This is the best article on VT football spending.
In many ways it violates the narrative "we don't have or spend enough on football". We are third in ACC and at median of big 10 schools.
For a while we much higher nationally but haven't kept up with pace of spending the last few years.
My only flag with sharing this is I question some of data sources and accuracy of reporting in those sources. The reason being things we fans might consider recruiting expenses might be reported elsewhere by VT and we'll never know if universities standardize this.
But what is clear is the overall spend.
Seeing this my head goes from "woe is us poor little VT" to "hmmm we are squandering opportunity here".
https://sonsofsaturday.com/vt/articles/show-me-the-money-a-comprehensive...
Enjoy. And kudos to Chris Himes for such a great article.
Comments
This should really just make people even more upset at how mediocre we've become. But on the bright side there's real potential to get back to where we once were without a whole lot more spending, so there's that. I definitely see both the negatives and positives here. It could be easily spun either way, I think.
[some remark about recovery going well]
We get it, Fuente cannot football
2013 is a pivotal year in all of those graphs and charts. That's when we clearly stopped spending as much, and making as much, as the rest of the top quartile of D-1 schools. That's also not-so-coincidentally when the program's demise really started, the dreaded Russell Athletic Bowl year.
2013 was the Sun Bowl year, 2014 was the Brewer horseshoe extravaganza. It's how I remember when 2012 didn't happen.
The Russell Athletic Bowl was probably the single worst VT win I've ever watched. They should've just given the trophy to some guy in the parking lot.
In recent history, it's between that game and beating Furman 24-17 for me....
I like Furman, it's where my parents and older sister went to school, but I did not like watching us play Furman like equals.
I looked at this a while ago (2-3 months) with VT vs UF and Clemson. The differences were basically coaching staff dollars.
I 100% don't believe there is an apples to apples comparison between schools in the knight database because I don't think the budgets are broken out cleanly. We opened a new nutrition center, but that's not football budget. Recruiting seemed to not be either. I have no clue where all the extra staff gets paid from either, since they are not coaches they are from a different budget.
Either VT is blowing money on new gold toilet seats every year, or lots of other programs money is being spent from other budgets that aren't the yearly football budget.
There is no requirement to how spending needs to be broken out. Nick Saban going on a private jet to recruit might be a general AD expense at Alabama, but at VT it might be football only. These comparisons are always dumb imo.
How do fully endowed coaching positions factor in for the knight commission budget? Or when coaches are paid from booster dollars versus from athletic budget?
The knight commission doesn't disclose what dollars are paid from where. It just shows total revenue (and the breakdown of where that money goes), total spending (and where that money goes), and a (modest) breakdown of football spending. There's no throughline between dollars in and dollars out though; it's treated as a single bucket.
I know this isn't the case at VT, but I'm not sure why it's that way?
I'll start by saying I really enjoyed reading this article, and I think it's very well done. However, I've always viewed these comparisons and numbers with a bit of a dubious eye about how accurately finances between Athletic Departments and "Football Spending" can be compared from school to school given the myriad of ways they can disclose or delineate between cash flows. Frankly, I just don't expect machines (Athletic Departments/football programs) that large to be trustworthy or consistent in their reporting of these things if they can avoid it.
For example, when Clemson built their comically ridiculous $55M football only facility, did that show up in their "football spending" in the form of a huge increase in their spending in the year where they built it (2016/2017), has it been amortized over x years, is it even showing up in football spending at all because it was funded by donors?
No - Clemson's football spending increased $3M from FY 2016 to FY 2017, and another $3M from FY 2017 to FY 2018 (source):
HOWEVER, their 'Athletic Revenue' increased from $84M in FY 2015, to $104M in FY 2016, to $112M in FY 2017, to $120M in FY 2018:
Their Athletic Department expense rose at the same rate as their revenue:
So I agree - knight commission does a good job of capturing/comparing yearly operating costs (salaries, travel, etc.), but it doesn't doesn't do a good job of capturing 'total spending' (facilities, how many private jets the university has for recruiting, etc)
I would say yes, there is a spike in spending that correlates with the new football facility.
The facility was built in 2016 (opened January 2017) and that chart shows Clemson Football spending jumping from $29.0 million in 2015 to $40.9 million in 2016. That's an extra $9 million compared to their typical annual increase of about $3 million.
