Does a school's budget include boosters, and other supplemental sources?
VT had a budget of 33.5 mil in 2019, Clemson 38 mil. Clemson had ~8 mil more in coaches salaries to pay. So what are we doing with out money?
EDIT: VT spends 33.5 million on the yearly football operating budget. This is only spent on the football team. This covers the costs to play football minus scholarships. This doesn't cover other sports. This doesn't cover facility upgrades.
We have a $90 million athletic department budget. VT had more than 2 million in profit in 2019. Football brought in $50+ million in revenue.
So VT minus coaching salaries spends $3+ million more than Clemson minus coaching salaries. So what are we spending this on?
Wasting it all on other sports
Define waste? Is football the only college athletic sport you think Tech should sponsor? Personally I'm glad to see hundreds of other tech student athletes get a shot especially females which is a great chance to show my 4 girls what they can do with hard work.
Honestly yes, I would support football, men's basketball, baseball, and wrestling, and then only enough women's sports to cover those so women's basketball, volleyball, softball, and a wildcard, women's golf maybe, idc. It's callous, but I don't see why scholarship university sports exist other than for the enjoyment of alumni. Club and intramural exist for other student athlete enrichment.
Well my kids and I have seen softball, women's golf and track and field in person outside of Blacksburg more than my kids have seen football in Blacksburg so seems like it's working how it should.
What does what you and your kids do have to do with what the school should be funding? Not trying to be mean, but I don't think every sport or every niche interest deserves to be funded. I assume you can agree the line needs to be drawn somewhere, right? Then how would you decide where to draw the line, and where would you emphasize spending the budget?
Your criteria for having the sports. The sports I listed being enjoyment to my and many other families.
Fair point, but they need to be a certain level of popular. Every team we could throw together can't be funded, otherwise we would have a lacrosse team.
We have a women's one but men's isn't a wide spread enough sport to field one and be competitive.
I think we both know that's not true. Virginia is one of like 4 states that cares about lacrosse and could field a team of competitive players if it wanted to.
now I'm just curious what the other 3 states are. Maryland? New Jersey? Who else?
New York...Long Island and upstate. (Syracuse, Hobart, SUNY, Albany...)
Massachusetts
PA too
You had me until you said niche...college wrestling (71 d1 schools and shrinking) qualifies as niche to me. I enjoy watching our wrestling program but I don't think it could be called anything other than a niche.
Not the only, but I would prefer the vast majority to go to football. Also, I would like to eliminate 6 scholarship sports programs like Clemson does. We are at 22, they are at 16.
I could care less if we are good at men's/women's soccer, softball, etc
Won't downvote, but we should find a way to support all 22 sports, if not more. We aren't Clemson and shouldn't be chasing them.
No we shouldn't
Clemson isn't winning football games because they only have 16 sport programs. They also don't have an aerospace engineering program, it doesn't mean we should cut that.
Education, engineering in particular, is literally why the school exists. Men's soccer is not. That's really not a comparison
Sorry but neither is football if you want to get right down to it.
Football at least pays for itself and then some
I'm not sure a few anecdotes of people enjoying a sport is enough to justify funding them for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year. By that criteria you can justify funding pretty much anything, which is clearly unrealistic.
It really comes down to why a university gives scholarships for any athletics in the first place. An argument can be made (and I've met many who hold the opinion) that universities should concentrate on academics and not fund athletics at all, with students free to participate in club sports with only facilities provided by the school.
Schools started funding athletics & providing athletic scholarships because they saw it as a way to bring back donors, make money and spread their 'brand' to get new students. Athletic departments can see growth creep just like any other organization, and some sports that used to be viable may no longer be wise investments.
I thus see an easy criteria for keeping programs: simply look at which ones are either profitable or bring in enough crowds & alumni to justify their existence. Cheaper programs don't need as large of crowds as expensive ones (tennis v football for example), but if they don't get the spectators to justify, turn it into a club sport. If a club sport regains viewership to justify scholarships, go ahead and provide them.
