Given a number of reasons, I have a hard time following all the players that I don't see making plays on the field. Are we set to lose anyone that had or has potential to have a significant impact on our team?
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IMO Findlayter was always a project. Madison has the size but he didn't get any burn this year so I'm sure he's looking for somewhere that can offer playing time. Perry I'm disappointed about. Not sure if I'm disappointed because he just didn't seem to pan out this year or because he's leaving after 1 year. Probably both. He's young so there's no reason to be down about a guy that young not getting playing time with the experience we had on the line this year but I heard he just mentally didn't get it together
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DL entering the portal... either Price and Pry had some "tough conversations" and we can expect upgrades or we've got a concerning exodus at a position of need...
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Huff and the AD are beefing. Huff said in a presser that Marshall doesn't have the NIL/Buyin to compete, and the AD/Boosters took offense to be called out like that. Huff walked it back with a canned apology that he was upset he had to make.
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FWIW (cue comment about infinite eligibility) Gilliam did walk with the seniors on Saturday. Doesn't rule out him coming back but probably need to wait on an official announcement either way
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I suspect this is a way of Pry pushing the decisions on staying/leaving until after the season to keep the players focused on closing out the regular season instead of deciding if they will walk or not.
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He recognizes those that are graduating. They may only be Junior year but many take classes all summer while staying at school for football. Two summers can knock a year off if done right.
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He's a RS Junior- or Senior (4 years since HS). So technically he is a senior academically, and likley has his degree. This concept wasn't blasphemy until the recent endless eligibility waivers and covid.
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Jordan Tapscott WR is entering portal.
Class of 23, 6'1, 170. Believe he was a PWO and with incoming freshmen probably never would have seen the field. May have been one of those tough conversations to go from 116 to 105 as well.
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Random thought, if all these walk ons were scout team and practice players. And now there isn't a limit to # of coaches, why can't we pay for graduated players to run the scout teams? I see coaches throwing balls to DBs before each game. Why not during practice? They could spend all year learning opposing teams playbooks and practicing making the scout team better.
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Hendon Hooker and Khalil Pimpleton are the only two transfers that have done better after they left VT off the top of my head. Anyone else think of any others?
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He apparently didn't like the running in the first week or two he was here. I don't care if he became an All American somewhere else, that is absolutely the kind of sh*t we don't need in the program.
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He played two seasons for Michigan and won a Natty in 2023. Meaning he impressed Jim Harbaugh enough to be on that squad and play a lot. Sounds like he needed some growing up to do, but with our defensive struggles, I'll take that kind of shit at VT.
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Its possible that the VT experience with repercussions was the wake up call required to get his life on track. It is well documented that a come to jesus moment can have that effect.
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Goode was a total punk, disrespectful and out of shape. I don't care if he was Chris jones, we don't need that bullshit in the program. It only took Goode 5 years to grow up and not be a prick.
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We had a RB deep on the depth chart who left a few years back and ran for like 1K yards at a smaller school. I remember being impressed but can't remember who it was lol
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Went back and found it — it was Jalen Hampton. Don't think he ever had any stats for us, but he went to Elon and ran for 1062 yards in 11 games his first season at 4.6 YPC and 880 the next year at 4.7.
Kenji Christian also left us for NC A&T and ran for 718 yards his first year at 5.4 YPC.
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Loved the Travon years... the ONLY person on the roster with an extra gear, and whenever he ran for a 60 yard TD, he was benched the remainder of the game. Fu was playing 5D checkers yall.
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Can you imagine how Fu would do in this NIL/transfer era? He was such a weird dude and would bench guys for making good plays. Just the way he treated Teller was comical. Think we'd have to forfeit our second game because 3/4 of the team would enter the portal after the first game.
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Yup he's the one! Guess it makes sense we had some talent deep on the depth chart since we all used to crack jokes about how we had like 12 running backs lol. Basically inevitable that one or two of them were legit!
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Sucks because wasn't he backup center at one point? Got a lot of reps in the spring game if I remember. Now we're down to 7 underclassmen OL after the new guys come in, which is not great over 3 classes
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Marcellus Barnes, who was a high three star committed to us, then Georgia, only to follow Fran Brown to 'Cuse is in the portal. CB with three years eligibility remaining.
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Eh, I'm not too upset frankly. Guy looked like a physical freak but didn't play like a natural linebacker. Really struggled to grasp the position and has now been replaced by Woodson. Great athlete but just not a natural football player IMO, and probably don't want to overpay to keep him,
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If he wanted too much money, I see your point. However, football is a violent game. Who steps to give Woodson a breather? Who starts when he misses 2-3 games for a combo of targeting, hamstring/shoulder dings? I honestly don't know who the next man up would be.
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I don't see us being able to have the luxury of a ton of quality depth in this new revenue sharing/NIL era. We have to hope to retain quality starters and get starter quality transfers from the portal using the funds we have. Paying for a depth contributor just seems like it will cost us a starter at another critical spot. I'm sure some of the freshmen will get some more looks for playing time earlier now.
I mean realistically, if you have $20.5MM to spend in revenue sharing (NIL is there but will get more scrutiny now from Deloitte so no more ridiculous pay for play deals, or at least will be more difficult), a starting caliber QB right now has a market rate of upper 6 figures/7 figures. That's around 5% of your salary cap there, then think of the market rate for quality OL, DL, LB. We're going to have to start playing money ball and letting players who have big pay demands walk if we don't see the ROI.
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This seems like you're assuming a backup will want almost as much as a starter. Theoretically, NIL is for name, image, and likeness, which you would be getting paid for the use of those respective things, like if an apparel company put your name on a jersey. They aren't doing that for backups. I'd guess that applies pretty much anywhere. Unless you're a 5 star QB that is next in line at one of the top 5-10 schools, backups probably are getting next to nothing, if not nothing at all lot of schools outside the top few.
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NIL is 100% pay for play. Can we stop with the pre-tense? Triumph gives kids a figure... they do not and will not match it to Shelor motor park paying for commercials. That's why they are called "collectives"... Its simply pay for play
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This. And to the market rates for starters vs backups, that is all relative to a particular team. We may have a player that we don't see the ROI on, but another team may see potential or have a need and be willing to pay starter money for someone who would only be a depth/rotational player here. We shouldn't and wouldn't pay to match that offer for a depth player in that case. Would be nice to have them, but not if the return isn't there.
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Quite frankly, I think we could have a freshman or portal transfer taking that spot from Lawson and at the very least tread water from where we were last year, if not improve. They might have had experience, but they were still making freshman level mistakes out there, it was time to move on.
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Disagree here. He's a good athlete but was still completely lost on the field at LB, probably the most tentative LB we had that saw significant time never looked confident in his positioning or decision making.
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He was in the wrong position. Should have been a Star LB the entire time. Inside he would get washed away easily. Almost all of his great plays were in space (Star).
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This seems like even more of an indictment of the Linebacker and star coaches (I think stars are under Quinn, right?) in terms of recognizing the strengths of the players, and if they aren't playing people at positions they "get" better. If they're playing Lawson at the wrong position just because he's built a certain way is idiotic.
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Agree this one stinks. Just not sure why he would transfer. He's #1 when healthy and would get whatever NIL money he wanted. Would be drafted (high) if he could play most of the season (VT puts DBs on the league). His playing time was a result of injury.
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Why he would transfer? This is one of those "hard conversations" the staff is having. If they wanted him back, he would be back. This is the NFL now... they want to budget the safety money to younger players. IIWII. Pry better bet correctly however.
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How do we know this? Safeties like him don't grow on trees and while he has been injured for a while, he would command a certain amount of money and interest for what he's already accomplished
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We know because of his age/eligibility remaining and the timing. That is exactly what these decisions are made on at this time of year whether fans like it or not. It's not about ability anymore- its about business. As in a budget that is going to be given to kids with more eligibility. Cold hard facts. Its what the fans wanted though.
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This sounds exactly like my NCAA25 dynasty strategy.... I bring in too many recruits every year and then when making cuts I keep a 85 OVR sophomore and cut an 86 Senior
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I'm sure they would like to keep him, but they could've said your NIL package portion of the athletics revenue share is X and Stro could've said I'm worth more than that and is going to get his money via the portal.
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Important distinction - it's no longer an 'NIL package' paying these players primarily. Rosters will be funded by the $20.5 MM revenue sharing allotment for each school under the House settlement starting with the 2025-2026 sports year. NIL is still around, but the Big 4 audit firm Deloitte is now the NIL clearinghouse. Any cumulative payments to a player over $600 (the IRS reportable compensation minimum) will be sent to them to clear. If they cannot determine that the payment amount is based on an actual fair market value of services to the payor, then it will be deemed an impermissible pay-for-play payment. So the clamps are about to come down on NIL except for the players who actually do have a significant commerical/NIL value.
Everyone now has to work within their $20.5 MM salary cap for the most part. No surprise the VT staff is going to really evaluate the ROI of each player within their budget.
Edit - should also mention the $20.5 MM revenue sharing allotment is across all sports. VT has said they're going to put about 75% of that toward football, with the other 25% split between MBB and WBB. Non-revenue sports will see some increased scholarships only.
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Thanks, I didn't know the details of when rev sharing started or how the NIL supplementation worked and assumed everyone would still be getting sizable NIL money on top of the revenue share.
It would be interesting to see how Deloitte determines market value.
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From what I have read/seen online, they will look to see if the NIL payor (collective or individual/business) is actually getting a commensurate amount of services from the athlete in return. So if player X gets a $1 MM NIL deal to basically appear at a car dealership one time and sign some autographs, that's pay for play and illegal. But if they have to film several advertisements, make numerous appearances, etc. then it could be deemed a fair exchange transaction.
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"So if player X gets a $1 MM NIL deal to basically appear at a car dealership one time and sign some autographs, that's pay for play and illegal" So Texas's backup QB who makes 6 million per in NIL will be a thing of the past? I doubt it.
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Oh no doubt - the big collectives will figure out whatever they have to do to make it work. But this is at least a step in the right direction if we're going toward a professional model. The next step will be collective bargaining and contracts. It may be a few more years of this interim phase until we get there, but this will at least slow down the ridiculous NIL money being thrown around if it has to have some teeth to it. A big audit firm like Deloitte has the resources to dig deep, and you don't want to land yourselves in trouble with the IRS.
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Yeah.. I don't see this being a big change except that there's basically a $20.5 million roster minimum. NIL deals on top of that are not going away and will continue to be a pay-for-play equivalent.
Because if Auburn grad's car dealership is willing to pay a VT player $100k for a TV ad if they happen to be on Auburns roster next year, and an Alabama booster is willing to pay $120k for advertising his kids lemonade stand, Deloitte will conclude the market value for that player's endorsement is "around $120k" and VT booster's offer of $50k for a radio commercial won't cut it.
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I would love - honestly- love to know where all this fucking money comes from. Seriously. Who are these boosters in the state of Alabama that love Auburn football so much that they can raise/pay millions in NIL???? hedge fund managers? What mega corp is headquartered in Auburn, Ala? I seriously can't wrap my head around it. THE issue this election was a tough economy for Americans... yet there is literally billions in fan booster money in the SEC. For 12 games a year of enjoyment. It is 100% throw away/disposable money- millions of it. Where does it come from?
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Auburn and Alabama are the nearest thing that state has to pro teams. Remember reading an article about Bama a couple years ago that said 70% of donations to the AD or close to it came from non-alums.
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That's a good stat and all, but you don't see people donating yacht money to the New Orleans Saints. I don't know anyone who thinks they should shell out 6 figures so the Houston Texans can win more games. Maybe for season luxury suite tickets, but that's usually done through their corporations. I'm with DC. I understand that some people's lives and personalities are 100% invested in the success of these football teams and they are paying for "pleasure" via wins, but WHO is donating? Maybe it's old money and the investment of old money creates the ability to donate 6 or 7 figures to help a college sports team win, without feeling it in their bank account.
