Hate to break it to ya but this roster means things are only gonna get worse before they get better. I'd love to have a one year rebuild instead of two, though, yes
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Well, interesting arrival today from Parkersburg, WV which had an arrival from Rickenbacker in Columbus, OH just before. Could Fickell have driven to Columbus and hopped airports to throw us off the trail??
Also a flight departed Blacksburg for Lexington, Kentucky late today. Mark Stoops, anyone??
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As much as I like Luke Fickell, the guy is making $3.4M at UC, plus decent bonuses for NY6/CFP appearances and top 25 finishes/AAC titles (regular season and champ game), etc, with a buyout currently at $3.5M. Oh, he also has $3.85M for support staff. Seems like he's got a pretty good deal and it would take some serious cheddar to get him to move at this point in his tenure there.
Not at all saying it couldn't happen, but I don't see why he'd leave at this point.
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I think that's just because a lot of military aircraft don't (yet) use ADS-B transponders? This site has way more military traffic than any other. Click the "U" button in the top-right to filter on only military aircraft, it's pretty cool.
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If I'm clawsons agent I'm using VT to work both and see who offers the best situation. I could also see him holding out to see what happens with PSU and LSU as well
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Absolutely. He is in the drivers seat. The market has too many open positions, not enough qualified candidates, and money flowing from everywhere. It's red meat.
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I'm not convinced a Clawson hire would be the end of the world but I'm terrified of what it would mean for our recruiting. I mean I know Wake isn't viewed as a top tier program but they are in literally the same conference we are and his recruiting results there simply wouldn't cut the mustard here. Can we really say he'll improve in that area just jumping across the conference? Sure his team is impressive this year but he doesn't really have a sustained track record of doing this and the ACC is obviously down this year - are we signing up to be mediocre for 2-3 year stretches at a time and maybe randomly be good once every 4-5 with a bunch of seniors? I'm not okay with that as the expectation. I don't want to pick another coach and bank on him taking bottom-of-the-ACC recruiting classes to a winning program through "player development." It just sounds like asking for Fuente 2.0, albeit maybe with better actual gameplanning/in-game coaching.
If he "Mike Young's" it and brings in an ace recruiting staff while nuking his WF staff, I'd be a lot more confident. But I don't really believe he would do that until I see it - nothing about his coaching background suggests that would be his style. Though nothing about Mike Young's background really suggested that either.
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CMY has had a good success record recruiting since he has gotten here. Those guys are young and he has some very good experienced guys. He hit the portal to beef up the roster early which is what our FB coach will have to do.
Recruiting to Wake is entirely different than recruiting to every school other than Duke in the ACC. They were doormats in football so it takes a lot to bring in talent there.
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Wake Forest has even more restriction on recruiting. It is a Private Small School that does focus more on grades for acceptance of athletes. And its Wake so its brand limits its recruiting prior to this year
Considering all of that the Coach recruited players he could ccoach up and win with which is what Beamer/VT was
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I know not everyone is into Clawson, but I am riding the Coach Claw train hard. Watch a couple Wake games and I think you'll see where I'm coming from.
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Clawson hire depends on final staff IMO. If he takes his Wake staff straight to VT, it's a very meh hire. If he surrounds himself with proven recruiters, it's exciting.
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slimey human being isn't the same as being "uninspiring" -- art briles was a good coach! he just was a good coach at the expense of being a decent human... harrrrrd pass.
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Seems like it's a dead heat between Napier and Clawson, so I hope Whit comes out and blows us away with a Kiffin or Campbell. He did it with Buzz, never say never.
I'd also be very interested in Marcus Freeman, if we decided to go cheaper HC option and throw the book at a good OC.
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"Not me. (Winning the Big 12) was never my goal," Campbell said. "My goal has always been one thing and that's to become the best version of ourselves we can become. You've never heard me say that word once, you've only heard me talk about becoming the best version of yourself you can be
Don't understand the love affair for him or Freeze so many have.
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yes but matt campbell has been successful in terms of w/l. I dont get why people want one innocuous sound bite to color their view of him as a coach. he'd be a pretty good hire and a better option than clawson to me
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Where his only year above 8 wins was Covid season, where he is looking likely to only win 6 this year? How is he a better option than the guy we just paid 8 million to leave?
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So as we all know Fuente wasn't good enough but Iowa State isn't getting much better, they got marginally better and if you take out COVID year the margin is even smaller. Especially doing this in a very watered down BIG 12 the last 5 years. Many names out there that have much higher ceilings.
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They're Iowa State lmao, not TCU not Baylor not Oklahoma State. It's analogous to BC, UVA or Syracuse having that type of success. Can't compare it to a program like us at all
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As I pointed out in another thread, Iowa State has historically been among the worst P5 programs in the nation, and he has them running on a level much higher than their station.
That said, the same knocks against Clawson apply to Campbell, with even more caveats:
He had never coached at a P5 school before ISU
His best season was under very strange circumstances and could easily be treated as an outlier
His success is shorter-sustained than Clawson's, as well as at fewer places
Who knows if a system that worked at ISU can also work at VT, and if not, can he adjust his system to fit the program
In basketball, I was strongly of the "wait and see" opinion about Mike Young as well, and so far in year 3 it seems like the best hire we could have made. All that is to say that, at this point, Whit has earned my trust that he will do his due diligence and make the moves that make the most sense for the program, so if he decides that Campbell (or Clawson) is the coach that he thinks can return us to the promised land I wouldn't be angry about the move, regardless of how many question marks it leaves on our checklists.
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And outside of Oklahoma win how many of those teams finished in top 15? Again it's not just about Fuente bad you need a much better option if your going to put that guy in charge and he doesn't have the resume better than anyone else on the list.