Turning a team into a club sport does not prevent you from watching them- I've watched the rugby team a few times, and they're club. It does not prevent you from having a team to support or show your kids. You could even make the argument that club sports actually provide more opportunities for average students on campus to participate, as there are fewer roster limitations. Supporting a sport as club rather than with scholarships is simply a business decision based on whether enough people care to attend, view it, or generally just support the sport. The university is not an athletic charity.
If you feel differently, I'd like to hear why you think taking money away from sports teams a large number of people enjoy and giving that money to programs that very few people care about is a good investment.
This is a better written version of what I was trying to express
Athletics isn't a charity? That's a shock because they seem to need donations at even the best earning schools to stay afloat. You only want sports that bring in fans and revenue so football at 90% of FBS schools and basketball at a handful of FBS and power basketball conferences. Just look how many even top schools rely on student fees to boost the budgets. I don't want to watch a minor league NFL I want to watch student athletes compete in as many sports as can be supported.
No, you didn't read what I wrote. The university isn't a sports charity. I don't only want sports that being in revenue. I only want sports that either bring in revenue, OR have a large enough attendance/viewership to actually have an impact on donations, school engagement and bringing people in. A sport with a small following might as well just be a club sport
You might want to watch students play underwater basketball or whatever, but if not one else really cares, why should the school provide a scholarship for that sport. It's not about what you personally want, get over that. This isn't your household, it's a multi-million dollar institution
Since 2016 scholarships have been paid fully by donations so the school isn't funding them. Again college sports aren't supposed to minor league teams but fully part of the student body and overall college experience. Using your example should VCU have folded its basketball program in the early 90's when 400 people were showing up to the Richmond Colosseum to see them play?
Great, so if all scholarships are covered by donations and those donations would drop if we cut any athletic program, then keep them. If dropping scholarships for cross country or tennis wouldn't affect donations or people coming to blacksburg regularly, then why have them? (Just two random examples, no idea of attendance).
For your VCU example, did people donate to cover scholarships despite attendence? Was that their only sport to spread their brand? More importantly, if they got revenue from student charges, was it right to have those students who clearly didn't care about the program pay for it?
There's a great article in The Athletic about how non-revenue sports cost the athletic department, but benefit the university. For example, a men's tennis team allows 4.5 scholarships, but typically has 11-15 players. While that team might cost the athletic dept $750k/year (I'm making this number up) in salaries, travel, etc, that team brings the university 6.5-11.5 paying students each year, which is about $1.1M to >$3M/year (assuming the players are out of state).
So what do you here? You can add that $750k into the football budget and likely decrease university revenue by >$1M in tuition, or you can decrease funding to football but keep Sands happy?
"Clever" partial quote to change meanings.
Again, you only read what you wanted in my response. Not what I said. I'm not saying only keep revenue sports. But those non revenue sports better be bringing in enough people to justify scholarships
I understand your point, but I wager all men's sports bring revenue to the university at large. Due to Title IX, there are way more women getting scholarships in non-revenue sports. I didn't intend to cherry pick your comment; I'm just saying that I don't think it's as black and white as 'These three teams don't generate revenue, let's cut them and route that money to football or basketball'
Ah, understood. And yeah, should've clarified I wasn't suggesting we abandon meeting regulations
We could also just admit a few more non-student athletes per year to cover that loss and save money from keeping a deadweight non-rev program afloat. I feel like we are grasping at straws trying to justify the impact of non-rev sports.
I'm not trying to justify Olympic sports, and personally I'd prefer to divest from other sports in order to focus on Football. I'm just saying that the university benefits from them, thus they may have a vested interest in keeping those teams around. I'd share the article about it from The Athletic, but payway rules...
CG's really prevent a true answer to this. But simply, it's not just "football deserves all money and forget everyone else."
I didn't say football and revenue only sports. If people like softball enough to come to the games or donate because of it, keep it. If not, make it club.
And if your reason for keeping all sports is so controversial that you can't even post about it without breaking CGs, then I'm not sure why you think the university as a whole should seriously consider that reason
Controversial? No. But the reality is it slides into a political discussion.
The university as a whole (and many many others) not only consider their reason not controversial, but actually practice it. See: we have 22 varsity sports.
You're either reading the CGs in a very broad and limiting way, or believe the university should be taking political stances.
