Four-star OL Gunner Givens has committed to the #Hokies. The No. 131 player nationally, he becomes the top-rated player in VT's class. Joins Ramon Brown as a four-star commitment in the class."I'm staying home and going to Virginia Tech," Givens said.— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) July 16, 2021
247 Link https://247sports.com/Player/Gunner-Givens-46094025/
100% COMMITTED🦃 HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA❤️ pic.twitter.com/THT7UODHQz— Gunner Givens (@givens_gunner) July 16, 2021
ANOTHER HOKIE! 4⭐️ OL @givens_gunner officially commits to @HokiesFB 🔥The Virginia kid is staying home 🔥 pic.twitter.com/PLDawgOxTz— 247Sports (@247Sports) July 16, 2021
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Comments
Staying Home!!! Let's Go!!!!
HOKIES!!!
Back to back weeks of FAMMMMM!!!
Always great to keep another highly rated in state guy home!!!
This is good progress for this staff. It's a shame it took them so long to realize they needed to get more players from Virginia.
Glad to have him on board!!!
I like this feeling much better than when we're not picked!
Nice!
Let's gooooooo @Rayo
I'm gaining hope as we speak. It feels great.
EDIT: I think I like him on defense. Thoughts?
Welcome home, Gunner. DT, OT, RB or wherever you wanna play! We are glad to have you!
Bam!
Bam fam!
Back to back Fridays of FAM!
and someone enters the transfer portal in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.../s
Joe this is VPIHokie, DCWilson and I's job. Please leave it to the professionals.
Versatile, big, and athletic. Love it.
Did I read it right that VT has jumped Clemson in the Top 25 class rankings on ESPN?
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills
Sort of. I am not a downer on this class at all but we are filling up while Bama is doing the Bama waiting game on their half a dozen 5 stars and 15 4 stars. We are looking to finish in the mid 20s or so. Regardless Gunner is a big get.
According to 247's 2022 team rankings Clemson only has 8 commits compared to our 19. Their average recruit ranking is 92.34 vs ours at 86.67.
They should fire their coach! /s
He said he would quit if payers ever got paid so....
Clemson has been paying their players for years for IPTAYs sake. /s
Remember. All the big dogs fill their classes at the end when the 5* recruits sign. Usual suspects will still be there at the top at the end of the season.
I think about it like this.
Get your points where you can. Win out over the lesser and equal competition. When the heavy hitters finally get theirs, try to be as far ahead as you can so that when the dust settles, you are may still be trailing, but not by as much.
Let's F'ing GO! 🎣
2 up 2 down !!! He's staying home!! 🦃🦃🦃
Fam!
Welcome to the Hokies, Gunner!
Whoo hoo!
These guys must already knows who our next coach is. /s
Another one! I care which side of the line he plays on, as long as it's our side.
From what I understand, not a big surprise as we locked him in a little while ago, but a huge fucking get nonetheless.
Gunna Give it All!!!! Let's go....now let's get the CAMs from B'More and Fernandina. I like how this class is bringing in a heavy meat on offense along with RBs, WR. On Defense we have a solid linebacker, DBs. Let's do it
Big. Time. Get.
This is another big pickup for this staff. Welcome aboard, Gunner! Short trip down the road from Daleville to the Burg too.
I've been fairly critical of this program, but I will say the griping about losing Jennings the other day after just getting a commit from the highest rated RB since David Wilson and now with another top VA recruit honestly pissed me off. I know people aren't happy, but overall this class is better than we have done in a while. We won't land them all. Jennings stings, and he's a legacy, but it's not like he was some huge 4/5 star. Screw UNC and I hope we kick their shit in on Sept 3rd like the pansies they are.
Let's be stoked for this class and the recruits we are landing. These are some big time pickups. Welcome again Mr. Givens!
Well said!
Kick their fucking shit in! Let's fucking go!
I'm excited to have Givens and Brown aboard but I think the "griping" over Jennings is justified. It's not an either-or and there's room for both sentiments -- we wanted him and we needed him. Jennings would be the 4th highest rated commit in our class (which moves the needle in our overall class ranking) at a clear position of need.
It's only a legit gripe if the cycle is over and you think he was the best possible option we had at that position for the whole cycle and we couldn't or won't get anyone better or equally as good. And that's a loser mentality. Move on. Who cares? Get a better player. Problem solved. Celebrate the wins and forget the losses.
There's no one better at DE left on the board and I'm willing to bet Jennings is a higher rated player than gunner when it's all said and done
I would take that bet all day long
Cant wait for my 20 dollars and a bag of Skittles😎
This is a commitment thread. Take this weak ass shit over to the bullshit/gripe thread.
No doubt it stings. He was one of our top targets and it's understandable to be upset about missing him. But realistically we won't land every one of our top targets. The swings in our fan base from 'great pickup!' to 'fire everyone today!' when we miss one recruit are getting a bit tiresome though. Am I saying this staff is absolved of all their recruiting misses? Absolutely not, but we can't burn everything down each time one recruit chooses to go elsewhere.
Agreed. Let's be happy for the guys who are fully committed to being Hokies. We won't win all the recruiting battles, but I am really glad to see us now, finally back to focusing on the in-State guys that for some reason we seemed resigned to lose. We need the in-State guys, and if we show them some love early, they will come. We really need to utilize every strategic advantage we may have to at least secure the good local guys.