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I will actually address your question: he's better than Fuente because Campbell has elevated a p5 program for an extended amount of time. Winning 7 games is good for Iowa State, which very well may happen again in the next two weeks.
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um, I'm pretty sure Lasso coached Wichita State to a NCAA championship before he left for England. But that's Division 2 football so he wouldn't have P5 or G5 experience.
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Agreed. I think Clawson is a massive smoke screen so he can get a big raise from WF. Good coach but just doesn't make sense for VT. Not to mention his salary isn't publicly available since Wake is private, and he's probably already decently compensated and likely has a not insignificant buyout himself. $8.75 for Fu and then likely several more million for Clawson's buyout doesn't seem financially doable.
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Does not have demonstrated experience recruiting at a high level. This was also a big unknown with Fuente and we thought he could just learn. Now maybe Clawson would come in and build out a top-notch recruiting staff and surprise me, it's a huge unknown. But he's never operated like that, so it's odd that we would want to emphasize that with the new hire and pursue someone with no real track record of it. I don't disagree that he's a very good coach and knows how to get the most out of his players.
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Wake Forest has even more restriction on recruiting. It is a Private Small School that does focus more on grades for acceptance of athletes. And its Wake so its brand limits its recruiting prior to this year
Considering all of that the Coach recruited players he could coach up and win with which is what Beamer/VT was
Excelling with less (WF) is better to me at least than failing with so much talent (Miami) as an indicator of potential. This is a lot like Fuente...except Fuente was Co-OC at TCU 2009–2011 and HC at Memphis 2012–2015. Thats not at all a lot of time
Clawson was an FBS HC for 8 years than an asst coach at D1, then Bowling Green 2009–2013 and Wake Forest from 2014 – now. Thats 20 years of experience and moving up and still wining
At each of those schools he won a Conference championship. As did Fu, at one school he was a coach
Also Mike Elco was his DC, but that Notre Dame fame and TAMU Money helped keep him not at WF
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I 2nd this about recruiting to Wake. He's recruiting how he needs to to win at WF and it's working. We don't know if he'll recruit well, but he'll recruit better than he is now, and even if he somehow can only pull in the 60th ranked class in the country, we'll win 8 games. We'll be the most entertaining 8-4 of all time.
Again, that's if he recruits around 60. Fuente had to burn every bridge in the state to recruit that poorly.
Clawson has established relationships throughout VA and NC for over a decade. I'd like to see what he could do if he recruited even slightly better. Does 7-8 wins (with a built in loss to Clemson) turn into 9-10?
He hired Elko who is considered an ace recruiter. Elko wasn't pulling 5-stars to Wake because it's Wake. Clawson can probably recruit better to Bburg than Winston-Salem. He doesn't need to get a top 10 class as much as we would love that. If he returns us to just our average high 20s we'd be lighting up the ACC.
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Fuente didn't know what he didn't know. Clawson is far more experienced, and hopefully knows what he doesn't know.
Like I said before, with Clawson, it all depends on his staff. If he rounds out his blindspots, we're good. If he just pulls 9 guys from Wake, it's uninspiring.
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Totally agree. I believe the bulk of his staff have been with him for a good while, but he could certainly shake things up if he's the hire. Convince Elko to rejoin him as AHC/DC and now we're cooking.
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Convince Elko to rejoin him as AHC/DC and now we're cooking.
I jokingly said this to a friend last night. A Clawson/Elko ticket would be a homerun hire.
Unlike last time, I'm closely eying the coordinator hires we make. I think Whit will be willing to pay top 25 salary for (at least one) experienced coordinator.
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This is likely the most apples to oranges comparison you could possible make. I would argue that Napier is far more familiar with modern recruiting process than Clawson. Napier literally has his own page of all time commits and Clawson just has 1 on his coaching page. Both have played significantly different roles in modern recruiting cycles
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yeah, very different career trajectories -- Clawson has worked his way up through the head coaching ranks from lower levels FCS to higher level FCS to G5 to P5, while Napier went the "P5 assistant to coordinator to G5 head coach" route. Napier has experience around big programs who need to bring in the bluechippers to even just tread water, but I don't necessarily know that it's an indictment of Clawson that he hasn't been primary recruiter on a many players from the HC position. Saban doesn't have any listed either and it's clear he gets it and is good at it. Clawson was around Tennessee for 11 months, hired in January and fired when Lane replaced Fulmer and cleaned house.
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I could be happy with Clawson, but I think some of the others floating around are more "pop" hires.
But I am trying to see why Clawson would want to come here. He already makes 3.875? at Wake, we were only paying Fuente 4. Staff money is probably about the same (unfortunately).
Playing in the same conference but on the other side isn't much of a move for him. He is old enough, Wake would probably be happy to keep him for the rest of his career.
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Whit is in the process of making one big 8.75 million lump sum payment to Fu. I think there might be more money in the bank to pay the next staff than most people think.
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And Clawson wouldn't be a cheap hire. You factor in probably a pretty good size buyout for him on top of the one we paid Fu, then at least probably $4.5 mil in salary to get him to jump from Wake. Clawson would be extremely pricey.
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David Teel on Packer and Durham yesterday said his convo's with him he seemed totally content at Wake and was getting big infusions of cash to program to go with really good facilities (didn't realize that they did). Teel seemed to think he'd stay at Wake
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No thank you. Pros for Clawson is I think he's got a high floor. We'd probably safely win about 7 to 8 games each year. The con is his ceiling is 7 to 8 games each year with the off chance you might compete for the conference if multiple teams suck.
Clawson is great fit where he's at, taking an afterthought and making them respectable. But I look at college football having Elites (Bama types), Contenders (competing for conference titles, Top20s), Respectables, Afterthoughts, Doormats. Our Beamer heyday had us in the Contender class. I don't see Clawson ever getting a program, any program, past Respectable. We can still be Contenders with the right hire.