As for why we and other schools have the number of sports they do, it's because they are (or were) revenue generating, command moderate levers of viewership and/or donations, or are title 9. If they don't meet one of those requirements, then I'm not sure why we shouldn't make them club sports
I wrote "...slides into a political discussion"
Doesn't read "should be taking political stances."
Not everything a basic decision. And nothing state here, within or outside of the CG's, is going to change your mind. You've stated your side. I've said I don't agree.
Fair
For my own curiosity, I'm just trying to think of what justification can't even be mentioned, but isn't controversial
Maybe I should quote you for this one...you are only reading what you want.
slides, turns, evolves, grows into a political discussion. Doesn't start that way, nor is overtly controversial.
Nope, exactly what I said. See below
Assuming you mean something like title 9, it's clearly within CG to list as a reason, especially as it's just following the law. If people for some reason want to discuss the merits of that, that would be against CG.
No, we spent 33.5 million on football, not other sports.. Yet Clemson can spend only 5 million more yet have 8 million more in on field coaching. So basically they are doing all other football operations for 3 million less that VT. What is VT football spending its money on?
College sports are opportunities for young adults to learn life lessons in safe and enriching environment. The purpose of a University is to provide facilities for teaching and student exploration. Non-revenue sports like swimming, track, and tennis are part of the student experience. Does a 3rd string quarterback who never leads the team to victory value his experience on the team and learn just as much about commitment and teamwork as the player drafted by the NFL in the third round?
I would argue that the slowest member of the "B" relay on the track team or swimming team benefits from his or her experience just as much as the two football players referenced above.
I would argue that the mission of college sports is to provide those experiences for all student-athletes.
As alumni, we certainly enjoy cheering for our revenue teams in a packed stadium or coliseum - but is this the ultimate mission of college athletics? Some alumni "super-fans" may believe this to be true. However, I feel that the mission of a quality college athletics program extends beyond the football field and basketball court.
Spending funds on a diverse portfolio of non-revenue sports is not a waste.
I lean towards agreeing with you, but declaring what the mission of college athletics should be is more of an opinion than a fact. If the mission is winning championships at all cost, then absolutely spending money on other sports is a waste. If the mission is providing as many opportunities for college athletes as possible, then it isn't a waste.
All of this is begging to see an athletic department mission statement. Without that, all we have is speculation.
"Virginia Tech Athletics is committed to excellence, both academically and athletically, and to the personal development of our student-athletes. In the spirit of Ut Prosim, we stand together to serve and represent our university and community with integrity and respect."
There is a mission statement. Too bad it's buried pretty deep on the Hokie Sports website - you've got to go to the Varsity Women's Golf page to find the press release from 2015.
https://hokiesports.com/news/2015/2/13/20150213aaa_11745
Are you saying they can't learn life lessons playing intramural, club, or even pick up? Why do they need to be scholarship? Why does Tech need to hire professional coaches and pay for their travel?
Well, it is possible that without scholarship assistance, they wouldn't be able to go to school at all, or would have to attend a school that didn't have the athletic activities the want to pursue. So, that is one possible reason.
They would be replaced by someone else who would have a new opportunity
Give it a rest, dude. We get it...you don't like women's sports and less popular men's sports. The majority of America disagrees with you since sports outside of football and basketball have been funded for decades and will continue to be funded for the foreseeable future unless major laws change.
You think that the majority of Americans disagree with me? Lol.
You're mixing scholarship monies and opportunities, and making it a way-too-simple decision. Without those sports opportunities, those students may or may not still attend VT. If they do not, that doesn't simply mean that another slot is open and must be filled, as if there is a set number of students slots. Even if that is the case, that doesn't mean that the new student will be receiving the same about of scholarship money to make it possible, or lucrative, or able to attend VT. Why? Because those scholarship funds are from two completely separate pots of money. It's not a binary equation. So it's not about responding with "majority disagrees with you...LOL." There's more to it.
So they get a loan like the other 30,000 students
Intramural, club and pick-up sports are recreational activities. A club team may be guided by a volunteer student coach with little training and scarce resources. A club team may practice three or four times a week for 90 minutes...and might sell frozen cookie dough to raise funds.