Football Spending:
2013: $22.3 million
2014: $26.9 million (+3.6 million)
2015: $29.0 million (+3.1 million)
2016: $40.9 million (+11.9 million) [new facility construction]
2017: $43.9 million (+3.0 million) [new facility opens January 2017]
2018: $46.3 million (+2.6 million)
their Athletics debt payments also spikes from $3.3 million in 2015 to $8.9 million in 2016. That's an extra $5 million compared to a typical increase of $1 million. That would indicate large loan was added in 2016 (like for the new football facility)
Athletics Debt Payments
2013: $1.5 million
2014: $2.3 million
2015: $3.3 million
2016: $8.9 million (+6.6 million)[new facility construction]
2017: $9.8 million [new facility opens January 2017]
2018: $9.3 million
It's unclear whether football-specific debt service is included in Football Spending figures or kept totally separate.
Would a fully funded endowed coaching position be considered revenue or expenditure?
Let's put aside the endowment part of it, and pretend that coaching salaries come from donations, but donations don't exclusively cover salaries (eg; donations can cover things other than salary). There will be one revenue buck for donations (say, $22M in donations for FY2018). There will also be one expenditure for coaching salaries (say, $7M for Coaching salariers in FY2018). There is nothing that says "$7M of the $22M donations went to coaching salaries" - Rather, the Knight commission is saying "22M of the $100M we brought in was from donations. $7M of the $95M we spent went towards coaching salaries."
Also worth noting that (as I understand it) support staff is wrapped up in 'support staff and administrative costs' - so the analyst and football ops roles are tracked in the same bucket as Whit's salary, the basketball ops person, etc. So this is another way that 'football spending' is misleading.
Now getting to the endowment part of it... The spending would still be classified as 'Coaching Salaries' and a 'Football Expense'. However, I'm not sure how the revenue would be classified - it would be lumped in with either 'Donations' or 'Other'.
Which school specifically are you talking about?
The only ones off the top my head are Stanford, Duke and Northwestern. But when looking at a donations Tech's donations almost all go to capital improvements (not just football only) and scholarships (again not just football).
All private schools, so Knights Commission wouldn't have that information anyways. Pretty sure you can add USC to that list as well.
Tech has one but it's for one of the women's Olympic sports. But it's our only one.
Our football spending is also about to go up if (when) we buy Fuente out (I know this doesn't actually come from the athletic program's budget, but still)
Nuanced take - it's possible that VT is both not maximizing its current resources, but also needs better funding. Yea, we're 25th in financial support, and playing like a top 40 football team. Not good. But how much better than 25 is a top coach going to get us? Maybe 20?
I honestly think a large majority of the fanbase would agree with this take. Most people don't want to throw money at Fuente, because he's shown an inability to maximize his current resources, not because they think we have the resources to win national championships right now.
I honestly don't want to throw money at any coach. It's a losing game. I dont want to be a Texas or a Tennessee or an Auburn.
I do think that we don't pay our assistance enough. Last I checked only one position coach was paid well for their position.
I do think we should be better with the rest of our football budget because it's really not that far off other schools.
I do think we have a huge funding issue in the athletic department because our basketball staff isn't getting paid what its worth.
There's a lot to unpack here...
These schools are hampered by the buyouts, not the salary. Worth the distinction IMO.
Shibest is one of the 5-10 highest paid special teams coaches in the nation. Hamilton is the highest paid assistant on staff despite being the youngest. Who should be paid more?
Our basketball staff got a 200%(?) raise when hired, and since the have completed one sub .500 regular season. Now, obviously their rebuilding our team (quite quickly), but let's wait until (a) we finish with a winning season and (b) the market demands us to give them a raise/extension. Giving premature raises/extensions is how Auburn and Tennessee fucked themselves.
I have always thought, that the down trending of the VT football program was the 2014 Wake Forest - VT game that ended in a 0 - 0 tie. At that time, I realized it was time for Frank to ride off into the sunset with all of our admiration for what he did to build this program. Since then, recruiting has become more of a problem and when Fuente took over our recruiting has taken another turn downward. I keep seeing too many in-state players going elsewhere. Many of them want to come to VT but are not offered or asked to walk on instead. The list is long.
This is a great article that points out areas that we do need to improve on. Donations is probably first and foremost, but it's tough supporting a losing proposition (I know because I do it every year and it is getting harder to write that check). I will say one thing, winning cures a lot of problems, so just win baby.
2010 is my downfall time line.
That recruiting class was a whole lot of misses. Add in another terrible recruiting class in 2011 recruiting class and the fact we basically went 3 years without recruiting recievers, wilson and hosley left early, 2012 was a given.
We had some great hokies in those 2 classes but to few of them. The 2009 class was packed with guys that you know and love, the 2010 and 2011 classes I struggle to remember if 70% of them actually played for VT.