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Did you not finishing reading the rest of the sentence about it being higher every so many years when everyone else sucks? Because that's exactly what's going on with Wake right now. The ACC is dogshit. This Wake year is an anomaly. They aren't some future ACC player here to stay.
Parks and Rec > The Office
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You realize this just furthers my point about the ACC being dogshit, right? Clawson is fine coach to take a program near or on the bottom and make them respectable, but they aren't contenders. They're "contenders" this year because everything else around them has fallen apart. FSU is down. Clemson is down. UNC was moving up but is down this year. Even Louisville, for most of the last decade you could safely pencil in at 8 wins or above is having mixed results of late. And Wake this year played a murderer's row OOC schedule of ODU, Norfolk State, and Army (and UNC because of that weird agreement they have). Does that scream vast improvement? Because it looks a hell of a lot like an easy schedule and a case of other teams falling back to their level while they basically stayed the same (which isn't bad, again, they're respectable). Dave Clawson is an average coach. If VT hires him, you're likely gonna get an average team. Which is actually upgrade from the direction Fuente was taking us but its not the level I would think most people would want when they envision making a coaching change.
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We don't have to play Clemson or FSU every year. And it's not like we play a murderers row noncon. ACC is a dogshit conference that he's shown he can run through even when he has no talent, that's better than most of the coaches on our wishlist.
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So one curiosity about Clawson that I'm too lazy to look up: I see that the records of the programs he's coached have indeed improved significantly under his leadership, I haven't heard anyone talk about how he did it.
Is he just a better football coach than his predecessors?
Did he enter disorganized football operations and reorganize them to look like an actual football program?
Was he a better recruiter than the last guy?
Though the on-paper numbers make him look like an attractive candidate, I just don't know if his skills are a good fit for what we lack right now.
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He takes time to build up the trenches, recruiting linemen who stay for 5 years. By their 5th year, the lines are super solid. When he arrived at Wake, he redshirted a ton of linemen so he could beef up there. Their OL this year is super good.
I don't know if he is good or bad at driving organizational change.
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I mean, thats exactly what Grobe did at Wake too. It was very odd that Curry played as a frosh there because that wasn't how he ran the program up until that point, but when your freshman better than everyone else one defense you play him.
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So then my question would be can he take a slightly better recruit and turn them into much better players?
What are Wake's starting OL/DL recruits? Low 3 star to mid 3 star? Or mid 3 star to high 3 star? And what are ours?
My assumptions are that Wake recruits linemen that come out of HS about low to mid 3 star, and we recruit linemen that are about mid to upper 3 star.
What does Wake turn out at the end? All Conference? All American? NFL draft picks? Because All ACC with a peppering of NFL prospects is about what we do pretty consistently with our line. If he's doing the same with lower starting ratings, then he's either developing better than we are or he's better at evaluating. If he's doing slightly less, then we can expect our lines to remain about the same.
If he's taking lower rated recruits but also turning out more All ACC and more NFL prospects, or his line recruits are much lower rated, like upper 2 star, and they have about the same rate of All ACC and NFL prospects, then that's a good sign for him here.
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Expanding on this in a reply to my own reply to keep it from being a wall of text:
If someone wanted to really look at starting stock of recruits and try to see if they improved, someone some time ago put some thoughts out there that went roughly something like this.
To rate existing players, give them 1 point for making a 2 deep, 2 points for starting, 3 points for all conference, 4 points for All American, and 5 points for drafted. Then give them additional partial points for things like being on award lists, winning awards, winning major awards like Outland and Heisman, first round of NFL draft, first 5 or so picks of the draft.
The scale doesn't quite match up, especially at the low end (1 star players - are there even any that go on to play Division 1? And 2 star recruits have a pretty low percentage of making the 2 deep.), but it roughly tracks expectations of success in recruiting.
I'd really be interested to see how we have done over time with this, especially the last 5 years, and what peer level programs have done.
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I don't have a well thought out position on who I think should be the next coach (I thought Mike Young wasn't the guy and will gladly eat crow on that forever).
But it seems weird to me that this was the first coach mentioned in all these stories - after the first firing since the 70s, that happened at 7:45am - would be the prohibitive frontrunner so quickly. Regardless of any conversations Whit has had, I doubt he's had full on interviews with anyone, let alone the guy who probably has the longest remaining schedule in the ACC.
If it's Clawson, fine. I'm not thrilled, I think there would be problems but I'd at least wait to see what kind of staff he assembles. We may not have Bama/Clemson money, but we probably invest much more than Wake Forest.
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They were the names I saw most for a job opening that didn't actually exist. I'm pretty sure that the 247 staff was saying Clawson was a focus by like 10am the morning of the firing though.
Then again, so was Mick Cronin and Ryan Odom for the last basketball opening.
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If it's Clawson and that's a big if, when does he leave WF? Does he coach their bowl game? If so, that would really kill this years recruiting class. Sheesh.
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Apparently Lane Kiffin and da U have mutual interest, that could certainly shake things up by opening another $EC job
Andy Slater
@AndySlater
SLATER SCOOP: Lane Kiffin would leave Ole Miss for the University of Miami if the Hurricanes head coaching job were to open, multiple sources close to Kiffin tell me.