Very different experience than competing on a Varsity team led by a professional coach, practicing 6 days a week, often with both morning and afternoon workouts. Student athletes are held to a high standard of training and compete at high levels with other college teams. Access to the big time weight room and athletic trainers...
Apples and Oranges dude.
The VT athletics department does have a mission statement. As of 2015 it is:
"Virginia Tech Athletics is committed to excellence, both academically and athletically, and to the personal development of our student-athletes. In the spirit of Ut Prosim, we stand together to serve and represent our university and community with integrity and respect."
I'm not understanding how a generic mission statement is useful in determining how many varsity sports VT should have. We can agree that there is some limiting principle for how many varsity sports VT can maintain. The mission statement doesn't change the fact that a line must be drawn somewhere. The "we just care about people more" argument for why VT should fund the maximum amount of non-revenue producing sports or sports that lack popularity is tiring. If we had a massive donor base of small donors then it would be easier to maintain more sports in spite of a deteriorating football program because small donors are low maintenance and give without any demands. As far as I know we don't have that luxury. We rely on upper income donors to continually support the athletic department. If those donors begin to feel like the athletic department is failing as a steward of their donation by spending that money on a pickle ball team, they might reconsider donating.
Have they? We still have 22 sports funded, so no, they haven't.
Do you think they will simply continue to give the same amount if we were to cut half the sports from the varsity ledger? There would be a smaller budget with fewer sports, so I'd imagine they would give less, because less money is needed. But there's this broad brush assumption we can maintain the donation level, but cut spending.
I think we are about to find out. I really think a lot of fans are just now accepting that this might be the new normal. It was easy to dismiss the fall off at the end of the Beamer era as Frank being a little behind the times but also a couple bad breaks for what were still relatively good and competitive teams. I think the success of 2016-2017 further reinforced the notion that 2012-2015 was going to be the outlier for VT football. I think the recruiting failures over the past two years along with the poor performance has fans waking up to reality. I think we have had strong donor support throughout the last decade because it wasn't unreasonable for donors to believe we were close to breaking back through. It is getting harder and harder to believe that we will get back to where we were and there are now infinitely more competing causes for our disposable income.
As this new reality sets in, I don't think it is a safe assumption that all material donors will continue to give material donations indefinitely.
Do you think that our donor base has been the driving force behind Whit increasing the emphasis on Olympic sports or that was an internally generated goal?
Do you really believe that if we eliminated golf, lacrosse, and cross country that our donor base would reduce their donations?
Which one is it? More options meaning people will give less money because other options are available to donate to, or we eliminate sports, have a smaller budget, but people sill give at the same rate even though not as much is needed?
To answer the question(s), I don't think donors will continue to give at the same rate if the budget is reduced.
It isn't an either or question. People have a limited amount of disposable income. There are more things competing for that disposable income every year. We need to feel that the money we gave away was used efficiently. If donors feel that VT isn't using their money wisely they may reduce the portion that is given to VT in favor of other causes they feel are being better stewards.
The overall budget doesn't have to be reduced because sports are eliminated. Rather money is reallocated back to other sports.
I disagree that donors will give less because periphery sports are eliminated.
Ok, well, I have the same opinion that donors will feel that VT isn't using their money wisely by cutting sports, and may reduce their donation level due to that.
Perhaps it would be revenue neutral. I could see donors potentially giving more if VT was a wiser steward of the funds, allocating more to football and getting rid of the cornhole and dodgeball teams. I doubt it moves the donor needle significantly in either direction.
We have been seeing a lot of sport specific donors in recent years. From families whose kids are current players to former players to fans of sports like baseball and wrestling. What would keep those people donating?
Nothing but since their donation is not going towards football I don't think the loss would impact the issue at hand.
For what it is worth I really appreciate and admire your fandom and support for all the programs. I'm thrilled your family and daughters have had such positive experiences cheering on the lady Hokies. I don't think that cutting sports in isolation turns football around. I think most of us are coming at this from the perspective of Brian's last article on being small potatoes. Trying to do more with less is not a viable long term strategy for our football program. A bigger better recruiting staff is needed for whoever is running the program. If we don't turn football around soon, these other sports will be cut regardless.