It was too late to recover from that with the staff changes.
this sounds right. Took till 2012 for the worse recruiting to start manifesting on the field (people forget, but that team also had to fight like mad to reach .500. I think they lost 4 straight at one point before fighting back to beat BC and LOLUVA and reach the Rutgers Abomination Bowl. Several of their Ls could have and maybe should have been Ws though).
That was a last minute FG to win the commonwealth cup.
Hosley and Wilson leaving early didn't help 2012. Boykin and Coale graduated so it left the offense with not much. Marcus Davis, DJ Coles, and Corey Fuller weren't a great receiving core for various reasons.
right, yes. the Mike London Timeouts game.
Corey was the best of those WRs. Davis should've been the best of those WRs.
This.
Donations are the biggest area for improvement if VT wants to take a leap as a program, given the current state of college football.
However, it also feels like VT fans get bogged down with the level of mistrust they have in Fuente (BTW, he's earned that mistrust) to the point where they begin to wonder if it's worth it to donate at all.
Making things even more complicated, VT hasn't really had a strong culture of donating over the years, seeing as how they have consistently underperformed the competition in that category, even when Beamer had the program rolling in the mid-2000s.
So, essentially, two things have to happen:
1. VT fans (and the AD as well) need to cultivate a better culture of giving
2. VT fans have to hope that those added donations do NOT serve as a ringing endorsement for a mediocre coach
That's an incredibly tough path to navigate and I honestly don't know what needs to come first... increasing donations or replacing the coach?
As a final thought, for those fans who do want to replace Fuente before they feel compelled to donate (by either increasing their current level of giving or giving for the first time), will that actually lead to more donations? Because it didn't really happen when the team was winning, or in 2016 when Fuente was hired, even though Fuente's hire was well-received.
2014/2013 is when the program started to fall off, but it's also when a lot of major shifts in the college football landscape (and just life in general) started. 2013/2014 was when Hudl started to take off. It was when smart phones were becoming common place (not just things that 10% of people had), making the world smaller, and contributing to a change in recruiting. 2014 was the year the SEC network launched.
I think that there are a lot of factors, both internal and external, that have contributed to where VT football is today.
Agreed.
The changing landscape definitely mattered, as well as who was in the driver's seat for Tech football at that moment.
For context, here's the list of people and how long they had already been at VT (as well as age) during the 2013/14 season:
2014 season:
AD Office
Jim Weaver (69) - 17 years
John Ballein (est. 52) - 27 years
Coaches
Beamer (68) - 27 years
Foster (55) - 27 years
Stinespring (51) - 24 years
Wiles (50) - 18 years
Old dogs can sometimes learn new tricks but given the above group of tenured decision-makers, is it fair to say they probably weren't ready for the rapid changes happening across the college football landscape, both from a financial and technology standpoint, as well as how they would need to adapt to keep up?
Don't forget that this was also when Sands replaced Steger. In 2.5 years, we replaced a leadership core (Steger, Beamer, Weaver) that had been in place for 13 years. I think this has contributed to a lack of identity for our football team, and university at large.
2005 Miami loss on ESPN during prime time was the high water mark... VT00WF was just a continuation of the trend. Hokie football was already firmly second/third tier... if not a national after thought in recruiting by then.
The greatest what-if is 2006 with Marcus Vick as QB. Had he not stomped on Elvis, had he not got caught with weed while speeding. Had he gotten his life together 2006 would most likely have been a year that VT would have been a major player.
But being 2nd/3rd tier wasn't the downward trend, we were never first tier, we just had an anomaly named Mike Vick. 2001-2003 were not great years. 2004 we won an incredibly weak ACC and didn't play FSU that year.
If you think VT was a top tier program at any point then you must have started following in 1999. VT has five 5* recruits all time. Most top schools have that in a year.
I'm not going to re-litigate the differences surrounding recruiting, talent, and depth between then and now. But I'm not the only person who views the history of the program this way. Chris Coleman has done plenty of stories/analysis on it.
I've been following VT since the 80s, as early as I can remember, because of family/legacy alumni connections.
The amount of recruit talent sitting in the stands (official and unofficial) for the '05 Miami game is unequalled in VT history. At kickoff VT had legitimate interest from many of them, to say nothing of the less heralded but solid players in that cycle. Recruiting has only gotten worse since then.
Listen....it hasn't been the same since Danny Coale caught it in New Orleans.
Ever since, we had 1 winning regular season until Beamer hung it up for good. We didn't get 10+ wins again until Fuente started hot out the gate in 2016 . Hell, we have gone a whole decade without seeing an elite VT team.
2011 was elite, LT, David Wilson, our defense, oh that defense!!
And from 1999-2011, we had a whole host of great seasons. We had the best defense in the country for 3 straight years at one point. We finished #1 in the computers in 2007. We won 10 games every year from 2004-2011. We beat ranked LSU, ranked Marshall, ranked Tx A&M for 3 straight weeks in a row.