I guess we can't all be born into old money.
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Oh no, he was by far our best OL, local to where I live now, gotta go talk to some of his friends.
BREAKING: Virginia Tech starting LT Xavier Chaplin has entered the transfer portalThe 6'7 323 lb. tackle from Seabrook, S.C. started all 12 games for the #Hokies this season2 years of eligibility remaining Story: https://t.co/CU6mLtOiTFpic.twitter.com/3liCnXWUdH— Kolby Crawford (@kolby_crawford) December 9, 2024
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Uh this is terrible. Seeing as we do not have a replacement anywhere close on our roster. And very little depth outside the 5 man rising r-jr class that Chaplin was part of.
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He's open to coming back. Just wayyyyy too much money for him to not test out the portal. As we all know, competent OL is difficult to bring in via portal, he's going to be a hot commodity.
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Some rumors behind paywalls on other sites that some teams got into a bidding war for him and his market value went sky high. He's good but nowhere near worth some of the figures I saw floating around for him. Sucks a lot to lose him but we can't pay that much for an OL who isn't absolutely elite.
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Allegedly man got a crazy $$$ offer from Maryland and maybe one from Shane too.
This is where we're going to see the P2 conference discrepancy take shape. Huge bummer because, imo, moving onto his 3rd position coach in 4 years isn't awesome for his long term development. But also, if TSL offered me seven figures I'd take my happy ass off this board in a heartbeat, so 🤷♂️
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I fucking hate Jay Bilas... why? He was one of the first to beat the drum that D1 athletes that fly on charters and wear designer clothes were "slaves". I feel that VT can't compete seriously again because this constant emotional false narrative was pushed, so we HAD to go to a pro model. Fuck Jay Bilas.
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But I see this as more of a one-year thing rather than ongoing. Every team will have to work under the revenue sharing amount moving forward. I guess a lot of schools are going to frontload their NIL this offseason into some big ridiculous deals and go out with a bang until the House settlement takes effect later next year. But overpaying for players shouldn't be the norm for most schools I would think. That would just be bad business.
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Agree, but the thing is the current VT OL coach (who we hired from South Dakota) lacks a competent resume, therefore he will probably immediately get better coaching right away at other P4 schools.
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I was thinking the same thing, but somewhere on TKP in the past week or so people were talking about him being a projected 1st rounder from some external source. How he managed to jump over Strong as our best DB in the eyes of NFL scouts surprised me.
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He was 3rd team All-ACC. 8 PBU's. Not his best year, but he wasn't awful, and he's had very good years. He's also got decent size and can move. Looking at free scouting websites (little sketch, but the best I've got) I'm seeing late 1st to 2nd round grades.
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Malachi Thomas in. The RB room is fairly talented with young guys but Thomas seemed to improve every year.
BREAKING: Virginia Tech RB Malachi Thomas is expected to enter the transfer portal per source. Thomas ran for over 1,100 yards and 7 touchdowns during his 4 years with the #Hokies. Read more on Thomas and what this means for VT here: https://t.co/INySCRwP3F— Tim Thomas (@TimThomasTLP) December 9, 2024
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Likely but with how the younger guys played I don't think he was going to be a feature back, likely would have been an OR with somewhere around half of the RB carries.
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I don't think he took any offensive snaps though he was playing special teams - I could be wrong here as OL is probably the hardest position to notice snap count because of lack of stats there.
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BREAKING: Virginia Tech starting Safety Mose Phillips III plans to enter the Transfer Portal, he tells @on3sportsThe 6'2 195 S totaled 65 Tackles, 1 Sack, 4 PBU, 3.5 TFL, 1 INT, & 1 FF this season2 years of eligibility remaining https://t.co/qWgEGRyluLpic.twitter.com/xNO9j7Birj— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) December 9, 2024
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I had the same thought. Either the players know a change is coming or they know one isn't and they don't like being coached by a MAC level squad. We basically need transfers for every position on defense and an entire offensive line.
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Oh I totally agree. At this point, I think we are going to have a 6-6 or likely worse year next year and we're probably looking at a new AD and HC after that. Hate to say it but that's where this is headed. The schedule gets much more difficult next year too, and if this was Pry's most senior-laden and talented team, prepare for a massive step back next year barring no staff changes.
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Yes, VT values Phillips, (BWW he was rated the #46 of 51 safeties in the ACC rated by PFF), but not as much as he values himself.
per TSL... Philips was planning on staying @ VT then got involved with an agent who convinced him to ask for more $$$. So much more $$ that VT was like.. we'll do half that if you stay. And Phillips chose to leave and hit the Portal.
Highly unlikely that anyone is going to pony up the kind of money he is asking for. Great chance he winds up getting less than VT's offer.
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1. VT's offer was best and final at the time.. they are not going higher
2. VT's offer may have been rescinded entirely and he's not welcome back
3. IF he comes back hat in hand, AND VT takes him back... who is to say he doesn't get a smaller offer from VT?
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But at the same time, this is life of a non-P2 school. At best we are a feeder program to everyone else. We're the Triple-A football team for the SEC and Big Ten
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Even moreso than being a non-P2 school. We aren't very good, in any context. We are a mediocre team, and we've gone 6-6 back to back seasons. We haven't been consistently good since 2011.
Chaplin, in particular, is at an uber-premium position in the portal ecosystem. There are lots of top teams he would start for. Hopefully, we can keep him here without sacrificing majorly elsewhere.
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Thinking out loud a bit but wonder if Philips and Stroman know their coaching is changing...i.e. P.P. is out??
Stroman particularly makes no sense... I don't think there are tons of teams looking to throw $$ @ a guy who's spent most of the last 2 years injured.
Chaplin---is what it is...this was always where NIL/Portal was heading...P2 uses everyone else as a Minor League. It completely sucks, but somewhere there is a 17 year-old with a Ferrari that he wouldn't have otherwise had...so few eggs to make an omelet, yeah??
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1) I think the staff probably realizes they overpaid for a lot of the players they retained last year, and concentrated too much cash on the QB and WR room and had other holes that they failed to cover (OL, LB, S come to mind). I think they're going to have to let some guys walk to fill more holes on the roster this year.
2) I think there was palpable momentum and optimism going into last offseason. But now I think the book is out on Pry and his staff, and there's probably some thought by some of these portal entrants that this staff isn't going to take them where they want to go. Hard to spin this year into the same offseason hype as last year, especially if no coaches changes whatsoever.
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To be honest, that always felt like a senior led effort to make an impact this year. I think that push was unlikely to return when so many of the reasons to stay were the seniors graduating.
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Officially in the transfer portal as a OL with 3 years of eligibility remaining. • Played DT 22' ( redshirt freshman ) and 23' ( medical redshirt played in 3 games ) • Moved back to OL spring 24' • Former 5⭐️ in the 2022 class pic.twitter.com/cdkQ647xJi— Gunner Givens (@givens_gunner) December 9, 2024
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1) Xavier Chaplin- I think a case study with what is wrong with the composition of the program. There is so much hand wringing about his departure, but his performance, while at times was serviceable, wasn't top tier. His footwork and effort took steps backwards as the season progressed, was constantly missing snaps because of a shoulder issue, and never was good in pass protection. The problem? The Hokies didn't have someone with higher upside in development. The OL were mostly Fuente era holdovers, and we have yet to see anyone where the relationship was established with this staff take a big leap forward. Meadows got a last second offer. Braelin had the family tie in with his brother. Then to look and only see two scholarhship takes at a position where there are rarely difference makers in the portal is very frustrating.
2) Mose Phillips- this one is a mixed bag. It is troubling because Pry made him a priority and identified him early as a part of the solution. Either it was a missed evaluation or awful coaching, because there isn't anything in his performance that would indicate he would be a huge loss. Sometimes those upside guys just never get their feet to catch up with their heads (see Hunter, Devon), but the optics aren't good.
3) Malachai Thomas- clearly lost his explosiveness and probably was a "tough conversation because of how effective Coney was in limited touches. I liked his toughness (minus the Marlowe Wax play in the Dome), but for a guy whose next season is likely his last and wants to play, a reduced role probably isn't appealing.
4) Gunner Givens- he was never going to play at VT. Physical tools, but mental toughness and williningess to take coaching were always going to be issues. I am still shocked he stayed in the program this long. Dead wood.
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Sums up a lot of my take on it too. These are guys where the ROI isn't matching up to likely what they want, either compensation or playing time next season. So makes sense for both sides to move on. The amount of money floating around that Chaplin was commanding is absolutely absurd given his performance. That is more than a lot of top-tier starting P4 QBs will get if those numbers are remotely accurate.
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Mose would have been fine with stroman back, but we are now down 3 safeties that have playing time.
Thomas would have been fine for senior leadership and banging out some yards to keep wear and tear down on all the backs but Coney, Prioleau, and Mason seem good
Chaplin sucks because who is going to play? Moore is gone too. We don't have bodies. We're now an i jury away from Givens playing OG and he's gone. While big picture he's not a loss, we just don't have anyone.
It feels like since there isn't a salary cap were seeing NFL QB stupidity for every position. Serviceable OTs getting paid like Trevor Lawrence. Dak, Trevor, Love, Burrow, and Tua are the top 5 paid QBs in the NFL, Burrow is probably thr only one that should be there. How does Kylar Murray make more than Allen or Mahomes? It's gonna get stupid
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I mean outside of Chaplin, we didn't have anyone good on the line. Replacing them isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's not like having everyone return this year helped us at all.
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Upgrading is borderline impossible with how much linemen cost in the portal though. And even if we upgrade at 3 starting positions (very big IF), the line will still have basically zero depth
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Considering how in demand O Line is, do we really think this staff is going to be able to cobble together an equal line...especially with Chaplin putting it out there one of his reasons for looking is a perceived lack of development from this staff?
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Total: 1 starter 2 backups 2 reserves. There was no plan for this. Gunnar Givens and Lance Williams would likely both start given the current roster. This is not something that can be fixed even with multiple plug and play portal transfers (which if they do exist will cost an incredible amount of money).
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I have to think it's more the latter. There are always more players in the portal than viable landing spots, and have to assume a lot of these kids aren't just looking for playing time at a lower level as opposed to testing the waters and seeing who will pay.
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There are 1,726 FBS players in the portal so far for the 2024-25 transfer cycle. How busy is that? There's the number of players TOTAL who entered the first two years the portal existed:2018-19: 1,7002019-20: 1,678https://t.co/5cp8GnYgzR— Chris Hummer (@chris_hummer) December 10, 2024
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A reminder this doesn't just happen to the #Hokies. Around the ACC (thus far):FSU - 15 TransfersLouisville - 14 TransfersPitt - 11 TransfersStanford - 14 TransfersVirginia - 13 TransfersVirginia Tech is currently at 11 scholarship players who have entered the NCAA Portal....— Matej Sis (@MatejS247) December 9, 2024
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is it possible that a significant change to the college football landscape means that a "Fuente-era excuse" isn't actually an excuse any more? Seriously question. Because it can't be both that college football has changed to be unrecognizable from what it was a few years ago and that we as observers should still view it through the same lens as Spring 2021.
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"Everyone else's sucks too" recruiting, attrition, etc was the rallying cry for Fuente supporters. Yeah we have a bunch of guys leave but so does Duke. It's horseshit in any era. Call it what it is.. our whole OL just hit the portal.. who gives a fuck how many portal guys uva has?
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Except in 2020 it was some indicator that Fuente lost the locker room and the team hated him and there was systemic rot. Now every team in america hates their coach and has systemic rot?
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I think we're up to 15 at this point. Phillips, Moore, and Chaplin hurt IMO, but a lot of the guys so far have been PWO or minimal contributors. I'm guessing the portal is going to be overflowing this year with the roster limitations coming.
Edit: I don't know if total number of transfers means much this year and quality losses are going to be more nuanced based on the variability of how rosters are constructed.