Referring to women's athletic teams as "lady Hokies" is a pretty outdated and offensive practice. I'm guessing you didn't know this, but I wanted to pass along helpful information.
The VT Women's Basketball team literally refer to themselves as the Lady Hokies. I am a season ticket holder for Women's basketball.
That surprises me and the most recent reference to "Lady" Hokies on HokieSports.com is from 2010 and the website was referring to the swim team. Either way it's generally considered a derogatory term these days and you might want to research and think about updating your vocabulary.
Edit: I messed up on the year, but it is not a widely used term and it looks like the term has been slowly phased out at VT.
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/sports/lady-hokies-take-commonwealth-clas...
This is the front page of the collegiate times from 2019. You are not the arbiter of speech.
I'm not trying to be. But as a female athlete and coach, I do have a right and frankly a responsibility to help educate others when they are being offensive. I passed along the info, it's up to you what you do with it.
Lady is derogatory? Or just in this context?
This is very much news to me. I am not a woman so I have no idea and will obviously defer as I don't get to decide what offends a person.
Just in this context. Many schools (at all levels) around the country have phased out using the term "Lady" in front of their mascot name. We don't say Lord Hokies for the men's teams so why would we say the Lady Hokies for the women?
You're welcome to be offended. That's fine. But you're going to need to cite something for this claim.
Tennessee actually reversed their stance regarding the use. The teams can chose to use the term lady.
At the same time, don't cite anything. This sub thread should have stopped long ago. It's not contributing anything.
So the issue would be in order to join the Hokie Club they have to meet the minimum donation towards the scholarship fund prior to team specific giving. Losing out on even say 100 donors who joined to support Olympic sports will have an impact on the scholarship dollars coming in, which has been a struggle most years at Tech.
Whatever you do, don't get rid of competitive bass fishing. And trade something in to get scholly women's gymnastics.
/s
Sponsoring 5 more varsity sports than Clemson and taking in about $37M less in revenue, according to the numbers from USA Today.
Catching up on all the missed facility upgrades in the Weaver era. Or complacency of the Weaver era. I'll go with complacency.
Cut some sports and accelerate the catch up process
For PR sake, blame COVID
Clemson sucked and floundered for a decade under Bowden. They were mocked for "Clemsoning". VT used to hammer them on the field. So what magic fairy dust happened??? Their interim head coach, promoted from WR coach went out and got fucking guys. Fucking ballers. He went out and got Stephon Anthony from VT's back yard. Went out and got Nuke Hopkins and Sammy Watkins. Went out and got Tajh Boyd from the 757. He went and got fucking guys. Dudes. He didn't whine about facilities or guys leaving early or anything else. He went and got legit studs, fired underperforming coaches, raised expectations and - shock- those ballers won games and now kids can't wait to sign there so they can win 90% of their games, be on prime time every week and go to the NFL. It's not magic. We need to get some fucking guys in here. Real guys.
So based on the above, Beamer and Weaver screwed the pooch by not strangling Dabo out after he became Clemson HFC in 2009. Or, maybe, Dabo was a fresh young guy who sold himself and Clemson football to top athletes in our backyard and our HFC was stuck in the old ways that always worked when everybody had a wired telephone.
Our Athletic Department hasn't been keeping up with the latest developments in recruiting and money making ventures for a while. And our payscale for football coaches has fallen far behind the expectations of some of the fanbase.
So, yes we do have a money issue (lower end P5 coaches salary pool) and we have a facilities issue (that was addressed during the basketball game last night). But mainly, we've been stuck using methods from 20+ years ago to run a modern football program and have fans with unrealistic expectations because we've been lapped multiple times while being stuck in the pits.
That's the reality of Tech football.
I think Beamer spoiled us too. We were always an outlier in how well we did with him in doing more with less for coaches salaries, facilities and recruiting (the former two which can directly impact the latter). Now that we're not an outlier in what we produce on field, people are upset with the results. Unfortunately, it is very much a money & recruiting game now days. Player development & finding diamonds in the rough isn't really a viable option to plan on in today's game
Also, Dabo didn't whine publicly about facilities because he generally got them when needed. People want us to get "guys", recruiting now days requires us to have something to sell them on. Generally coaches & facilities
This is a little bit of a fallacy...