Oh but the football gods teased us with an Ohio State win and come-from-behind instant classics in Charlotte and South Bend. Beating WVU restored some order, but only at the expense of an ODU loss.
The only way to lift this voodoo curse is to get back to New Orleans and win the Sugar Bowl. Against Michigan.
I still think that we were successful in 2016 solely because of Jerod Evans. Let's say Fuente never convinced him to come here, who is starting? Freshman Josh Jackson? I can remember 100% but IIRC Motley was gone already and AJ Bush wasn't here yet. But either way, I don't think we see a good 2016 with anyone besides Jerod. If you took 2016 away from Fuente, how much would that change public perception of him?
Also, what if it was still Beams? What if Beams was here in 2016 with Jerod, would we have still been just as successful? Would Beamer have been able to capitalize on that success better?
We'll never know but I think about it a lot. Either way it highlights that we need elite talent at QB
I think 2016 was Motley's last year. He helped run out the clock vs. Pitt after they pulled within one score at the end of the 4th.
Here is my perspective/novella on the downfall of VT football. In what many consider to be one of the Hokies' best seasons, 2004 was the beginning of the downfall. Getting into the ACC was the objective of the old guard (athletics and academic) at VT, and when we came in and won the league in year one, many felt we had arrived. Complacency crept in from that day moving forward.
2005 was likely the best team top-to-bottom we have ever fielded. The 05 Miami game was the high water mark for this program in terms of status, hype, and potential. We could have contended for a natty that year or in 06. But Marcus implodes and the rest is history. We still recruited enough athletes and had enough pull in state from the brand and Mike Vick days to run the ACC for a few more years. But 2011 clearly showed we were behind the times and needed to change when Clemson seized power. That was the beginning of the end of the Beamer era.
2013-2015 are huge what if's for me. We lost so many games by 7 points or less, we just didn't have enough on offense to get it done. We did begin a more modern and aggressive recruiting approach which gave us a great nucleus of talent, but Beamer unfortunately ran out of time and was a broken Brewer collarbone from having a bounce-back 2015. Instead, enter Fuente.
I will give Fu credit for bringing in Jerod as the spark to match with the powder keg nucleus of Ford, Phillips, Bucky, Rogers, etc. and Bud's defensive unit. Unfortunately, Jerod bolted a year early and that core group didn't continue to elevate the program in 2017. Instead we regressed. Fu has shown he cannot elevate recruiting, and the glory days of this program are well behind us. VT football is a story of what if's and complacency. Had Beamer been willing to adapt before things got too bad, I feel Fu is never here and Bud gets a chance at the helm.
The worst complacency decision was turning down the SEC. That extra money and resources would have gone a long way for Beamer's replacement, and that may not have been Fuente at that point.
Let's face it, 8-4 or 6-6 in the SEC is a better mark than in the ACC and the worst division in college football
Would it really matter? A .500 team supporting an SEC patch isn't going to make the fanbase any happier.
It depends on how much we would have embraced/marketed it as a program. Had we joined and maintained the status quo, we would be .500 on a lucky year. But had we seized the opportunity and declared VT as Virginia's and the mid-Atlantic region's premier football team, upping our fundraising and recruiting efforts and riding the wave, we would likely be in a much better place than we are now, 10 years after the SEC flirtation.
It is possible. But it seems to me the SEC powers haven't really changed through expansion.
TAMU is probably the third best team in the west
Mizzou took full advantage of a weak post-Tebow SEC East. If Pinkel didn't almost die, he would still be coaching Mizzou.
That could have been us in Atlanta playing for SEC titles. I think about that a lot. The recognition alone would have been a boon for recruiting.
Playing Tennessee and Florida every year would have certainly charged up the fan base.
Was it ever confirmed that we turned down an actual offer to go to the SEC, or was it just speculation?
There wasn't an official "offer" because a conference will only extend the offer if they know you're coming. But yes, there was an offer on the table so to speak. TAMU and VT were to be the 13th and 14th teams, instead Missouri took our spot. SEC wanted us and the DC/Mid-Atlantic tv market and SEC schools thought we fit the profile as far as football. Our admin wanted to stay in the ACC however, especially since it took some politicking to get us there in the first place.
Right, like how every school always hires their first choice coach.
It definitely would have been hard to ditch the ACC given what went into getting us in, and it's probably the best overall cultural fit for athletics and the university as a whole, but the fit with SEC is pretty good, too. It'd be interesting to think about if we were never let into the ACC, and were still in the Big East/American, if we'd still have had the cache for the SEC.