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I mean he had a successful stint at FAU up the road a bit from Miami and has been relatively successful with Ole Miss. I could see him being a Jimmy Johnson lite at Miami, which would not be fun for us. I don't think he'll have the same overall success (especially with Dabo in conference, Saban still sucking the souls of mortals, and Kirby building a death star in Athens), but I don't think it would be a disaster either. He would probably bring that "swagger" back to the U
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Even as a VT fan, what's there to hate? It's actually a win/win either way. Its a win if he's a disaster because its fun to watch Lane torch himself. But if he succeeds, that boosts the ACC. You don't want to beat a poor Miami. You want to beat a good Miami. The ACC is in desperate need of its flagship football schools to actually be good. We can hate Miami all we want, but it actually benefits us if they're good too. That way, ACC schools can make the playoffs with 1 or even 2 losses because the conference has respected depth. Miami and FSU being good raises the level for everyone else. We also don't directly compete with Miami for recruits anyway so its not gonna hurt us too bad in that respect either (even when they suck, they're still pulling in a ton of talent anyway). It's not really like the UVA rivalry where beating them is fun regardless of if they suck (pretty much always) or not. But its more fun and beneficial beating a good Miami team like in the old Big East days as opposed to now where its like two sad, out of shape middle aged guys (think of Bill from King of the Hill) limply slapping each other still thinking they've got it
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I agree. Right now the ACC is a joke and a good Miami is a big part of the fix for that, so I would love for them to figure their stuff out. I would just want it to be like 2-3 years after we figure our stuff out
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Don't be surprised to see Lane go to Miami. Word is they are going to hire the FAU AD. They also just got commitment for $25-30MM, so they'll open up the Brinks Truck for him.
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It's all a moot point because Urban Meyer isn't coming to VT, but I think people would be disappointed and shocked at how much recruiting wouldn't improve.
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It would probably be way more than $9mm too depending on how large his buyout from WF is. I think that is unknown since it's a private school but is rumored to be ~$4-$7mm.
No thanks
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Honestly might be. Probably my top choice but his buyout is possibly high 7 to 8 figs.
Leaning more towards Houston as the best option we have for the money. Pirates have a chance to get to 7-4 today and the depth/player development on that squad is unprecedented for the shithole Scottie left in 2019.
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Comments
"Every leak has a motive..."
The rollercoaster begins.
Clawson is getting a raise. Just not sure which university is going to sign the check for him.
Yeah, that source he cites is probably Clawson's agent.
Exactly. This ain't happening.
Zack Barnett been TKP'ing hard today.
I just don't want to go 3-8 the first two seasons
Hate to break it to ya but this roster means things are only gonna get worse before they get better. I'd love to have a one year rebuild instead of two, though, yes
Start praying to the portal god. Hopefully they will bless us like they did Michigan st
So it won't be Clawson, got it
I thought Whit said, paraphrasing here, if you hear a leak about a coach he is hiring then it's not true.
I'd be ok being #10 in the CFP rankings instead of #28374 or whatever we are right now
that's #27865, thank you very much. sheesh at least give Fuente some credit.
Are we certain we're not #8675309?
800% certain.
And the guy from road rage suggests his sources tell him that Napier has an offer that's his to turn down soooo in gonna enjoy all the rumors.
The guy in upstate, sc? Walt?
Walt Deptula definitely doesn't know shit.
I do hope we get Napier though.
Oh I know, easy time for every 'reporter' to get clout/clicks/retweets these are all rumors until they come from a reputable VT reporter IMO.
He sure loves to tell his listeners that he knows everything!!
Truth. I got nothing nice to say about him, so I'll leave it at that lol.
Are we not doing Flight Aware speculation this time around?
*all the nostalgia feels*
Yeah, who's in charge of tracking the air traffic this time around?
Well, interesting arrival today from Parkersburg, WV which had an arrival from Rickenbacker in Columbus, OH just before. Could Fickell have driven to Columbus and hopped airports to throw us off the trail??
Also a flight departed Blacksburg for Lexington, Kentucky late today. Mark Stoops, anyone??
Nah, Fickell would be coming from Lunken on private jet and you know he isn't flying out of town mid week during the season
As much as I like Luke Fickell, the guy is making $3.4M at UC, plus decent bonuses for NY6/CFP appearances and top 25 finishes/AAC titles (regular season and champ game), etc, with a buyout currently at $3.5M. Oh, he also has $3.85M for support staff. Seems like he's got a pretty good deal and it would take some serious cheddar to get him to move at this point in his tenure there.
Not at all saying it couldn't happen, but I don't see why he'd leave at this point.
That and he has to expect those numbers to rise as soon as they start bringing in Big XII money instead of AAC money.
As much as I'd love having him as our next coach, it's nothing more than a pipe dream at the moment.
Pipe dreams are kind of the point, from now until the new coaches first game are probably as positive as it's possible to get
I've heard that we have a plane on the list discussed in this article. If true, the flight trackers are useless for this endeavor.
This site shows aircraft regardless of their request to be hidden: https://globe.adsbexchange.com
Any plane with a modern transponder shows up, which should be... well, pretty much every plane we'd care about.
If you're curious, here are all the planes trying to be hidden: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?filterDbFlag=ladd
Few things on the planet entertain me more than flight tracking.
With the exception of some military air traffic.
I think that's just because a lot of military aircraft don't (yet) use ADS-B transponders? This site has way more military traffic than any other. Click the "U" button in the top-right to filter on only military aircraft, it's pretty cool.
Been addicted to ads-b for a while now, agreed, the u-button filter is cool.
If I'm clawsons agent I'm using VT to work both and see who offers the best situation. I could also see him holding out to see what happens with PSU and LSU as well
Absolutely. He is in the drivers seat. The market has too many open positions, not enough qualified candidates, and money flowing from everywhere. It's red meat.