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A bunch of portal guys in the 2 deep on a 6-6 team that can't close games doesn't indicate to me they are "passed on the depth" chart, no- it indicates to me that they are looking for greener pastures- money, coaching etc. I won't believe for one second we are sitting on a talent gold mine and these guys were going to be on the bench. not one second. That's what the Fuente defenders said, and you see that that was horseshit.
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This doesn't really surprise me. Never really broke in on the offense and I heard they were trying him out on defense to see if he could make the field there.
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We are currently being told that guys like Pennix, Madison, and Bradshaw can't play here and were being passed- on a 6-6 team that can't beat Duke. I call 100% BS. If that was true we would be winning, not treading water. If it is true, we suck at player evaluation.
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I think our starters are mid and our backups are worse than mid. So to your point about player evaluation... yeah probably.
I will say I think this staff has hit on some of the younger guys (Woodson and Pop come to mind) as well as good portal evals. I think Pennix and Bradshaw were always going to be somewhat reaches. Their recruiting short lists were very Fuente-ish (VT, a mid P4, G5)
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Exactly. Pennix and XTB were always high ceiling development guys who will be moving down to G5 or FCS programs. XTB has a lot of speed, but Pry always said he wasn't consistent. He was passed by Heath this year as well as possibly Adams. Pennix was a reach who played well on special teams but was passed by true freshman Josh Clarke in a DB room that is pretty crowded. Madison was never good and was never going to see the field.
If that was true we would be winning, not treading water.
DC, you act as if this group of players leaving were contributors who make us more competitive. They weren't. They're not good players. If they were they would've gotten on the field more.
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On the flip side of this, all our portal offers so far seem to be dudes in G5 and FCS programs. I know we struck gold with Tuten, but it is concerning to me that we don't seem to be courting many p4 players.
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I would focus on the players' offer list out of the portal, not where they are coming from. If it's an FCS player with an offer from Duke and Rice and us, it's probably not great. If it's an FCS player with an offer from half the SEC, then it's probably a safe eval.
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You shouldn't. no more player loyalty, so why should fans be. The "we want guys who want to be here" days are over.
You should only care if we are willing to go all in and buy a team to win. As we saw this year, there's no guarantee that 18-24 or 30-year-olds (I hear ya, DC) will get you more than six wins.
NIL has made a mockery of the sport. Better yet, it's brought the money into the light.
Go to the light, Carol Ann. Go to the light.
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Better yet, it's brought the money into the light.
This - NIL and the portal have just exposed the underbelly of sport. Fans can no longer be blissfully ignorant. Coaches won't be able to demand the same pay. Administrators can no longer hide money in water slides and putt putt courses. University leaders were willing to sell their souls to broadcasters. Now it's time to collect.
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Man the putt putt courses are only not a thing anymore because schools don't have to wow recruits, they just need to pay them. And that money isn't being redirected from admins and coaches, its being diverted from other sports and it depends upon the average fan forking over more of their money.
All so the 18 year olds who already had a leg up on everyone can now make sure their grandkids have a leg up, too
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Man the putt putt courses are only not a thing anymore because schools don't have to wow recruits, they just need to pay them.
I think that's a good thing?
And that money isn't being redirected from admins and coaches, its being diverted from other sports and it depends upon the average fan forking over more of their money.
I fully expect that we will see coaching contracts leveling out, especially at non-P2 schools and tier 2 P2 schools, as soon as House goes into effect.
As far as other sports go... I hear you, truly. I feel conflicted. On one hand, football really fuels everything - there's no denying it - so shouldn't they get a substantially bigger piece of the pie? On the other hand, I do think there's something cool about a competitive olympic sport program. But not as cool as having a great football program.
All so the 18 year olds who already had a leg up on everyone can now make sure their grandkids have a leg up, too
I mean... Most kids playing other college sports - Baseball, Tennis, Softball, Track, Swimming, etc - already come from a much more privileged background than your typical football or basketball player does. Not sure an equity argument really holds here.
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"I fully expect that we will see coaching contracts leveling out, especially at non-P2 schools and tier 2 P2 schools, as soon as House goes into effect."
I think this makes a ton of sense. Coaching salaries ballooned as a function of excess money being available and as a compensation for extremely good recruiters. You could pay a true coach a bit less and then allocate the "premium for a great recruiter" to a bigger budget to buy players.
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My guy. The football program had some amount of money. There were limited places to dump that money legally before. Coaches were an obvious place to put it, because they had some level of direct impact on winning the games. Now it is possible to pay players, some of whom have a more direct impact on winning the games. So there will be shifting of resources. No one is talking about removing the ability to pay coaches. You can see the difference there, right?
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Except now it's going to take a lot more money than just "coach" money to be competitive. We couldn't keep up as it was and now we're gonna have to pony up a player pool of $$$. Where do you think that is going to come from? Our revenue share isn't increasing enough to offset it. You better be ponying up the donations to pay these young athletes. Oh, and you'll also see tuition rates increase and probably a higher "athletic " fee added to each student
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Yeah we'll probably see $100k annual tuitions in our lifetime for public schools (sooner than we think, TBH), and one of the main drivers for it will be to pay fellow students to play football, or to build facilities for those athletes which are off limits to the regular students body. But it's fine, squeeze them regular kids to pay the elites more, gotta love it.
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Exactly.
"Those poor football players", nothing poor about the majority of them. It takes crazy money to be a part of those 7v7 teams, those camps. Not to mention the elite talent kid from Rhode Island who has no chance of getting noticed so his poor parents send him to Bradenton FL to play for IMG, i know that's dirt cheap for the poor kids.
The true poor kids play D2, D3 or NAIA if at all because they don't have the luxuries of doing camps and scouting events. They'll never get ranked and recruited with the big dogs because they can't afford those events and travels. But hey, let's pay the athletes and make that gap even bigger.
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If this were true we'd still be pulling diamonds out of the rough from the 757 boys club, YMCA, and putting together the teams we did in the 90s and 2000s. It isn't and we aren't.
You can't say this and then also say there are no hidden gems anymore because of the internet, hudl, recruiting services, etc. If a player is talented, coaches will know about him.
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They are there, look at Tuten. Look at all the juco and fcs players that go into the portal and get offers from the P2/4. Once the get a chance to play and showcase their talents and there's film, then the offers come. There's plenty of diamonds in the rough however with all the talking heads and plethora of recruiting services out there, most people assume all the athletes have been evaluated and THAT'S just not the case. It's all a business and it all comes down to money. If you have money you're in, if you have talent and money you're golden. If you're talented and broke, it takes a shit ton of extra work and luck.
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What I have a real fucking problem right now is that you're basically setting the average student up for generational debt with Student Loans in order to prop up the kids who already had it all with free tuition by now giving them generational wealth in NIL payments.
It's so fucking backwards from what college should be. It's not just that athletics is broken, it's now causing academics to break even harder than it was before.
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Looks like this is actually happening now with some of the big name coaches. Seems similar to a Tom Brady type of contracts where an individual (or coach) can only take so much compensation before it takes away from the overall ability to get other good players.
I fully expect that we will see coaching contracts leveling out, especially at non-P2 schools and tier 2 P2 schools, as soon as House goes into effect.
I'm not sure what would possibly make someone think that. The Unlimited Transfer Portal has enhanced the value of individual coaches incredibly. Possibly less so at the non-P2 level, because when enough money comes calling, those players are leaving regardless.
But absolutely ZERO chance P2 coaching salaries don't continue to balloon exponentially. Having a top-level coach who can both recruit and fundraise is going to be paramount...programs will pay out the nose for that.
Here's a conversation:
Admin:"Coach, you've been tremendously successful so we are prepared to offer you a 4 year extension, with a $10k raise per year"
Coach: "Yeah, that's not gonna work for me"
Admin: "but coach, we have to pay players now, so we need to save money somewhere"
Coach: "Great, I'm gonna go coach at Rival U. and take at least 6-8 of this team's best players with me"
And non-P2 salaries may be stagnant because it will be a glorified minor league and a stepping stone level for coaches who want to get the big money in P2.
At the G5 level--whatever % of programs are even still active 10 years from now--is where the real economic impacts will be felt.
But the coaching money isn't going away, it's just going to get shifted to different places. Just like NIL as a whole, not really about the benefit of everyone, just about benefiting a selected few at the detriment of everyone else.
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"If the primary decision factor for players is money"- 100%.... and in college football that means these insane endowments and booster money...which happens to coincide with the schools that have the most players drafted- bama and ohio state... so that also checks their second choice for going to a school... getting to the NFL. It's a club and VT aint part of it.
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Money is important but players follow coaches to at least an equal extent. These guys have been convinced since early teens that they are going to make big NFL $$ and they trust those who they think can get them there.
One of the biggest causes of exodus in the Portal is the position coach leaving or getting fired.
If Mines left VT, I guarantee we would see a big chunk of the WR room leave too.
Look at Bama last year after Saban left...
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But there are coaches who have clear records of being successful recruiters year over year and there will always be tremendous value attached to them.
To imagine they are going to accept a paycut or even stagnation just because colleges are going to be playing players is an extreme leap of logic. The competition is only going to get fiercer for those at the top and bidding wars will ensue.
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There's really no reason to. Other than the fans of the top 5-8 Blue Bloods, college football fans are largely being told that they don't matter.
And if they want their team to be competitive, they need to take out a reverse mortgage on their house to help pay ridiculous NIL money for guys who mostly have no chance whatsoever to ever play in the NFL.
Guys like Malik Murphy who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and no NFL scout takes seriously somehow has 6-figure value in this broken-ass Market.
It's not sustainable, never has been, and most of the teams not in the top echelon are going to flounder and ultimately fail financially.
This was always where the system was headed without any oversight. It was stupid from the start and never about actually "fairly" compensating players.
Fans of VT football, should have seen this coming from a mile away, and called bullshit on it from the start.
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Most of us (and football fandom, to be honest) saw this coming, but we were shouted down because any criticism of the system was met with bad faith arguments taking evetything as a offense to those poor college kids who were just trying to make a few dollars to pay for textbooks.
We all saw this coming. We saw that it would kill non rev sports, we saw that it would kill the vast majority of non-P2 schools, we saw that it would create an unsurvivable power imbalance and we were told to shut up.
So yeah I don't know why anyone is a fan anymore. Fuck the whole system. Hope it burns
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We're fans because regardless of how they get there, there will be 100+ kids wearing maroon and orange on the sidelines representing our school. And, generally speaking, we like our school.
I can hate the system, hate the roster construction, hate the portal, hate the playoffs, hate everything about CFB, but come Saturdays, I will never hate the team that suits up. They're playing for us, literally for our entertainment, and I'll root for them.
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I started as a VT fan. I became a CFB fan. I enjoyed watching all the games - including the ones that didn't feature VT
Now, I ONLY watch VT - and the product has been poop for the last 15 years so my patience is running really thin. I just can't watch CFB anymore - it is not entertaining to me anymore
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If you're not finding the games entertaining then sure, I get it. But for the 2-3 hours of actual football, I still find the games worth watching and entertaining. The end result does not change the fact that I turned off my brain for a couple of hours, had a couple of drinks with friends, and as was the case for this year, saw a lot of close back and forth games that had me tuned in to every play.
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back when I thought VT had even the slightest chance of reaching the summit I was interested in watching other games and seeing how they might impact the post season picture. Now that it's basically a foregone conclusion and the powers-that-be are unashamedly pushing the agendas of a select few teams I have very little interest in the sport at large. It's a direct result of the failed CFP structure, conference realignment, and networks putting all their eggs in two baskets. The sport just isn't interesting anymore because anyone not named Georgia, Bama, LSU, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, Texas stand no chance. Regional rivalries are dying. Teams in California are playing the ACC. Oregon is in the B1G. The SEC appears to run the show. ESPN proudly slobbers all over the SECs unit. Guys like Herbstreit have become total clowns with no integrity. I. Just. Can't. Watch. Anymore.