If we can keep this recruiting momentum going, it could go a long way towards helping us regain some footing in the ACC.
LET'S GO!!!
Couldn't agree more!!!
Have people's memories completely faded??? It's like people on this site seem to think we were competing for national championships for the 5 years before Fuente.... Nope!
If we had a new staff with these current recruiting results we'd all be over the moon! Fuente now has his staff, upgrades in facilities, and some recruiting momentum. How bout we just enjoy it!
Maybe it's a different story by season end but To quote Billie Joel: "the good ole days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems"!
By the way, what if this season really goes well and the results keep improving? I sure hope these same people that can't seem to say anything positive will be willing to change their toon! Go Hokies!!!
Change their toon? Like Space Jam?
With this positivity you need to join TKPC!
don't care which side of the ball he lines up for, either way this is a huge get!
Yes this is amazing. Gunner givin' his commit is huge
I liked his announcement. Staying Home. Good things happen when VT locks in VA talent. Let's make some noise, boys.
Awesome get and huge win for the Hokies! Keep the momentum going!
Bottom-line is this kid's athletic ability gives him a very high ceiling. I think he is ultimately a OT in spite of the chatter. He has elite athleticism for the edge and if he puts in the work could be an special player as I believe with 2-3 years of hard work with the s&c staff he has 1st round potential.
Great feet, extremely strong already and a frame most people dream about - he could easily play at 325 and be able to move.
Unless this kid doesn't have his head on straight (I think he does) he is a can't miss prospect. We should be excited here!!
A lot of guys are like that. They want to play D-line and I say let him try it out. If he's a wunderkind/next Bruce Smith, let him stick. Otherwise, have The Talk like Russ Grimm had with his coaches about the joys (and money) of moving people from point A to B (and beyond) against their will.
We get another shot!
Let's give him the chop
Tuned in to see if French had opined on Gunner on DL....
We talked about a film review, but 100% transparency it would be a TKPC post. See the Ramon Brown post. If you value the insight and analysis, you should join.
French's film reviews have made me 100X smarter as a football fan. They alone are worth the (very reasonable) annual membership fee.
I compared it to what I was getting with TSL. I felt TKP is doing a better job with its paywall content.
A lot of the paywall content at TSL you can get without the paywall now with social media, podcasts, and smaller news outlets that don't charge for a recruits' top 3 that the recruit posts on twitter a few days later.
I don't want to comment on TSL's paywall content because I'm not a subscriber. As for TKP, my strategy is that moving forward folks are going to have to pay for the unique things TKP produces. And from a content strategy we're focused on quality (again stressing unique), not quantity. It's a much better investment of our time and resources.
As for other things that make TKP unique, folks have seen software features made available only to TKPC members, and that will continue and evolve.
I will make a front page post about this soonish, but under the hood TKP is built on top of Drupal 7 which goes EOL (end of life) in November 2022. While I've done a ton of custom programming to make TKP, "TKP", Drupal is the guts. It's essentially the CMS and platform. When it goes EOL, it will no longer produce updates, mainly security updates, that are crucial. There are a few paths forward, but they are all expensive and time consuming. That has left me with a lot of hard decisions to make for TKP's future.
I don't know if this can be a thing, but I'd be more than happy to donate to the "Upgrade TKP Fund". Your time is valuable and you shouldn't be doing all the hard work while losing money. If TKP goes away, my boss is going to wonder why my productivity level suddenly shoots up and we can't have that.
Yea I need TKP to stick around till I'm done with both my masters and my kids are older and I can go back to working full time and talking to adults about something besides my kids m, their school, their extra curricular activities, swim team etc.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I would hate to lose TKP, this is my VT community, and it would be a blow to lose it. However, I also don't want Joe having his time, peace of mind, and wallet hurt by maintaining the site, so I can live with whatever happens, though I certainly hope TKP doesn't go away.
my sentiments exactly
I'd pay just to rid the world of Drupal!
I have no trouble with paying an extra $10-20/year for a TKPC membership to upgrade TKP. Others might, but I don't mind.
there is far far more subscriber content on TSL than interviews with recruiting targets
That's likely true, but Joe is prioritizing quality over quantity. I personally would rather pay for unique content rather than something I can get from reading normal sports news, social media, etc.
please show me a 13-part breakdown of VT's offensive system published over the course of the 2021 offseason that is available for free from normal sports news, social media etc.
you can subscribe to both sites ya know? and you can certainly advocate subscribing to TKP without denigrating TSL
Sure but personally I prefer as do most on this site prefer quality over quantity. Sure more is better in some cases but the quality we get here along with the community is way better.
My point was that TSL offers a wide variety of subscriber content beyond what the previous poster was complaining about - not that they offer a larger volume of subscriber content than TKP.
On top of a better community TKP is worth its weight in gold with the UI alone. I don't know how people can function with that forum format.
This as well the UI is miles beyond TSL, nothing against TSL I used them as well but the mobile UI and full UI with the TKP extras make it so easy to use
Joe, if you need an infusion of cash to upgrade software and keep TKP alive and running, just let us know. It's worth it to me to invest in my favorite Hokie community even with 2 kids in college and 2 more heading there soon. To quote my favorite book, "Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened"
Does anyone have any idea what the cost is?