So definitely Napier
I'm not convinced a Clawson hire would be the end of the world but I'm terrified of what it would mean for our recruiting. I mean I know Wake isn't viewed as a top tier program but they are in literally the same conference we are and his recruiting results there simply wouldn't cut the mustard here. Can we really say he'll improve in that area just jumping across the conference? Sure his team is impressive this year but he doesn't really have a sustained track record of doing this and the ACC is obviously down this year - are we signing up to be mediocre for 2-3 year stretches at a time and maybe randomly be good once every 4-5 with a bunch of seniors? I'm not okay with that as the expectation. I don't want to pick another coach and bank on him taking bottom-of-the-ACC recruiting classes to a winning program through "player development." It just sounds like asking for Fuente 2.0, albeit maybe with better actual gameplanning/in-game coaching.
If he "Mike Young's" it and brings in an ace recruiting staff while nuking his WF staff, I'd be a lot more confident. But I don't really believe he would do that until I see it - nothing about his coaching background suggests that would be his style. Though nothing about Mike Young's background really suggested that either.
Keep in mind our hoops starting 5:
A High Point signee
2 Wofford transfers
A original Wofford commit
A guard ranked around 450
CMY has had a good success record recruiting since he has gotten here. Those guys are young and he has some very good experienced guys. He hit the portal to beef up the roster early which is what our FB coach will have to do.
Recruiting to Wake is entirely different than recruiting to every school other than Duke in the ACC. They were doormats in football so it takes a lot to bring in talent there.
Wake Forest has even more restriction on recruiting. It is a Private Small School that does focus more on grades for acceptance of athletes. And its Wake so its brand limits its recruiting prior to this year
Considering all of that the Coach recruited players he could ccoach up and win with which is what Beamer/VT was
I know not everyone is into Clawson, but I am riding the Coach Claw train hard. Watch a couple Wake games and I think you'll see where I'm coming from.
Whit should just keep everyone guessing and pull one of these the day of the presser.
Meh, their football team scores more points than their basketball team does...that ain't VT football
Clawson hire depends on final staff IMO. If he takes his Wake staff straight to VT, it's a very meh hire. If he surrounds himself with proven recruiters, it's exciting.
He has had the same staff at WF for most of his tenure, so don't expect any high profile assistants or recruiters.
Please no. This is the most uninspiring hire possible.
But....but we'd save money on defensive staff side to hire recruiters. Does Clawson play defense?
I raise you Butch Davis, who is newly available.
I see your Butch Davis and raise you Art Briles, who is back in the states again and is also available.
Plenty of other uninspired names that have come up.
Promote JC Price or JHam.
Go get Stiney from JMU.
There's always a lot of nonsense thrown out this time of year, when you're in coaching search mode.
slimey human being isn't the same as being "uninspiring" -- art briles was a good coach! he just was a good coach at the expense of being a decent human... harrrrrd pass.
no thank you. next
Seems like it's a dead heat between Napier and Clawson, so I hope Whit comes out and blows us away with a Kiffin or Campbell. He did it with Buzz, never say never.
I'd also be very interested in Marcus Freeman, if we decided to go cheaper HC option and throw the book at a good OC.
This Matt Cambell?
Don't understand the love affair for him or Freeze so many have.
My goodness. That's almost as bad as Butch Jones saying his players won the championship of life.
yes but matt campbell has been successful in terms of w/l. I dont get why people want one innocuous sound bite to color their view of him as a coach. he'd be a pretty good hire and a better option than clawson to me
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/iowa-state/index.html
compare the six years before he got there to the six years he has been there, that would explain why people like Matt Campbell
Where his only year above 8 wins was Covid season, where he is looking likely to only win 6 this year? How is he a better option than the guy we just paid 8 million to leave?
Best wins for Iowa State under Campbell:
2017 beat #3 Oklahoma
2017 beat #4 TCU
2018 beat #6 WVU
2019 beat #22 Texas
2020 beat #18 Oklahoma
Fuente's best win:
2016 lost by 7 to Clemson in the ACCCG
Fuente "biggest wins"
2016 UNC 17th
2017 WVU 22nd
2018 FSU 19th
2021 UNC 10th
So as we all know Fuente wasn't good enough but Iowa State isn't getting much better, they got marginally better and if you take out COVID year the margin is even smaller. Especially doing this in a very watered down BIG 12 the last 5 years. Many names out there that have much higher ceilings.
They're Iowa State lmao, not TCU not Baylor not Oklahoma State. It's analogous to BC, UVA or Syracuse having that type of success. Can't compare it to a program like us at all
As I pointed out in another thread, Iowa State has historically been among the worst P5 programs in the nation, and he has them running on a level much higher than their station.
That said, the same knocks against Clawson apply to Campbell, with even more caveats:
In basketball, I was strongly of the "wait and see" opinion about Mike Young as well, and so far in year 3 it seems like the best hire we could have made. All that is to say that, at this point, Whit has earned my trust that he will do his due diligence and make the moves that make the most sense for the program, so if he decides that Campbell (or Clawson) is the coach that he thinks can return us to the promised land I wouldn't be angry about the move, regardless of how many question marks it leaves on our checklists.
I'd like to add the 2016 Bowl game vs Arkansas. When I saw that 2nd half execution adjustment and come from behind win I thought we had found gold.
Which of Fuente's biggest wins went on to make the playoffs like 2017 OU? Which of Campbell's big wins won 4 games like 2018 FSU?
In addition to the things listed below by other people, Campbell has never enlisted a SI writer to put a gloss on a player mutiny.
yeah Campbell's big wins are easily more impressive, not sure what there is to argue about here
Those teams turned out to either be mediocre or suck ass. That's like someone on a WVU message board saying beating #15 VT was a "big win"
And outside of Oklahoma win how many of those teams finished in top 15? Again it's not just about Fuente bad you need a much better option if your going to put that guy in charge and he doesn't have the resume better than anyone else on the list.
and the 6 years before he got there?