I've joined an EPL fantasy league with my brother and have found watching soccer on the weekends to be FAR MORE ENJOYABLE than football. I watch one football game a week (VT) and then focus on soccer. It's been great.
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SMU, Vandy, Tulane, Indiana - all are historically dead end programs that have capitalized on the new world of College Football. There's a lot of room for upward mobility in the sport. Arguably more than ever before.
VT just doesn't have a way to capitalize on it right now.
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Because at the program level, we're cheap and ignorant relatively speaking. Our AD has repeatedly kneecapped us. He signed a shit Nike deal because it was "on his desk" from the guy before him. He's extended coaches who don't deserve it, so we can't fire them. He's spent a fortune on non revenue sports while neglecting football for a decade. We need stadium wifi, LED lights, new locker rooms, and better entry access. Instead we got knockoff seatbacks and protected the salamanders. Sure, we shifted some resources around this year to focus on football. Welcome to the party guys. So did everyone else. You can't neglect a program for 10 years then expect it to change in a season. That'd be like showing up only in the 4th quarter and expecting to win. That's how you lose to Vanderbilt and Rutgers. And then you've got the audacity to raise ticket prices and blame the fans rather than having an ounce of introspection.
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Yea... my big concern is that VT's struggles are less related to personnel and (significantly) more related to donors, geography, and conference affiliation.
Replacing people is easy. Changing culture is challenging but doable. The challenges I mentioned above are really difficult to deal with.
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Agree fully. The "This is Home" Beamer-style homespun culture is just not working in this era of college football. Players are going to go where there's a good playing and financial opportunity, chance to play in big spotlight games, and get prepped for the NFL. The old way of doing things just isn't working. VT big money donors are going to have to realize this, and the VTAD is going to have to get more aggressive top down. We can't hang on to under achieving coaches for 4-5+ years and hope it will work out like Beamer did. We can't beat our chest when we thump UVA and tout that we are the flagship VA program - that does not matter to top recruits even in VA anymore. The culture at VT is just so behind and it will take a ton to get caught up at this rate. There's just not one easy hire/fix to revamp these cultural and programmatic issues.
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I wouldn't say the "this is home" approach isn't working, but it's not enough by itself.
The amount of talent in our six hour radius is small relative to the number of schools competing for that talent. THAT is the big problem.
So either we need to find a way to win with less talent, or we need to find a way to compete for that talent. OR we need to find talent outside of that radius.
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At this point in terms of VT athletics, it comes down to leadership. Since 2011- the Beamer transaction and how it was handled, Fuente, Pry, NIL etc. Whit has had opportunities to make program changing decisions and here we are spinning wheels for 10 plus years. If you are going to allow Beamer to coach as long as he wants, then give him the tools to win- hire more analysts, hire better coaches. To be fair, Beamer was making bowl games- which is what we are doing now, so any decision there was tough. Had Beamer gone 2-10, decisions would have been easier. Fast forward to Fuente- at the time, great hire- When he got to Memphis, there was nothing and no support. He won there, and kudos to him. That is a different animal than VT though and Whit deserves heat for that. He is supposed to really "pay attention to" recruiting, and that was Fu'd blindspot and it took Whit too long to see it. So now you have a highly unpopular coach- ask Tre Turner, ask Dwight Vick, ask the 99 team he blew off. So football starved, great fans VT have an abrasive, unpopular coach that is allegedly talking to other schools and he is not winning. The team doesn't want to play in bowls etc. Could not be more toxic- recruiting, losing, players hate the coach. Pretty much worse case scenario. So Whit is left with the most critical decision of his tenure. He chooses to hire a guy that has never been a head coach before to clean up the most critical piece of his department. Why? Well he has ties to Beamer and VT. No other reason really. Pry was only a coordinator at a P4 school for 4 years- and that was basically co-coordinator for a head coach that brings elite talent in. Whit rolled the dice that the Beamer old VT connection was THE factor for a new coach. Not recruiting, not X and O's, not prior HC experience, not the hottest commodity. Now everyone will say Whit has no money to work with and that is what all decisions are based on- well Whit needs to pitch VT football to the board better then. It's part of his job. Its not like he supports Olympic coaches either- he hand stings them at every turn. We have no leadership- that's why we are 12-12 in our last 24. That's why we signed the 43rd best class, that's why we are a lower/mid ACC program now. Leadership. Lack Of.
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I agree with a lot of this, but I think this part is straight up wrong:
He chooses to hire a guy that has never been a head coach before to clean up the most critical piece of his department. Why? Well he has ties to Beamer and VT. No other reason really. .
The perception post-Fuente was that VT needed a coach who had experience recruiting at a 'big boy football program,' and - in addition to coaching and recruiting - that person could install the infrastructure that VT didn't have.
Pry was only a coordinator at a P4 school for 4 years and that was basically co-coordinator for a head coach that brings elite talent in. Whit rolled the dice that the Beamer old VT connection was THE factor for a new coach. Not recruiting, not X and O's, not prior HC experience, not the hottest commodity
This is false:
Pry had been a DC for over a decade when hired, and a DC or co-DC at a P5 school since 2011 (Vandy). In that time, he had the 10th, 8th, 19th, 10th, 16th, 21st, 7th, 17th, 34th, and 5th best defenses per SP+ (from 2011-2021, respectively).
Pry was the lead recruiter for 19 bluechip players, 15 of which were from VA, MD, or PA (areas we recruit).
There are a lot of reasonable arguments against the Pry hire:
You can argue that Whit should have focused on Head Coaching experience instead of P5 experience (VT can't afford both)
You can argue that Whit should've prioritized a coach who is a 'developer' of underrated talent instead of someone who is better at recruiting talent.
You can argue that Whit's interviewing strategy is flawed because his interview clearly didn't test Pry's game management knowledge.
You can argue Whit should have never let Pry hire two first time coordinators.
You can't tell me that Pry was hired 'just' because of a Beamer connection. His resume fit the gaps (recruiting, program management, personality, etc) that VT was trying to fill at the time.
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When I look at the Fuente hire, it's clear that Whit had blindspots. He didn't realize how far behind our program infrastructure was, and because he didn't know that, he couldn't properly evaluate Fuente.
When I look at the Pry hire, I see the challenge of deciding trade offs with limited resources - Do you prioritize head coach experience or Power school experience? Do you prioritize development or recruiting?
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I think I'm more lenient to Whit on the Pry hiring and associated blind spots/risks. I've never interviewed anyone for a head coaching job, but I would think that assessing someone's game management ability would be kind of difficult. What do you do - ask them hypothetical questions about how to handle the last two minutes of a game? Pry checked a lot of boxes that we thought we needed Post-Fuente, so I can understand how we got here.
I know everybody thought Fuente was a great hire at the time, but I have a lot of questions about you hire somebody to be a head football coach at the Division 1 level and not realize that they have essentially zero plan or ability to recruit. So yes, dummies (like myself) thought "good offensive coach + Bud Foster = championship". But the Athletic Director not realizing at all what a successful, modern D1 program looks like is less forgivable.
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I'm not done with Pry yet. I'm close... but I'm not done yet. If we groundhog day it with the same exact staff heading into the Sugar Shane game expecting the win fairy to show up, I am more than done with Pry/Whit. Why? because Shane will smoke us and for 3 hours in prime time we get to hear Sean McDonough say "former hokie, dad was a legend, how sweet this must be for him" - and I'd rather the hokies win in that spot.
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Agreed. We hired Pry because he knew what "big time football" looked like. Well if he brings back the same staff that underachieved to go 6-6, that aint big time football.
If they mix it up, it at least says they know what should happen. Whether they'll be able to execute and win games is always a different story
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I know everybody thought Fuente was a great hire at the time, but I have a lot of questions about you hire somebody to be a head football coach at the Division 1 level and not realize that they have essentially zero plan or ability to recruit. So yes, dummies (like myself) thought "good offensive coach + Bud Foster = championship". But the Athletic Director not realizing at all what a successful, modern D1 program looks like is less forgivable.
I think 2016 was in the midst of a rather large change in college football. The idea of a 'CEO coach' was not popularized - Dabo was the only one doing it. Promoting a G5 coach to the P5 was very en vogue. I think a lot of people (including Fuente and Whit and fans) thought that VT could just recruit itself and churn out top 20-30 classes.
The landscape of College Football changed so much from 2015-2020 (and even more from 2020-2024). Whit was ever so slightly behind the curve when he hired Fuente. It was costly.
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At the time, I was 100% on board with the logic that if you can win at dumpster fire Memphis, you can win at VT- I was very much on board with that. It was wrong. VT's facilities that people like to bang on are literally the Taj Mahal in every way compared to Memphis... and Fu won there. The logic was solid.
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I think a lot of people (including Fuente and Whit and fans) thought that VT could just recruit itself and churn out top 20-30 classes.
Yeah and this is the part that i think is very dumb of an athletic director. Yes - CFB changed drastically in the last ten years, but coaches have always had to be able to go in a recruit's living room and talk to him and his parents. That is the bare minimum and Fuente sucked at it and couldn't be bothered to try improving.
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Fu even did Whit a favor by embarrassing the entire VT community at ODU. That was a disgrace. If Whit fired him that week, named an interim coach- nobody would have batted an eye. Am I making too much of one game? No I am not. Fuente had not won shit. He had no equity and he embarrassed the school as much as ever on a football field. If Whit was serious about winning, he would have sent a message then. The program was out of control, and the talent on the field was so poor and poorly coached that a 3 win ODU beat you. An in state school- it killed recruiting for years. Whit missed a huge opportunity.
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coaches have always had to be able to go in a recruit's living room and talk to him and his parents. That is the bare minimum and Fuente sucked at it and couldn't be bothered to try improving.
This was not Fuente's problem IMO. It's not that he wasn't a good enough salesman. It's that he didn't know how to run an organization, train others, etc.
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Of course its hindsight. If you prefer foresight- what would the reaction on this board be if I told you- 3 years into Pry's tenure, we will be 6-6, lose to Rutgers twice, lose to Duke and sign classes in the 40's? zero people on here would defend that. None.
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nobody is asking you to defend the results. but dont let the mediocre results change the way you evaluate the hire at the time it was made.
if pry is a bad hire it's because he loses too many one score games and cant manage a clock. not because his only qualification was apparently being part of the Blacksburg Old Boys Club. not only is that a sour grapes take, it's wrong and it's not rooted in reality
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What are you seeing that I am not? Serious question. Brent Pry had never been a head coach. Brent Pry was a DC for 5 years under Franklin. Brent Pry was not on the short list of "hot upcoming coaches" like Fuente was. He was very much under the radar. Pry was a great recruiter? maybe, but he had a Penn State polo on and an elite closer as a boss. I'm not seeing much besides the connection to VT. If there is nothing to that, why didn't Whit hire someone with Pry's exact resume not associated with VT? Or better yet someone that had been an HC before? I honestly think it was a huge, huge factor in the hire.
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I'm not discounting his time as a co-DC - especially seeing as his long time co-DC (Bob Shoop) has drastically underperformed at almost every stop since he stopped DCing with Pry.
Point taken about the advantage of the PSU polo - recruiting at BlueBloodU will always be different than recruiting at VT.
I do think that it was important to get someone who could modernize VT and help reset/upgrade booster expectations on funding an FBS football program. He was hired to do that, and that is one of the few areas where he is meeting expecations
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if "connection to beamer" was the only selling point, why wasn't anyone else the guy? Why was it someone whose only connection was as a GA 25 years prior? Could have had JC Price, already in the building and way cheaper! Could have hired Scot Loeffler with his HC experience! Could have hired Shane with a godfather offer, he's LITERALLY A BEAMER!
Brent Pry was so far under the radar that bar1990 suggested him as a potential candidate as soon as it was clear that Fuente was gone. Yes the connection to VT had a say in it -- that was biggest criticism of Fuente! Didn't get it, didn't understand it, didn't make an effort. Culture fit matters, but someone being a culture fit doesn't mean that it was their only qualification.