Regarding unpaying Beamer: In 2000, after Beamer threatened to leave for UNC, Weaver kept him around by making him and his staff the third highest paid in all of college football. Now, towards the end of his career, he was underpaid for his accomplishments, and I will concede that we somehow paid Bud Foster top 25 money for top 5 quality coaching.
Regarding less recruiting: I think we actually recruited top 15-20 under Beamer; the ranking services were just inaccurate. As Foster said on that podcast recently, if Kam Chancellor were a recruit today, he'd be a high four-star with offers to Bama and OSU. There's just not diamonds in the rough like that any more thanks to Hudl and improvements to 247.
There have been monumental shifts in the college football landscape that made Frank Beamer's recipe for success no longer doable. That said, it doesn't mean it's impossible to win at VT; it just has to be done differently than Frank did it.
You might be right about the recruiting. We don't really have a way to judge or rank old classes before all the recruiting services became major business though.
For coaching salaries, I could be wrong, but I was always under the impression that our total coaching budget was noticably less than even other ACC schools when you include all the assistants. Sure Beamer and Foster might be getting competitive salaries, but all our position coaches generally weren't. The support staff & coaches that weren't "on field" for us was always a much smaller group than at other schools from my understanding
We weren't in the ACC in 2000 when Beamer got his big raise. I'm not sure when we fell behind the average (it would be an interesting exercise to figure this out) but my guess is that it was at earliest 2005, at latest 2012.
When Shane was hired as HFC at Carolina, I looked at the USA Today data to see what he was making at OU. According to that data, he was making $540k for 2020 as the TE/HB coach. Looking at our salaries, only JHam makes more than Shane did at $600k. Our coaching salary pool went DOWN this year, even with some guys getting raises. We're closer to Georgia Tech than Clemson in a lot of ways. That's our "new normal ".
I think this is the important part to look at to see where programs are differentiating from their peers. A $50m budget in the hands of five different groups does not mean all five groups will produce equal value from that money. The way you spend that money and how you target the allocation brings different results.
Sell beer in the stadium.
Push Hokie Club harder. Open up a few scrimmages for hokie club only. Hold other special hokie club events. At each one, have pledge booths to join the hokie club for at least $25/year. We need members, regardless of modest donation. The bigger money will come once we have the memberships. Make it a no brainer for current students to become members so that the ice breaker is out of the way.
Makes you wonder why we don't
They had the virtual coaches tour this year which was probably the best they could do with covid. Hopefully they keep making progress. A little more heads up when they do the recruiting showcases at the drafthouse would be nice.
First of all, it's worth noting that this article was released in March 2020 and IS REFERENCING THE 2018 FOOTBALL SEASON . On first glance, it would be easy to read the quote shared in the OP and assume the article was referencing the 2020 season. This article is discussing the 2018 season, does not account for any revenue earned in the 2019 season, and does not account for COVID.
Second of all, I strongly recommend using the Knight Commission CAFI Database when doing this research. It's the most comprehensive database I've found.
Third of all, by my comparison, it looks like this article ONLY DETAILS FOOTBALL REVENUE which includes ticket sales and TV revenue, BUT NOT DONATIONS. Here's a link to (and below a picture of) VT's entire football revenue:
Let's compare that to Clemson, who only earned $2M more than VT in TV Revenue + Ticket Sales, but brought in almost $20M more in donations:
When you think about this logically, all ACC teams should have similar TV revenue due to the ACC's profit sharing, and Ticket Sales revenue will probably vary based on stadium size, quality of home schedule, and # of tickets sold. I wouldn't expect more than a few million in variance here between ACC teams. Donations and expenses are the difference.
Their giving base is astounding. When we lived there and one of my wife's co workers kids got a partial band scholarship paid for by the booster club I was floored. I knew Big Ten Schools did that for music majors but wasn't aware any ACC schools did.
I mean, you can do that when you focus on limiting the number of sports you provide.