I will actually address your question: he's better than Fuente because Campbell has elevated a p5 program for an extended amount of time. Winning 7 games is good for Iowa State, which very well may happen again in the next two weeks.
Ted Lasso!
Wrong football...also...fictional character
Yes, I know.
That is a very close paraphrase of actual dialogue from the show. It makes me wonder if that was the part of the inspiration for it.
um, I'm pretty sure Lasso coached Wichita State to a NCAA championship before he left for England. But that's Division 2 football so he wouldn't have P5 or G5 experience.
Yeah because talk is cheap and he actually won the Big 12
Who won the Big 12?
Matt Campbell
he didn't. lost to Oklahoma in conference championship game
Well shit I've been remembering that wrong for close to a year. Could've sworn they won on a late td
Nah, I think Napier is our clear #1. Question is if we're his #1.
Agreed. I think Clawson is a massive smoke screen so he can get a big raise from WF. Good coach but just doesn't make sense for VT. Not to mention his salary isn't publicly available since Wake is private, and he's probably already decently compensated and likely has a not insignificant buyout himself. $8.75 for Fu and then likely several more million for Clawson's buyout doesn't seem financially doable.
Why? Because he scores too many points and has shown that he can win games in the ACC?
Does not have demonstrated experience recruiting at a high level. This was also a big unknown with Fuente and we thought he could just learn. Now maybe Clawson would come in and build out a top-notch recruiting staff and surprise me, it's a huge unknown. But he's never operated like that, so it's odd that we would want to emphasize that with the new hire and pursue someone with no real track record of it. I don't disagree that he's a very good coach and knows how to get the most out of his players.
Wake Forest has even more restriction on recruiting. It is a Private Small School that does focus more on grades for acceptance of athletes. And its Wake so its brand limits its recruiting prior to this year
Considering all of that the Coach recruited players he could coach up and win with which is what Beamer/VT was
Excelling with less (WF) is better to me at least than failing with so much talent (Miami) as an indicator of potential. This is a lot like Fuente...except Fuente was Co-OC at TCU 2009–2011 and HC at Memphis 2012–2015. Thats not at all a lot of time
Clawson was an FBS HC for 8 years than an asst coach at D1, then Bowling Green 2009–2013 and Wake Forest from 2014 – now. Thats 20 years of experience and moving up and still wining
At each of those schools he won a Conference championship. As did Fu, at one school he was a coach
Also Mike Elco was his DC, but that Notre Dame fame and TAMU Money helped keep him not at WF
I 2nd this about recruiting to Wake. He's recruiting how he needs to to win at WF and it's working. We don't know if he'll recruit well, but he'll recruit better than he is now, and even if he somehow can only pull in the 60th ranked class in the country, we'll win 8 games. We'll be the most entertaining 8-4 of all time.
Again, that's if he recruits around 60. Fuente had to burn every bridge in the state to recruit that poorly.
Clawson has established relationships throughout VA and NC for over a decade. I'd like to see what he could do if he recruited even slightly better. Does 7-8 wins (with a built in loss to Clemson) turn into 9-10?
He hired Elko who is considered an ace recruiter. Elko wasn't pulling 5-stars to Wake because it's Wake. Clawson can probably recruit better to Bburg than Winston-Salem. He doesn't need to get a top 10 class as much as we would love that. If he returns us to just our average high 20s we'd be lighting up the ACC.
Fuente didn't know what he didn't know. Clawson is far more experienced, and hopefully knows what he doesn't know.
Like I said before, with Clawson, it all depends on his staff. If he rounds out his blindspots, we're good. If he just pulls 9 guys from Wake, it's uninspiring.
Totally agree. I believe the bulk of his staff have been with him for a good while, but he could certainly shake things up if he's the hire. Convince Elko to rejoin him as AHC/DC and now we're cooking.
I jokingly said this to a friend last night. A Clawson/Elko ticket would be a homerun hire.
Unlike last time, I'm closely eying the coordinator hires we make. I think Whit will be willing to pay top 25 salary for (at least one) experienced coordinator.
I think Elmo ends up as a head whistle somewhere this carousel.
I love autocorrect.
There is a goldmine of these first-time-typed autocorrected names all over this website this week.
Has shown just as much as Napier recruiting wise lol. In fact his evaluations are probably better.
This is likely the most apples to oranges comparison you could possible make. I would argue that Napier is far more familiar with modern recruiting process than Clawson. Napier literally has his own page of all time commits and Clawson just has 1 on his coaching page. Both have played significantly different roles in modern recruiting cycles
yeah, very different career trajectories -- Clawson has worked his way up through the head coaching ranks from lower levels FCS to higher level FCS to G5 to P5, while Napier went the "P5 assistant to coordinator to G5 head coach" route. Napier has experience around big programs who need to bring in the bluechippers to even just tread water, but I don't necessarily know that it's an indictment of Clawson that he hasn't been primary recruiter on a many players from the HC position. Saban doesn't have any listed either and it's clear he gets it and is good at it. Clawson was around Tennessee for 11 months, hired in January and fired when Lane replaced Fulmer and cleaned house.
I could be happy with Clawson, but I think some of the others floating around are more "pop" hires.
But I am trying to see why Clawson would want to come here. He already makes 3.875? at Wake, we were only paying Fuente 4. Staff money is probably about the same (unfortunately).
Playing in the same conference but on the other side isn't much of a move for him. He is old enough, Wake would probably be happy to keep him for the rest of his career.
Maybe he is tired of playing clemson every year? /s
Whit is in the process of making one big 8.75 million lump sum payment to Fu. I think there might be more money in the bank to pay the next staff than most people think.
In his press conference he literally said he's tired of people thinking we don't have money and that our financials are poor
And Clawson wouldn't be a cheap hire. You factor in probably a pretty good size buyout for him on top of the one we paid Fu, then at least probably $4.5 mil in salary to get him to jump from Wake. Clawson would be extremely pricey.