Should we have hired Manny Diaz to replace Fuente after he got canned at Miami? honest question -- that's like the only name that can come to mind immediately for P5 HC criteria who was available that cycle.
edit: leaving the top part for posterity but i don't feel like getting into this now. Manny is a fun alternative though!
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Probably... why? because he would be better than 1-12 in one score games. why? because you can't be worse. We aren;t winning a natty in football, so hindsight, Diaz probably fucks up less timeouts than Pry.
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Manny in Blacksburg is weird to think about, but I also think it's weird to see him at Penn State or Duke. I happen to think he's a good coach who got shafted at Miami.
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bar covered this well about how this comment is half very legit and half complete nonsense. Addressing the no HC experience point, remember all the conversations on this board about what we needed in a HC before and after Fuente got fired? The number one thing people were pointing to was high-level P5 experience. What we know from around the country is that prior HC experience is not a guarantee of success. Coaches who had no previous HC experience:
Dabo Swinney
Ryan Day
Kirby Smart
Dan Lanning
Rhett Lashlee
Shane Beamer
Kenny Dillingham
Marcus Freeman
Lincoln Riley (at Oklahoma)
Mike Elko
Manny Diaz (at Miami)
Pat Narduzzi
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There's a pretty big gulf between where we were (which was not equitable) and where we are now (which is not sustainable).
Not paying athletes in the 80s was fine. But by the mid-2010s, with schools, coaches and TV networks making billions, it was absolutely clear that student athletes were being exploited. Tuition and board was a fine compensation in the 80s. Much less defensible in the 2010s. Recognizing that and advocating that athletes get a cut of the vast sums their work is generating isn't advocating for where we are now.
We're where we are now because no one had the courage to just come out and say that college football is a pro sport. We're trying to layer professional features on top of an amateur infrastructure. It will not work. Demonstrably.
The fix is to fully embrace the professional nature of the sport and get government permission to set up things like salary caps, trading windows, etc.
We all could see this coming, yes. Agreed. That doesn't mean the way it was was right.
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And I'll die on the hill saying that not graduating with student debt was a massive fucking leg up and benefit that every scholarship athlete enjoyed and it's horseshit that we were gaslit by the talking heads into thinking it wasn't.
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That's fair. My counter point would be that that benefit was no longer commensurate with the value generated to schools and networks by CFB collectively.
If I can ever get motivated, I want to read this book on the topic.
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Networks generate money by raising subscription fees. The majority of which subscribers never watch a college football game. They also generate money through ad revenue during said game. To that point, Army Navy game ads- a game played by kids that can not accept NIL and don't chose the school by how much bag they get- command as much as the SEC title game. That's where CBS gets their money- not from Lynn Kidd or Xavier Chaplain- live sports content played by literally fucking anyone - and turned over every 4 years- is where they make their billions. If not Chaplain, someone fucking else- bank on that. It's fucked logic to tie the 2 together. You think people only watch the rose bowl if there are highly ranked recruiting classes in it? fucking nope. They watch it because its "school x vs. school y" and its live sports. The over valuation of these players, the over payng of these players is going to kill the sport- and then what violin will we play for ballers that get a free 250K dollar education? when they kill that goose?
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Not sure what point you're making. I agree with your entire post. However, who populates the teams representing "school x" and "school y"?
Looking at it another way, if every player refused to play the 2025 season, and they all had their scholarships revoked, but schools, conferences and coaches also didn't get their TV money, who took the bigger hit? Who would have the bigger motivation to try to get those games played?
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"if every player refused to play the 2025 season"- the hundreds of G5 players, walk ons, prospects that were overlooked would line up and play. Look VT is going to turn over 1/3 of our roster between now and march... and players aren't replaceable? come on
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And with those walk ons and G5 players, would ESPN, Fox and CBS just shrug their shoulders and say "yeah, that seems pretty close to what we're paying billions for"? Of course not. Come on.
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Yes they would. They pay millions more now than they did when Johnny Manziel was irreplaceable. They pay more now than when Leonard Fornette was too big/good for college football. When Sheduer and Travis Hunter leave this year, you think anyone will air colorado games next season? VT sold out lane this year for not Michael Vick or anyone close. Facts. Would ESPN pay for SEC football? you bet your ass.
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I see where you're going with this, and I agree in principle. The charm of college football is the "college" part. It's why CFB succeeds where the XFL and other attempts have failed. But if you believe that ESPN would pay their current rates for club football, I think you're dreaming.
They pay what they do now BECAUSE Manziel was irreplaceable. His lore added to the intrigue of college football. So did Mike Vick's.
Why is ESPN paying so much more for the SEC? Because that's where the best teams are. And why are they the best teams? Because they have the best players.
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I think his point was that ESPN pays for the SEC because of the bigger fanbases. They weren't the best league at the time that ESPN started pumping them.
They are now, because of the best players, but that's the result, not the cause.
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Here's the other point that none of the NIL proponents have been able to answer..what happens 5 years down the line???...say you give a college football player $750k over 4 years to score you 9 total TDs. After taxes, that's slightly more than $450k. A nice chunk of change but not set for life kind of money.
Even if that player is investing that money incredibly wisely (feel free to LOL at this point), they are still going to need a consistent source of income.
And since we have allowed them to transfer 3 times and decided that their education isn't real compensation, they have no degree and are left as a 30 year old with no real marketable skills. Is that really progress???
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Let's examine the choices for American (and foreign) high school seniors in the real world. 1. Go to college- there are a myriad of levels here. You can go to Johns Hopkins to study pre-med and then med, you can go to Harvard to study business, you can go to Yale to study law- IF- huge IF- you are in the top 3% of your high school class. If not, you can go to a fine school- Virginia Tech. Off you go to find yourself and get an education. You don't get 6 figures for showing up though- so take note. 2. Get a job- for 99.99% of high school graduates, this is going to be an entry level job or trade apprentice. Many good honest livings out there- but right out of high school, you are not getting a 6 or 7 figure check for showing up your first day. 3. Join the Military- for 30K dollars per year. 4. Not do anything and live in moms basement- or something similar 5. Go backpacking in europe or 6. Join the NBA G league- if you are one of the 40 best basketball prospects in the world- for 85K per year. or you can do the totally equitable and realistic choice behind door number 7... sign with BYU hoops for 7 million dollars before you play a game, or extort virginia tech after you redshirt for 500K dollars before you scored a touchdown. Seems totally fucking real world and "fair" huh?
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Recognizing that and advocating that athletes get a cut of the vast sums their work is generating isn't advocating for where we are now.
Not disagreeing, but how do we determine which athletes are really generating profits and how do we then divy it up? Certainly no one on the Water Polo team is generating any profit....so do they deserve nothing?? Is their work and dedication not equally as taxing and worthwhile as the QB #1??? If QB#1 has a bad year do we then get to take back some of his money?
Which is why the SENSIBLE THING to do from the start would have been to have allow players to sign with Agents. (Like actual agents here...not NIL Agents who are mostly College Students or recent Grads who look like they had sub-3.0 GPAs in Business School) Guess what, Agents aren't looking to sign the 3rd string RB or every 17 year-old who has 3* or more on 247----that's because those individuals don't actually have any monetary value in the real world.
Let those that can profit off of merchandise, autographs, video game royalties, ect. That is real "NIL"
I don't think anyone here had a problem with that, but like Alum07 said above, if anyone said anything slightly disparaging about paying players they were met with contempt by those that feel like all those "poor 20 year olds" have been so exploited....with multimillion dollar facilities, private chefs, the highest quality training, and free academic assistance.
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That I don't have the answer to. I'll fall back on my prior observation that the mess we're in is because we don't have the courage to call this a pro sport. Things like letting athletes get agents is a pro sport concession. We (collectively) cling to the amateur nature of the sport because that's part of the charm.
But amateurism and billion dollar TV contracts cannot exist together for any length of time.
As for that 3 star not having any monetary value, I agree. As an individual, he doesn't. But in the aggregate, recognizing that you can't field 138 football teams (and thus merit those TV $$$$) w/out a whole lot of 3 stars, they do have some value.
An honest reckoning of what college football has become would have allowed us to understand and compensate for that value. We haven't had that honest reckoning yet.
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First I appreciate the way you are communicating your point. It is how you would talk to someone in person if you really wanted to have a conversation which is lacking on the internet 99% of the time.
We have opposing views on this. I consider the dollar value of the tv contracts a red herring when been used as a benchmark for player compensation. I see college football players in the same vein as the participants on Survivor or American Idol. Those shows draw huge audiences and generate tons of money for the network but the value creation isn't happening at the individual contestant level. The Olympics are another example. Those are amateur athletes competing on the largest stage that generates tons of money for NBC. The players, game show contestants, etc, are all cogs in a wheel from a value creation standpoint.
I'm not unsympathetic towards the rigors of being a college athlete but I'm also not going to treat them as being victimized. Being a D1 college football or basketball player is a unique experience that most people never get to have. They get an education, travel experience, the best coaching in their field, the best strength and nutrition, a platform to showcase their talents, and if I remember correctly from my time at VT...tons of girls.
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The participants in those shows have done the math and decided that the chance to win $1M is fair compensation for the time they're putting in and a fair cut of the money that NBC is making.
For a long time, CFB players felt things were equitable for them as well. It seems (possibly with some prompting by outside agitators) that they look at the money being made now and at their compensation, and have decided that's not the case any more.
If we had collectively recognized that the money involved in all this means it's not an amateur sport any more, we could have figured out what compensation (and labor management) should look like. My guess is that the vast majority of CFB players are fairly compensated as things stood before all this. That is, room, board, and all the stuff you mentioned. But I don't think you're arguing that those things you listed are fair compensation for Cam Ward. Or put another way, I don't think you're suggesting that Cam Ward delivers the same value to the ecosystem that a 3rd string punter does. That was the implication in the pre-NIL era.
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All of this - we have arrived at a place where regular fans with jobs paying in the thousands are being asked to fund the compensation for players most of whom are also being paid in the thousands, while the top conferences take in billions and even the ACC is paid hundreds of millions. It's perverse.
Long term one of two things will happen.
Option 1: College Football remains a cartel, controlled by a few interests with a lopsided labor market. Interest drops out as the lack of structure tanks the competitive appeal for all but 20-ish teams who form their own division of the sport. The rest of the programs starve and I get another hobby.
Option 2: Substantial reform. Players form an association and receive a significant fraction of the value generated by television viewers and advertisers. A competitive structure is formed with rules bargained between the universities and the players association that deals with the allocation of compensation, talent, rules for treatment of contracts, endorsements, etc.
Option 2 is the better and sustainable model. Option 1 is the more likely model, in part because of what I started with above. People are so fucked off at the concept of sharing the big pie that they'd rather everyone get none of it but like 20 people.
It sucks.
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If Option 2 doesn't happen college football will lose a HUGE amount of its viewers and the money source that feeds it will dry up.
Option 1 where a bunch of Billionaire alumni supporting their own college team can't support this model alone.
If Option 1 wins its over in less than 4-5 years. And the powers driving the current jack-assery can thank themselves for the loss of THOUSANDS of college scholarships for athletics oriented kids of the future (I thknk Option 2 does support this need).
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Even I- yes no bullshit- would have been fine with a true and regulated NIL model. If hardees legitimately wanted to sign Drones to be in a commercial in the NRV and he gets paid for it- fine. Most normal people would not have had a problem with it. If fanatics sells x number or player jerseys- and like the NFL- Tuten got a legit cut of that? fine- nobody would take issue with it. But every school short of Texas, Bama, and Ohio State- whose boosters literally donate GDPs of small countries levels for "Go my school, yay" - they ALL knew they couldn't generate real NIL money for these kids. So they quickly went to pay for play- and the NCAA is too fucking weak to control it. Take even some SEC schools- take Ole Miss and Arkansas- 2 small towns in the south where covid and wal mart have killed many many small businesses. Do you think there is a legit bakery in Oxford, MS. that is going to pay Jackson Dart a million dollars to do a commercial for them? in other words, their total revenue for 4 years? nope. not remotely close. All of these schools knew this, thus the collectives were born. A close friend of mine owns several businesses in charlotte, NC and is a huge FSU fan. He is not a mega booster because you don't stay rich giving Willie Taggart 7 figures... but I asked him about his businesses getting involved in NIL for FSU players. He laughed at me and told me he's not a fan of throwing money away and that paid endorsements are a tax and book keeping nightmare. It's a fucking joke, all because we felt there was no "value" in a 250K dollar education.