Interestingly enough, Clemson didn't generate more total revenue than VT until 2016. It's been said a million times, but Weaver did great from from 1997 through the early 2000's, but he failed to capitalize on our success in the mid-late 00s. Combine that with Swafford's mismanagement of the ACC network, and you see VT (and other non-Clemson ACC schools) falling behind B10 and SEC programs.
I'm sure you receive a lot more donations when you have an exciting program competing and winning for championships, pulling in top recruits, and have coaches that engage with you. I would like to see clemsons donations evolve over the past 10-15 years.
Check the website I shared! You'll see that they didn't overcome VT until 2016ish - the year after their first national championship appearance under dabo.
Oh I thought you were talking about total revenue, not specifically donations
I've done this exercise before, and from memory, I don't think Clemson's donations were much higher than VT's until 2016. But I could be misremembering. I'll check later, unless someone else wants to pull the data from Knight's Commission.
At one time the VT AD used to give some funds to the MVs and you could designate your HC donations for that, but they quit doing that later on in the Weaver days.
Does the database have an easy way to see how we rank in 2020?
The data for VT's 2019 fiscal year (I believe it's June 2019-June 2020) has not been released yet. Should be available in a few months.
I should have deleted the original post altogether instead of updating with the relevant link. Thanks for adding some much needed context bar1990.
It's never been a money issue, especially now. It's not a facilities issue either as they just cut the ribbon on the best nutrition center in the country. People act like we send our players to planet fitness to workout and that our locker room is still underneath Lane. They opine that the recently re-done Merryman is not a "FOOTBALL ONLY" building, so we can't sign a good recruiting class. It's an excuse for a poor/mediocre coaching staff. You can win at Virginia Tech and win big. That's been proven. Beamer played in the MNC game 8 years after joining the schools first major conference. When you accept 3 consecutive mediocre seaons, that include loses to ODU, Liberty, Syracuse, UVA, Duke, and Wake as huge favorites it's not about money. When you keep the entire coaching staff after the first losing regular season and first missed bowl game in 28 years, you make zero changes and double down? it's not about money. It's about accepting mediocrity and making excuses. That's what Whit has done. He follows recruiting closer than anyone on this board, yet he see's no alarm there either. Everything is fine - and mediocre. That's VT football now. Accept it or prepare to be dissapointed.
I think there is a little of a money issue, but I don't think it's the main issue. We're a top 30-35 revenue generating team, but fans want to perform at a top 25 level. That said, we're not performing at top 30-35 level right now, and our coaching staff is responsible for that.
Whit is a practical person. I'm convinced that his comments in his presser were not transparent/honest, and he was planning to replace Fuente, but something (I won't speculate on what) stopped him, and he did what he had to in order to publicly defend his decision. I do not think that Whit looks at this program, shrugs his shoulders, and says 'Yea, I'm happy with this'. Whit knows you don't make a change just for the sake of change. I still trust in Whit, and I think/hope he's playing the long game.
Whit took a beating for that press conference but in truth he was being a strong leader for the school. I agree with you. Something happened and he discovered firing Fuente this year was too risky. A poor AD would have fired him and figured it out later. But, long term, the next guy HAS to be the right guy.
Whit's top 3 candidates didn't seriously consider the job. Because of the talent on the 85 and incoming classes. IIWII. If one of the 3 did consider the job, Fuente would be gone. Let's call it like it is. He kept Fu, because his wish list didn't pan out.
There's a huge difference between this:
And this:
If one believes that Whit is biding his time, waiting for the roster and/or athletic department to be in a place where VT can attract candidates who can win, then he's making an intelligent decision. If you think Whit is 'not alarmed,' than that shows incompetence or laziness.
Whit is not apathetic, he's trying to set the program up for long term success. That is not accepting mediocrity, and the only excuses being made are ones to hush up fans for the next calendar year, until change can be made.
I wonder how bad football performance (i.e. W/L) has to be to trigger firing for cause and negating the buyout... Any idea if that's even possible?
It's doubt it's possible. The school would have to come up with a situation where they could say 'we think this one unethical thing you did might be cause for firing you, and we're going to take you to court to find out. If you want to avoid legal fees, you should accept this decreased buyout."
Where did you hear/read this? Link?