That is true
David Teel on Packer and Durham yesterday said his convo's with him he seemed totally content at Wake and was getting big infusions of cash to program to go with really good facilities (didn't realize that they did). Teel seemed to think he'd stay at Wake
These reports all strike me as leverage by Clawson's agent.
Exactly.
This probably hurts Mike Tomlin's chances then
Lol. "Football Scoop" article written by a guy from Texas who lives "
outside Dallas."Edit: Sorry, "outside Ft. Worth"
Seems legit.
No thank you. Pros for Clawson is I think he's got a high floor. We'd probably safely win about 7 to 8 games each year. The con is his ceiling is 7 to 8 games each year with the off chance you might compete for the conference if multiple teams suck.
Clawson is great fit where he's at, taking an afterthought and making them respectable. But I look at college football having Elites (Bama types), Contenders (competing for conference titles, Top20s), Respectables, Afterthoughts, Doormats. Our Beamer heyday had us in the Contender class. I don't see Clawson ever getting a program, any program, past Respectable. We can still be Contenders with the right hire.
How is his ceiling 7-8 wins? How do you know that?
His ceiling with us is 7-8 wins, but he's currently sitting on 9 at Wake and the season ain't even over. 🤣🤣🤣
Did you not finishing reading the rest of the sentence about it being higher every so many years when everyone else sucks? Because that's exactly what's going on with Wake right now. The ACC is dogshit. This Wake year is an anomaly. They aren't some future ACC player here to stay.
Parks and Rec > The Office
The only team on their schedule that's way worse than they usually are is Clemson... and they haven't even added them to their win total this year yet
This.
You realize this just furthers my point about the ACC being dogshit, right? Clawson is fine coach to take a program near or on the bottom and make them respectable, but they aren't contenders. They're "contenders" this year because everything else around them has fallen apart. FSU is down. Clemson is down. UNC was moving up but is down this year. Even Louisville, for most of the last decade you could safely pencil in at 8 wins or above is having mixed results of late. And Wake this year played a murderer's row OOC schedule of ODU, Norfolk State, and Army (and UNC because of that weird agreement they have). Does that scream vast improvement? Because it looks a hell of a lot like an easy schedule and a case of other teams falling back to their level while they basically stayed the same (which isn't bad, again, they're respectable). Dave Clawson is an average coach. If VT hires him, you're likely gonna get an average team. Which is actually upgrade from the direction Fuente was taking us but its not the level I would think most people would want when they envision making a coaching change.
Uh no, unless you mean the ACC is always bad. In which case I would remind you that we play in the ACC.
If Clawson was at VT he would recruit better, we would not have the exact same team as Wake.
We don't have to play Clemson or FSU every year. And it's not like we play a murderers row noncon. ACC is a dogshit conference that he's shown he can run through even when he has no talent, that's better than most of the coaches on our wishlist.
OT:
Weird flex. It's just a GIF.
Not that into Clawson, gotta admit it.
So one curiosity about Clawson that I'm too lazy to look up: I see that the records of the programs he's coached have indeed improved significantly under his leadership, I haven't heard anyone talk about how he did it.
Is he just a better football coach than his predecessors?
Did he enter disorganized football operations and reorganize them to look like an actual football program?
Was he a better recruiter than the last guy?
Though the on-paper numbers make him look like an attractive candidate, I just don't know if his skills are a good fit for what we lack right now.
He takes time to build up the trenches, recruiting linemen who stay for 5 years. By their 5th year, the lines are super solid. When he arrived at Wake, he redshirted a ton of linemen so he could beef up there. Their OL this year is super good.
I don't know if he is good or bad at driving organizational change.
I mean, thats exactly what Grobe did at Wake too. It was very odd that Curry played as a frosh there because that wasn't how he ran the program up until that point, but when your freshman better than everyone else one defense you play him.
So then my question would be can he take a slightly better recruit and turn them into much better players?
What are Wake's starting OL/DL recruits? Low 3 star to mid 3 star? Or mid 3 star to high 3 star? And what are ours?
My assumptions are that Wake recruits linemen that come out of HS about low to mid 3 star, and we recruit linemen that are about mid to upper 3 star.
What does Wake turn out at the end? All Conference? All American? NFL draft picks? Because All ACC with a peppering of NFL prospects is about what we do pretty consistently with our line. If he's doing the same with lower starting ratings, then he's either developing better than we are or he's better at evaluating. If he's doing slightly less, then we can expect our lines to remain about the same.
If he's taking lower rated recruits but also turning out more All ACC and more NFL prospects, or his line recruits are much lower rated, like upper 2 star, and they have about the same rate of All ACC and NFL prospects, then that's a good sign for him here.
Expanding on this in a reply to my own reply to keep it from being a wall of text:
If someone wanted to really look at starting stock of recruits and try to see if they improved, someone some time ago put some thoughts out there that went roughly something like this.
To rate existing players, give them 1 point for making a 2 deep, 2 points for starting, 3 points for all conference, 4 points for All American, and 5 points for drafted. Then give them additional partial points for things like being on award lists, winning awards, winning major awards like Outland and Heisman, first round of NFL draft, first 5 or so picks of the draft.
The scale doesn't quite match up, especially at the low end (1 star players - are there even any that go on to play Division 1? And 2 star recruits have a pretty low percentage of making the 2 deep.), but it roughly tracks expectations of success in recruiting.
I'd really be interested to see how we have done over time with this, especially the last 5 years, and what peer level programs have done.
I don't have a well thought out position on who I think should be the next coach (I thought Mike Young wasn't the guy and will gladly eat crow on that forever).