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I have to say that I haven't watched a single basketball game this season and have lost almost all interest in doing so. Why? I practically don't know anyone on this roster from last year. NIL has created an almost wholesale change to our roster and this will continue. M&O may be the same colors but the annual rotation of large swaths of our roster has taken away the "connection" to our teams' human identity.
We are about to experience this with Football.
For example, I remember Eddie Royal's first game he played in and when I did, I said, "I can't wait to see what he does in year 2 and 3. Those days are gone on what we are about to lay witness to....significant annual roster exodus.
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This point in time is likely a bubble in the NIL market. With the new laws coming into effect where schools can pay players, there will be more money in the market than ever before. You are right in that it is probably unsustainable. But in the short term, any school that can throw money at winning will. I would guess this winter window and maybe the next spring window would be the peak of the feeding frenzy. After going through a season or two, schools will start to figure out he cost/benefit of their NIL investments and the market will start to correct. But for the moment, the players - and in particular the agents who are in their ears - should probably be licking their chops. Crazy.
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But in the short term, any school that can throw money at winning will.
There is no short term on that, there will always be schools willing to throw more money at winning than anyone else. Look at baseball, the "free market" now has some teams paying individual players more money than small markets can afford to pay an entire payroll, and those smaller markets are being absolutely crushed at the gate with plummeting fan attendance and engagement.
Free markets never correct if there are entities out there willing and capable of asserting their dominance. Bad faith actors will always work to create power imbalances that assert dominance over the rest of the market and regulations are vital to preventing that from happening. And as long as we keep treating NIL as the wild West, and no, none of the new laws will really curtail any of it or put rigid guardrails around any of it, well then nothing will change and we will continue going down this path. The rich are getting richer and the poor are being rapidly squeezed to death.
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Kid is a high school senior and is getting $7m guaranteed before he picks up a ball at the collegiate level. Fucking ridiculous.
The whole goddamn system has jumped the fucking shark. We've gone from whining about kids who were already graduating college without ANY student debt (at a time when tuition already costs upwards of $60k per year at most schools, especially put of state) being so poor they can't afford food (when it's literally been supplied for them in school and athletic run dining halls) to now needing upwards of 8 figures per year just to be in the race for their services.
Fucking ridiculous. If you aren't P2 or have absurd oil or religious money backing you, you cannot compete anymore.
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There ought to be development of a new minor league, totally divested from college sports. All the 18-24 year olds with the top talent go to that league and jump from team to team pocketing as much as possible until they're eligible for the draft for the NFL
Return college football to how it was before the portal/NIL days. This will be for the players not as talented as the minor leaguers, but still wanting to continue to play football. Pay the players and set a standard leaguewide individual salary cap. The on-field product won't be as good, and yeah, you'll still have boosters paying under the table - but the players that are good enough for that kinda money can go to the minor league.
Players good enough make their bank, players not as good get to continue playing, and maybe still develop into NFL talent. Fans won't see the skill on display that we have now, but we'll cheer for a consistent team of people who are proud of where they play and want to be there.
Before the portal and NIL days, I couldn't care less about the NFL. I was all in on college football, consumed my Saturdays. And during the week, I was reading about other teams and what all I missed. Nowadays, I watch VT (usually) and that is it. Don't keep up with rankings, coaches, league standings - none of it. Over the past couple of years I have gotten more and more into the NFL. At least when you have an NFL team, those players are locked into a contract (to a degree) and you know who you are going to be watching from year to year.
It's hard to get emotionally invested in a team that is going to have a full new roster every season. Crazy to say this as from about 2000 onward I have been a diehard VT fan, but the way things are going coupled with how bad we are - I'm getting to the point where I really don't care and may just give up on college sports.
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Will never happen- why? Because no life loser whose whole identity is Alabama football will pay their players more than this league will. People in Ohio who would have never sniffed admission to OSU will donate millions to the buckeyes because its the most important thing in their lives. This minor league can't compete with stupidity. Little can. The casino industry is built on it.
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I think the next logical thing in the whole NIL/Pay for play will need to be contracts that you can't break for minimum of 2-3 years. This whole transferring every year, taking a bag, not doing shit then transferring again for more money is not sustainable.
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contracts that you can't break for minimum of 2-3 years
Contracts are always breakable. And efficient breaking of contracts will always happen.
There is no way a contract that prevents player transfer would be legal unless there is an overarching association that has an agreement with a players union (like professional sports).
Without an Association/Union agreement, a multi-year contract could include one or more of the following to limit transfers:
Penalty payment to break contract early
Include incentives for being on roster (greater longevity on roster, better pay/benefits)
Set payment bonuses to after transfer portal windows (could have low salary, 2 large bonuses, one set for January one set for May)
Of course, if any suitor is rich enough, they can compensate a player for breaking any of those terms, rendering them useless. And with the wealth divide between P2 and everyone else, there is no solution without an association/union agreement. And I don't see how any school in the P2 would want to include themselves in an association that is nonP2.
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You're going to see players get paid on a per-game basis (this will limit opt outs for most players). You're going to see players have buy-outs (which will effectively be transfer fees).
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I've got it! Everyone is so hung up on football and basketball with NIL - we will NEVER keep up with either of them. Let's reroute all our NIL money and become the most dominate men's soccer club in America!
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Funny you should say that. When my son was at the AFA and played for the Falcon football team we went to the AF - Navy game in Colorado Springs. As you drive up to the AFA exit on I-25 you can see the stadium really clearly with the home stands facing the interstate. The Navy has done a few midnight pranks that week including building a 3-D submarine profile (out of a wood frame and black plastic tarps) in the center of the classes quad with 2-3 guys in the conning tower. Also, the home stands in the stadium has "AIR FORCE" painted across the seats. The Navy painted "CH" in front of it and it was visible for miles. Pretty hilarious.
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A few Cadets infiltrated Falcon Stadium and added their own embellishments ahead of this week's Army-Air Force game. Visible from I-25. 😅🪑🫡 pic.twitter.com/yYaEdX3ShE— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) October 29, 2024
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Chachi, this isn't personal, but any sentence containing "pickleball" and "sport" gives big UVA vibes.
Pickleball is to tennis what wiffleball is to baseball: a casual yard game version of a sport that requires none of the athletic ability, enjoyed primarily by middle aged suburbanites on at least their third beer.
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No offense taken, the sport has a reputation fostered by comedians for being a game for geriatrics and aging athletes like me. I recommend you watch some pro-level singles matches and decide if it's not a sport. I have never been more gassed playing tennis, racketball, squash, volleyball or basketball than I have been playing pickleball singles. Doubles has less running, but more strategy. I play at the 4.0 level and love beating players half my age, but I have worn out a shoulder requiring rotator cuff surgery and torn my right knee meniscus while playing over the past five years. The beauty of it all is that almost anyone can play and find a challenge. Considering that tennis has been dying for 30 years in the USA, and I love tennis having started playing in 1972, it's great that pickleball has filled in the gap to resuscitate racket/paddle sports in America. Hope you give it a try, it's notoriously addictive. Go Hokies!
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Maybe this is a hot take, but assuming we are working with a limited pool of funds, it feels like the smart personnel management decision would be to let Drones walk, ride with Pop in 2025, and use those funds to sign portal players at positions need.
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Not a hot take at all- We are 6-6. Drones is OK, he's not Montana. He's not winning 10 games. It's not all on him, but you can get 6-6 with less money.
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BREAKING: #Hokies CB Mansoor Delane has entered the transfer portal The 6'1 187 lb. junior from Silver Spring, Md. had 54 tackles, 4 interceptions, 2 forced fumbles and 7 bass breakups this season1 year of eligibility remaining Story: https://t.co/KjoqDPrYXnpic.twitter.com/OsGl9Cp92E— Kolby Crawford (@kolby_crawford) December 11, 2024
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If that were the case - I think the time to announce it would be yesterday.
1) So we could find someone worth finding before they get hired elsewhere
2) So the players know who it would be so they can try to keep some of them
3) So we can start to lure some portal players over
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Those saying that it is happening everywhere, I didn't have time to look at the whole ACC, but here is what I found, per 247. As of today, we are comparable to FSU. Yikes.
Total in portal, number of players in the 2 deep
BC
10, 6 from two deep
Cal
5, 2 from 2 deep
Clemson
3, 1 from two deep
Duke
4, 1 from two deep
FSU
19, 5 from two deep
GT
10, 5 from two deep
VT
18, 6 from two deep
Louisville
15, 3 from two deep
Miami
4, 1 from two deep
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Stanford, 17, 8 from two deep
Pitt 11, 5 from two deep
NC State 8, 5 from two deep
Syracuse 5, 5 from two deep
SMU, 5, 3 from two deep
UVA 13, 6 from two deep
Wake Forest 8, 5 from two deep
The biggest similarity is how many in the two deep have left. Ten schools with five or more from their two deep.
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At this point Pry is every bit as bad as losing quality in the portal as Fuente was. Which isn't fucking great given that was supposed to be his big selling point when bringing him in.
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I know it looks bad, and maybe it is indeed bad, but let's all remember that it takes longer to get guys out of the portal than it does for them to go into the portal. Not saying every player we're going to pull is Tuten-caliber, but there's always the potential.
Just wanted to look at the silver lining 😂
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If you don't want your 2-deep poached relentlessly, you can't underperform in the W-L column. That's the biggest similarity I see between us and FSU. Talent on the roster but don't win = a very easy pitch to transfer from winning programs.
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#Hokies players who started against UVa who aren't done with their college career or in the portal:LG Bob SchickTE Benji GosnellQB Pop WatsonDE Keyshawn BurgosDT Kelvin GilliamLB Caleb WoodsonLB Jaden KellerThat's it.— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) December 11, 2024
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This is sending up every red flag that we ignored under Fuente.
The problem isn't the coaching staff. The problem is Virginia Tech. We need to completely clean house of Merryman if we hope to have a functioning D1 athletic department by the end of the decade.
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The problem isn't only the coaching staff. The problem is Virginia Tech.
The coaching staff is definitely part of the problem. But yeah, it clearly goes much deeper than that. Unfortunately, I think the people who are in position to make changes either don't care enough about winning or are completely blind to the issues so it's unlikely we're going to see things improve any time soon
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Is it? He's barely seeing the field, and everyone seems to think we recruited over him with last year's class.
Seems like the logical thing for him to do if he wants to get major playing time somewhere.
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Surprised from the standpoint that he may have been a guy who got some extra run in the bowl game. And he may have thus had more tape to Portal in the Spring.
At the same point, if it became clear that younger wide receivers were already passing him on the depth chart, the writing may have been on the wall.
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Former Virginia Tech standout offensive tackle Xavier Chaplin is expected to transfer to Auburn, @chris_hummer and I have learned for @cbssports/@247sports.The 6-7, 325-pound Chaplin started for Virginia Tech the last two years and was a 2023 All-American.... pic.twitter.com/Ku4QoehRr8— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) December 15, 2024
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Unless there are hard changes made to NIL, payments, transfers - hard changes- VT is done competing at the top level in college football and basketball- done, finished. I hope everyone enjoyed the "glory years"- they are over.
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We were competing at the top level of those sports? Our football record vs top 5 is bad, our record vs top 10 isn't much better. We're 8-24 against ranked teams in the past 11 seasons. We are 7-20 against the top ten winninest programs. We've won the Big Least and all- basketball conferences for out football championships. We've had 4 players win awards in total.