A source that I trust. Granted one of the guys was pipe dream territory. ,
This isn't accepting mediocrity, IMHO. This is being prudent with the funding available and not making a bad situation worse. If Whit couldn't get his guy and the next available options were no better than what we already had, then I have zero issue with the decision to keep Fuente. I still have an issue with there being no shake-ups on the remainder of the staff, but the off-season is still young and still time for those moves to happen (but probably not the one[s] we want to see).
I believe you. I also think some of those guys may have told Whit, no way this year, text me in '21. If we all agree recruiting is the single biggest weakness, how was a new coach supposed to turn that around in a dead period? How do coaches implement new systems with new staff if we are under covid restrictions for the forseeable future? No way I would put my career on the line this year. Just saying, Whit may have taken the smart road, which unsurprisingly does not align with the vocal fanbase.
let's just hope that in taking the smart road, it doesn't turn out like the Smart Road
From what I understand, between when the presser was called with the intention to announce his firing and the moment of the presser, the decision was made above his head to retain him and he was forced to eat the shit sandwich during the press conference, hence the PR mess it quickly became.
If it were up to Whit, we would have a new coach this year, but it ultimately wasn't up to him. But he's taking public responsibility for it.
I do not believe that. He talked to everybody that could overrule him prior to setting up the press conference. Why would they rush in last minute to foul up the timing. Also, leaks about Fuente staying came very quickly after the announcement of a press conference. If something changed Whit's mind last minute, it was a candidate getting cold feet. But I don't even think that happened (at least not after the press announcement).
This
I think Fuente is Whit's guy, and Whit is betting that Fuente will be successful while simultaneously hedging that bet by working to get more funding for football from the school as the buyout steadily goes down. I think Fuente is unfortunately just stubborn and prefers his way and going against the grain. He thinks he is going to outsmart the rest of the country, and through unparalleled evaluation, assemble the best roster of under the radar recruits while simultaneously using the portal as a major means to build his roster. And I think Whit really has bought into what Fuente is selling and wants to see him succeed.
The fact is, we are going completely against the grain for how a successful top 30 program should operate in tying ourselves to Fuente. Recruiting is the lifeblood of P5 college football. And I will never be convinced that stocking up on transfers and JUCOs is a successful way of building a roster. It's a great way to add some competition or veteran leadership at a spot or add a key difference maker here and there, but it should never be used as a means of patching poor depth due to recruiting failures. The VT culture just can't accept that we need to prioritize modern recruiting if we want to stay relevant. Finding diamonds in the rough and coaching them up is not the blueprint for success at the highest level. If you want to stay competitive, you have to compete. What we are doing now is the equivalent of trying to beat the system and prove the rest of the country wrong. Best case scenario, Fuente is a genius and it works out. But most likely it doesn't, and we fall further and further behind because we have a staff that is too prideful to admit fault and change tactics, or simply can't.
Based on the research I was doing in to AD department expenses, they are squirelly as can be. Our football expense is 33.5 mill in 2019, our AD expense is 93 mil. Clemson is 38 and 130, UF is 39 and 140 (that 39 mil has pay outs to two former coaches).
Comparing the Football budgets are meaningless because there is no way that Clemson spends 90 million on its other sports. Same with UF. That money is going to football stuff some how.
Multiple things can be true at once. This staff has not recruited well. Money should improve recruiting if that is where the money is focused. Money may not make this staff better, but it is needed to put the next staff in the most optimum position to succeed.
It is kind of like anything, it is easier to make money if you have money. But people born in poverty can become billionaires and heirs of billions can end up in the gutter. Somewhere in the middle is the rat race of everybody else that has similar advantages just trying to do the best he/she can.
There's a lot to unpack here, but to start, I agree, the excuses have worn tired. Virginia Tech has the resources necessary to compete for and win conference championships. I don't believe Fuente has leveraged those resources to their potential.
You said below that Whit whiffed on his candidates. Wouldn't that refute/contradict your point here?
It's pretty amusing to see folks using somewhat dated, somewhat irrelevant, somewhat apples to oranges numbers to rationalize that VT doesn't really have a financial support issue relative to its aspirational peers.