But it seems weird to me that this was the first coach mentioned in all these stories - after the first firing since the 70s, that happened at 7:45am - would be the prohibitive frontrunner so quickly. Regardless of any conversations Whit has had, I doubt he's had full on interviews with anyone, let alone the guy who probably has the longest remaining schedule in the ACC.
If it's Clawson, fine. I'm not thrilled, I think there would be problems but I'd at least wait to see what kind of staff he assembles. We may not have Bama/Clemson money, but we probably invest much more than Wake Forest.
Chadwell and Napier were the top names prior to the firing and the day of
They were the names I saw most for a job opening that didn't actually exist. I'm pretty sure that the 247 staff was saying Clawson was a focus by like 10am the morning of the firing though.
Then again, so was Mick Cronin and Ryan Odom for the last basketball opening.
I didn't see that. I saw opening Vegas odds and Clawson was 4th.
Wasn't Kevin Willard the guy? Or at least we thought he was, but maybe he declined and then we went to Young?
If it's Clawson and that's a big if, when does he leave WF? Does he coach their bowl game? If so, that would really kill this years recruiting class. Sheesh.
it's a good question. But, as you've already alluded to, I think it's v. unlikely that it's going to be Clawson so this is a bit moot
I'm going to guess this year's recruiting class won't be great no matter who signs or when.
It wouldn't be a real coaching search if there weren't some unknown sources who were sure that they knew who the current lead candidate is.
Your word of the day:
Milquetoast
I don't see 45 ppg as milquetoast, but maybe I'm crazy
'S a good word, mang
Interesting career record.
He's been a head coach for 22 years, and is only 49-46? ;^)
Maths are hard.
Apparently Lane Kiffin and da U have mutual interest, that could certainly shake things up by opening another $EC job
Andy Slater
@AndySlater
SLATER SCOOP: Lane Kiffin would leave Ole Miss for the University of Miami if the Hurricanes head coaching job were to open, multiple sources close to Kiffin tell me.
Do it. DO IT. Lane Kiffin and Da U just screams disaster.
Boatz and Hoez Part 2 in the making right there.
What's the over / under on booster-driven yacht abortions?
Lane at the U would be terrible for us. I don't think they'll ever get back to Natty levels but Lane U would be a Coastal terror.
I mean he had a successful stint at FAU up the road a bit from Miami and has been relatively successful with Ole Miss. I could see him being a Jimmy Johnson lite at Miami, which would not be fun for us. I don't think he'll have the same overall success (especially with Dabo in conference, Saban still sucking the souls of mortals, and Kirby building a death star in Athens), but I don't think it would be a disaster either. He would probably bring that "swagger" back to the U
Due to resources and lack of commitment, I think very few people could succeed there. But Lane is definitely one of them, he would kill it there
As a VT fan, I'd hate this. As a fan of college football at large, I love it.
Even as a VT fan, what's there to hate? It's actually a win/win either way. Its a win if he's a disaster because its fun to watch Lane torch himself. But if he succeeds, that boosts the ACC. You don't want to beat a poor Miami. You want to beat a good Miami. The ACC is in desperate need of its flagship football schools to actually be good. We can hate Miami all we want, but it actually benefits us if they're good too. That way, ACC schools can make the playoffs with 1 or even 2 losses because the conference has respected depth. Miami and FSU being good raises the level for everyone else. We also don't directly compete with Miami for recruits anyway so its not gonna hurt us too bad in that respect either (even when they suck, they're still pulling in a ton of talent anyway). It's not really like the UVA rivalry where beating them is fun regardless of if they suck (pretty much always) or not. But its more fun and beneficial beating a good Miami team like in the old Big East days as opposed to now where its like two sad, out of shape middle aged guys (think of Bill from King of the Hill) limply slapping each other still thinking they've got it
Yea, this is exactly how I fell.
I agree. Right now the ACC is a joke and a good Miami is a big part of the fix for that, so I would love for them to figure their stuff out. I would just want it to be like 2-3 years after we figure our stuff out
Lane Kiffin for Manny Diaz?
Let's see.... If I was Miami's AD....
I mean it would not be taking over the world, but it could be taking over the Coastal.
oh good god
they're...perfect for each other
So #BringLanetoLane isn't happening?
Don't be surprised to see Lane go to Miami. Word is they are going to hire the FAU AD. They also just got commitment for $25-30MM, so they'll open up the Brinks Truck for him.
I had a friend of mine suggest that we should target Urban Meyer......after throwing up a little in my mouth, I said "that's a hard no from me".
Wut? You wouldn't take Urban Meyer? We'd get our three best recruiting classes each of his first years and be in playoff contention in a hurry.
and in our fourth year he'd fake a heart problem and we'd be on NCAA sanctions.
As the Tennessee Chancellor said -- "we're going to run our football program with integrity"
Except at VT, we actually mean it.
It's all a moot point because Urban Meyer isn't coming to VT, but I think people would be disappointed and shocked at how much recruiting wouldn't improve.
Urban hasn't said no
I think we have a better shot at Tomlin than Urban.
Tomlin said no to USC but I don't recall him saying no to VT 👀👀👀
I swear to all the gods in the heavens, if we end up paying Justin Fuente almost 9 million dollars just so we can hire Dave Fucking Clawson...
It would probably be way more than $9mm too depending on how large his buyout from WF is. I think that is unknown since it's a private school but is rumored to be ~$4-$7mm.
No thanks
Well, at least we know Clawson is out of the running
Honestly might be. Probably my top choice but his buyout is possibly high 7 to 8 figs.
Leaning more towards Houston as the best option we have for the money. Pirates have a chance to get to 7-4 today and the depth/player development on that squad is unprecedented for the shithole Scottie left in 2019.