Basketball is worse because the last decade is the pinnacle of VT basketball, an ACC championship, something like 5 straight NCAA tournament appearances, a sweet 16. There isn't a better time for VT basketball.
I am not saying that things don't need to change, but Duke and Cuse both won 9 games. If you think that Xavier Chaplin is going to make a huge difference to Auburn or Gunner Givens is going to make Vanderbilt, it ain't happening. Let Auburn waste their money, let Delane get burned by Ryan Williams. Don't take this as hard feelings they should take the money. But there won't be the ROI anyone is looking for.
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BREAKING: Virginia Tech transfer CB Mansoor Delane has Committed to LSU, he tells @on3sportsThe 6'0 185 CB totaled 146 Tackles, 16 PD, 6 INT, & 4 FF (3 seasons)One of the Top CBs in the PortalWill have 1 year of eligibility lefthttps://t.co/h0i8eOZS7spic.twitter.com/D3caRt2VFv— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) December 16, 2024
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I'm not going to root against him. He's probably getting a heck of a compensation package and I would struggle to turn that down as well. With that being said, I just don't see this going well. He's going to be playing against much better competition. The flat-footedness, eyes in the backfield, and ability to fight through blocks this year was alarming. I just don't see the 1. lasting in the SEC 2. lasting with brian kelly (who killed a kid) as a coach.
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Reading twitter every thinks they just stole him from the NFL. I wish the best for the kid but they should probably temper their expectations after this year.
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While it sucks right now, one thing this does is that players are less likely to go to the NFL early because a 4th round pick isn't good enough so college football will have more talent staying in college, which is a good thing at a macro level. At the micro level the SEC can eat a dick.
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Great decision by him. The NFL doesn't scout the SEC as hard. the strategy is oh, he played at LSU? He's good- draft him. He will get much more benefit of the doubt playing for them in terms of draft position.
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Breaking news: this was the inevitable result and goal of NIL and the Transfer Portal.
When you decide you need to pay players in an open market without rules or any structure whatsoever, those with the most money are going to win.
So while they still had the chance, the non-P2 schools and commissioners should have fought like hell to create some framework instead of rolling over dead. Now they are in fact that...dead.
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With 3 star home grown kids like Mose Phillips leaving simply for more bag, Lane Stadium is totally going to be full in 5 years. Totally. VT fans love not knowing who is on the team year to year. /S - this is going to kill the sport without major changes. People can disagree, but the mega donors- and there are a shit ton fewer of them than their are "normal" fans are keeping the sport alive right now. That is not scalable. Losing money/giving money away is what rich people hate the most. We all have friends that drive BMWs and are VPs that want the check split at lunch. There needs to be sensible action.... 1. Dial back the TV deals or spread them out- this is what they did with March Madness. They have never eliminated an auto bid- never- they have just expanded the field when new conferences were added. 2. Mandate that you must sit a year before transferring- OR you can transfer 14 fucking times, but you are a walk on if you do. Very soon people like Tim Sands are going to push back hard on having to build an entire football team every offseason. That is what it will take.
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As opposed to? The teams that had the most money to pay coaches? The teams that were located in geographically advantageous areas? The teams that made friends with the right other teams a half century ago?
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We are all fully aware of the revisionist - players have always been paid, the richest teams have always won, coaches don't deserve a high salary because its the same skill as the players who only got a scholarship, etc. College football has always been the wild west, yeah we get it. Funny how Beamer didn't lose 18 guys off the 1999 team though. Funny how Bama got drilled by cash poor VT in 1998. Funny how Chris Weinke was the exception, not the rule..... the sport sucks for VT now and moving forward. That's what we are pissed about. Now more than ever we are at the kids table, not the adult one... what happened in the SWC in the 80s is irrelevant.
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This is my point - When was the last time a team that wasn't 'rich' won a natty? 1990 Colorado/GT? 91 UW? FSU before they were FSU, in 93?
I'm saying, the power structure in college football has been the same for 30 years. You want the sport to go back to where it was 30 years ago? Sure, I get it. But blaming 30 years of change on NIL/portal (each ~a half decade old) just isn't rational.
the sport sucks for VT now and moving forward. That's what we are pissed about.
So the issue is with our donors, not the sport?
The wild thing is, I can make a compelling argument that we should be more confident about the long term future of VT now than I was 5 years ago. We just need a VT fan to hit it big - next big start up, win the lottery, etc, and then we can compete with SECU, regardless of what conference we are in. Way more straightforward path than VT had in the early 90s or even 5 years ago.
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You don't see an issue with a sport that needs to be propped up by huge donors? Millionaires to make it work? There are not that many of those that you might think there are. And I'd argue with you on power structure- Miami and Nebraska were once THE power structure in the sport. WV and VT played for national titles. Florida is treading water now- Meyer had them dominant. If you want to say that the P4 was the power structure- sure... but its not always bama and UGA... in fact UGA went 40 years between titles. Texas was firing charlie stong and herman not long ago and Mack Brown had a reputation for underachieving. To pretend that its the same over 30 years is not true.
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You don't see an issue with a sport that needs to be propped up by huge donors?
Great point. This is the issue having a revenue generating sport that is tied to a not-for-profit institution. I don't see a way around this unless:
Universities/football teams transform into truly for-profit institutions
Football teams agree to turn down billions in TV dollars to be truly not-for-profit
You can't have half the organization function as a non-profit and the other half function as a for-profit. You can't have donors and amateurs on one hand, then billion dollar TV contracts and employees making 8 figures annually on the other. It doesn't work. Pick one, and commit fully.
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Universities have been basically functioning as for profit institutions for a while now. The amount of money that gets pumped into endowments that are managed like large institutional investment funds all tax free has become insane. It was the Yale model for how they invested and managed their endowment that turned them into an endless oasis of cash, and now other universities have followed suit growing their endowments into ridiculous pools of tax free money.
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But blaming 30 years of change on NIL/portal (each ~a half decade old) just isn't rational.
In 2024......ZERO.....as in not a single one 5-Star Recruit signed with a non-P2 school. For the first time since Recruiting Rankings have been tracked. Things have changed massively in 5 years....to pretend like NIL and the Transfer Portal haven't changed the hierarchy isn't rational.
Clemson is case-in-point of this. They have gone from Blueblood to Outside looking in largely based on Dabo's refusal to jump into the Transfer Portal Cesspool. Wake Forest is now dead as a Program due to the Transfer Portal.
D2 and FCS Programs are going to be destroyed by the Pavia Decision because why waste your time there when you can just play JUCO and then have a chance to cash in for 4 years?
I get it, you have made it repeatedly clear that "get your cash, forget the rest" is your view on the best path forward. That attitude is what has led CFB to the chaotic shitshow that it is now and it ultimately going to collapse it from the inside out. Because just like there isn't any Angel Investor coming in to rescue VT Football, there is no Body coming in to actually create a reasonable and competitive structure for CFB. And if you haven't read the room on this (and many other) boards, lots of people are already fed up with the process and product.
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In 2024......ZERO.....as in not a single one 5-Star Recruit signed with a non-P2 school. For the first time since Recruiting Rankings have been tracked. Things have changed massively in 5 years....to pretend like NIL and the Transfer Portal haven't changed the hierarchy isn't rational.
IMO issue here is conference expansion, not NIL. If the conferences went back to where they were 10 years ago, then the top is no where near as P2-heavy, then every conference has at least two teams per year that land a 5-star.
I quibble with using the distribution of 5-stars as a metric for parity in recruiting, but if we see that 5-stars are basically being distributed in the same way they have been for the last decade. The problem is that the 4 best PAC Programs and the 2 best B12 programs are now in the P2.
Class
# of Teams landing a 5-stars
Conference to land a 5-star
highest 5 stars on a team
2024 (first class with P2)
16
4
5 (Tie: UGA/Bama)
2023
17
5
9 (Bama)
2022
13
5 (+ND)
8 (TAMU)
2021
16
5
7 (Tie: OSU/Bama)
2020
15
5 (+ND)
5 (Clemson)
2019
17
5
5 (UGA)
2018
10
5
7 (UGA)
2017
13
4
6 (Bama)
2016
17
6
3 (Tie: Bama/Ole Miss/UGA)
2015
15
5
5 (Bama)
2014
17
5
6 (Bama)
Regardless - I think the point is clear: FBS football is getting less stratified. There's a break into two classes. The upper class is getting a little bit bigger, but the lower class is growing rapidly.
Clemson is case-in-point of this. They have gone from Blueblood to Outside looking in largely based on Dabo's refusal to jump into the Transfer Portal Cesspool. Wake Forest is now dead as a Program due to the Transfer Portal.
So Clemson is failing due to choice/incompetence. Wake is being replaced by Vandy, Tulane, and Duke.
Wake is completely undeserving of their power status. They got here simply because they were friends with the right schools/people 40+ years ago. They got lucky by hiring a coach who was basically content with a great work life balance (relative to the rest of the college football industry) and was okay never competing for national titles. They've basically been operating like a good-to-bad G5 program for a few decades. They don't have a passionate fanbase. They don't travel, they don't pack out stadiums... They haven't wanted to be involved in 'big-boy' college football... ever? And now they're not 🤷♂️
I get it, you have made it repeatedly clear that "get your cash, forget the rest" is your view on the best path forward.
This could not be further from the truth.
I believe players should be able to get as much money as they want, and I don't like the idea of a salary cap.
I like the idea of multi-year contracts for players and transfer fees/buy-outs (just like coaches have)
I believe that more, smaller, geographically focused conferences would naturally and immediately create the perception of parity across conferences, and with time, we'd start actually seeing more parity.
I believe promotion/relegation would be the 'fairest' way to reward schools who want to invest in their program
For my entire lifetime as a sports fan (25-30 years, 15ish years as a college football fan), the power in this sport has been concentrated in 20 or so programs. Now that number is closer to 35/40, but there is a stark difference between those on the inside and those on the outside. I just don't think this is the result of NIL; I think it's the result of the top 20 programs consolidating. IMO that's the problem we should be solving for.
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There is another factor in play regarding 5 🌟 players and that is the "growth" of the Rating companies and widely different techniques or time investment by those companies. It really has changed significantly.
Two things have become true. On3 really props up scores for those that have committed to the P2 and vice versa seems to negatively score kids not going to P2 schools lower.
Point in case this year there were two 5 🌟 kids in 247Sports and Rivals at ACC schools but On3 score was so much lower it knocked them down to 4 🌟 in the 247 Composite ranking.
There are cause and effect as the raters spend very little time on ANY recruit but if a kid gets a couple SEC offers it increases the amount of time the raters spend looking at them. It's a system that feeds it's own loop.
As for kids getting paid, I don't have an issue with kids getting paid but do support a salary cap similar to the NFL. Kids that then earn real NIL I have no problem with either. It's NIL concealed as pay for play that I don't support. I would estimate 85% of current NIL deals do not return a positive return on investment for businesses. "Donations" by individuals is a lost cause but I don't really have a problem with those dollars if that's how people want to spend their money.
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The idea that this is always how its been but NIL brought everything into the light is not absolutely true. Yes I think it is fair to say that some big, powerful, and wealthy school have always worked under the table to incentivize top level talent to come there. However, the fact that it was illegal and all parties were at risk was a major limiting factor to the scale at which it could be employed by schools. No one was paying a backup OT $500,000. The current environment is not merely an extension of the previous environment, it is a completely different environment.
You might be correct that the 2nd tier teams still have a chance to compete, it just comes down to landing the right benefactor (while having a competent coaching staff). Previously the 2nd tier still had hope to compete based on the same conditions that made mid major men's basketball programs so formidable in March:
team filled with upper classmen that had developed, a few underrated stars on the roster, and a rock solid coaching staff. Those conditions allowed fans to get emotionally and financially invested in and stay engaged with the program. Because even if it didn't result in a playoff run you could build a solid program that won 8-11 games a year and occasionally picked off a big win against a blue blood that you had no business beating.
Waiting around for a mega rich donor to buy a roster for a 1 year crack at success is not a recipe to engage and motivate a fan base to be encouraged about the long term.
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However, the fact that it was illegal and all parties were at risk was a major limiting factor to the scale at which it could be employed by schools.
This is the point. Yes, there were absolutely schools paying players under the table. There were Cam Newton's and Laramie Tunsil's--but they were by far the exception not the rule.
Using the anecdote..Player X had a nice car so he must have been getting money to play at school Y is a fallacy. First, it is proof of nothing. Secondly, many of those players in the 90's and 00's we're getting money from Agents and not from schools.
And if the hope for being competitive relies on sudden and unexpected seven figure donations from some unknown wealthy donor, you are not competitive. Period. And no reasonable fan base is going to hang on to rationale is thin as that
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Yes - the scale of player 'compensation' is different now. I'm not arguing against that.
College basketball is a shitshow. I get it and agree.
No one was paying a backup OT $500,000
No one is now either... because being a starter at VT still pays more than being a backup at Texas.
The current environment is not merely an extension of the previous environment, it is a completely different environment.
I also cannot disagree with this. However, the movement towards player employment has put a check on (what I would call) unsavory player treatment. I'm talking about situations where the coach lies to a recruit, convinces a player to go there because a booster is lining up a job for his uncle, then when the coach turns out to be a colossal asshole, the player is stuck there because if he leaves his uncle is getting fired (cough gary patterson cough). NIL has put glass walls on the sausage factor AND cleaned it up quite a bit. I doesn't look like a sausage factory any more.
I understand why people are upset at the current state of the sport. I just think it's lazy to suggest 'these problems would all go away if we just don't pay the players' - This was inevitable as soon as TV money got in the mix and started growing rapidly. There were dozens of fixes that could've been implemented beforehand. The system was being held together with duct tape (aka amateurism). The duct tape has torn. The solution is not more duct tape.
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dont get too bent out of shape, mizzou shockingly has a top tier nil willing to throw $$$$ at any and everything. doesnt change their ceiling at all, but raises their floor to a mids sec team rather than miss st
as soon as covil committed, mose did his thing. assuming covil gets a medical redshirt for last year, we won here, outside of people catching feelings. moneyball.
tangentially: we smoked them in wrestling with a program that funds itself outside of NIL
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CJ McCray DE has entered the portal. Not one I expected to see but his usage this year was minimal after being a regular contributor the prior two years. Went from double digit games in 22 and 23 to 4 this year.
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I'm taking this as a sign that he'd been totally passed on the depth chart by people like Stevens. This is the kind of portaling that should be happening.
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Makes me wonder if we have a DC and the players/top transfers are being told. If it's Dex we might start hearing something today especially if PSU loses.
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He now has extra year(s?) of eligibility with the Pavia lawsuit, I think. He had two years of Community College playing time. If Keller has the starter $$, and now he can return and there is only backup $$. Plausible?
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No sauces, but I think he was tight with Marve so when his extra eligibility fell into his lap all of a sudden he has options. Plus his playing time did go down as the year went on, so he could just be looking for more snaps.
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Comments
Perry, Madison, Findlatyer thus far
Given a number of reasons, I have a hard time following all the players that I don't see making plays on the field. Are we set to lose anyone that had or has potential to have a significant impact on our team?
Short answer- no inside sauces- yes, IMO. We will lose at least one contributor to the portal.
IMO Findlayter was always a project. Madison has the size but he didn't get any burn this year so I'm sure he's looking for somewhere that can offer playing time. Perry I'm disappointed about. Not sure if I'm disappointed because he just didn't seem to pan out this year or because he's leaving after 1 year. Probably both. He's young so there's no reason to be down about a guy that young not getting playing time with the experience we had on the line this year but I heard he just mentally didn't get it together
DL entering the portal... either Price and Pry had some "tough conversations" and we can expect upgrades or we've got a concerning exodus at a position of need...
Charles Huff just left Marshall for Southern Miss... Coach Price to Marshall? 🤔
Imagine the melt down on here if we lose the the only defensive coach worth his salt and the rest of Marve and Co return for 2025.
I would hope JC wouldn't take a job that Huff just left for football siberia for. Southern Miss is an absolute shit job.
I was gonna ask....Is So. Miss really an upgrade from Marshall?
Seems lateral at best....maybe the $$$ was really good...
I think job security and perceived backing from the AD played a big part, or lack thereof in the case of being at Marshall, from what I've read
Will be interesting to see who Marshall hires. I think that is a pretty good G5 job
Huff and the AD are beefing. Huff said in a presser that Marshall doesn't have the NIL/Buyin to compete, and the AD/Boosters took offense to be called out like that. Huff walked it back with a canned apology that he was upset he had to make.
Congrats fox and espn- you effectively killed Marshall -and many others- programs. Hope you are happy.
Marshall was trying to get rid of Huff, so Huff moved on before he could get fired -- Source = Cover 3 Pod
That leaves:
Gilliam, Copeland and True freshmen: Laws, Johnson and Hanchuck (injured since spring camp)
Need at least 2 portal additions but also there's solid potential in that room
FWIW (cue comment about infinite eligibility) Gilliam did walk with the seniors on Saturday. Doesn't rule out him coming back but probably need to wait on an official announcement either way
On a serious note- several guys - such as drones, etc walked on senior night with legit eligibility remaining - 5th year, etc.
Somebody said in the gameday thread that Pry suggests that just in case the player leaves, so that they don't miss out on the experience.
If you leave before your senior year, you should miss out on the experience. It's senior night, not "I'm quitting after this game" night.
Make an exception for juniors declaring for the draft, but why are we honoring kids planning to leave for another school?
I suspect this is a way of Pry pushing the decisions on staying/leaving until after the season to keep the players focused on closing out the regular season instead of deciding if they will walk or not.
He recognizes those that are graduating. They may only be Junior year but many take classes all summer while staying at school for football. Two summers can knock a year off if done right.
Wonder why he would walk, he's class of 21
He's a RS Junior- or Senior (4 years since HS). So technically he is a senior academically, and likley has his degree. This concept wasn't blasphemy until the recent endless eligibility waivers and covid.
Perry is in the portal again? He just got here from Alabama.
he basically didnt play a whole season, im really not surprised
He only committed in May. What was he expecting after missing all of spring?
To play, probably. Nobody said these kids are making good decisions lol
Maybe he should portal to Directional Rustbelt Tech. That tickled me on the other thread, don't know why, but I'm going to be reusing that.
an endorsement from The Fifth Fuller himself always hits different
He wanted what every other CFB Players expects now---to be told that they are destined for NFL Stardom and Millions of dollars.
I'm sure his NIL "agents" advised him incredibly wisely in this regard.
If he couldn't pass Fuga... he's not that good. This is a positive
Got to make room for the new recruits signing their letters of intent tomorrow =)
is triumph going to be doing that whole draft day broadcast tomorrow?
Yes like a draft room. Saw a few X posts indicating it would happen again this year.
Jordan Tapscott WR is entering portal.
Class of 23, 6'1, 170. Believe he was a PWO and with incoming freshmen probably never would have seen the field. May have been one of those tough conversations to go from 116 to 105 as well.
Random thought, if all these walk ons were scout team and practice players. And now there isn't a limit to # of coaches, why can't we pay for graduated players to run the scout teams? I see coaches throwing balls to DBs before each game. Why not during practice? They could spend all year learning opposing teams playbooks and practicing making the scout team better.
Why does the scout team even need to count towards the roster at all? We have gone pro. Practice squads don't count against NFL rosters.
But practice squad members can be promoted to the active roster in the nfl.
Suppose you to hire 25 extra players to be the scout team. Those 25 players can't play in the current season.
Regardless, 105 players is ample. That's basically double an NFL roster.
I'm pretty sure you can't dress anywhere close to 105 players. Away acc games are limited to like 70 players
OL Lance Williams enters the portal
Damn, was hoping he would be a good one
Probably will now for sure
Hendon Hooker and Khalil Pimpleton are the only two transfers that have done better after they left VT off the top of my head. Anyone else think of any others?
Consider the talent level we brought in to begin with. Tough to do better when you probably shouldn't have been P4 to begin with.
But consider our offensive line coaching right now and most kids could only do better elsewhere.
Doug Nester, Bryan Hudson, Alec Bryant
Cam Goode
Cam transferred before he ever played a snap for us so who knows how good he could have been here.
I think he would have done pretty Goode here.
He apparently didn't like the running in the first week or two he was here. I don't care if he became an All American somewhere else, that is absolutely the kind of sh*t we don't need in the program.
He played two seasons for Michigan and won a Natty in 2023. Meaning he impressed Jim Harbaugh enough to be on that squad and play a lot. Sounds like he needed some growing up to do, but with our defensive struggles, I'll take that kind of shit at VT.
Its possible that the VT experience with repercussions was the wake up call required to get his life on track. It is well documented that a come to jesus moment can have that effect.
Sad that VT took it on the chin so he could grow up, but che sara sara.
Goode was a total punk, disrespectful and out of shape. I don't care if he was Chris jones, we don't need that bullshit in the program. It only took Goode 5 years to grow up and not be a prick.
I was just making a pun lol
sir, the dad joke is that way
We had a RB deep on the depth chart who left a few years back and ran for like 1K yards at a smaller school. I remember being impressed but can't remember who it was lol
Travon McMillian ran for over a thousand for us and then did it at Colorado. That isn't a small school so you are probably talking about someone else.
Went back and found it — it was Jalen Hampton. Don't think he ever had any stats for us, but he went to Elon and ran for 1062 yards in 11 games his first season at 4.6 YPC and 880 the next year at 4.7.
Kenji Christian also left us for NC A&T and ran for 718 yards his first year at 5.4 YPC.
Kenji back in the portal too btw
I'm totally fine staying far away from any running back Justin Fuente recruited and signed. Any.
FTFY
FTFY
Loved the Travon years... the ONLY person on the roster with an extra gear, and whenever he ran for a 60 yard TD, he was benched the remainder of the game. Fu was playing 5D checkers yall.
Can you imagine how Fu would do in this NIL/transfer era? He was such a weird dude and would bench guys for making good plays. Just the way he treated Teller was comical. Think we'd have to forfeit our second game because 3/4 of the team would enter the portal after the first game.
I think it was whichever one transferred to Elon. Hampton maybe?
Yup he's the one! Guess it makes sense we had some talent deep on the depth chart since we all used to crack jokes about how we had like 12 running backs lol. Basically inevitable that one or two of them were legit!
DJ Harvey maybe?
He was playing at SJSU, idk how much
Enough that he's in the portal and a few on reddit (I think) were disappointed to be losing him
Sucks because wasn't he backup center at one point? Got a lot of reps in the spring game if I remember. Now we're down to 7 underclassmen OL after the new guys come in, which is not great over 3 classes
Yeah, we should have twice that many.
Which is crazy because it's our worst position group and the whole theory of improvement is developing our underclassmen
QB Jackson Sigler is in the portal
Transfer portal is officially open. Good luck to those entering. And may the coaches find the players to plug the holes that need to be plugged.
Praise Portal
Marcellus Barnes, who was a high three star committed to us, then Georgia, only to follow Fran Brown to 'Cuse is in the portal. CB with three years eligibility remaining.
Just saw a report that Keli Lawson is transferring. link
Keli Lawson*
Snap count went down because of Woodson, but this is a big loss
Eh, I'm not too upset frankly. Guy looked like a physical freak but didn't play like a natural linebacker. Really struggled to grasp the position and has now been replaced by Woodson. Great athlete but just not a natural football player IMO, and probably don't want to overpay to keep him,
If he wanted too much money, I see your point. However, football is a violent game. Who steps to give Woodson a breather? Who starts when he misses 2-3 games for a combo of targeting, hamstring/shoulder dings? I honestly don't know who the next man up would be.
I don't see us being able to have the luxury of a ton of quality depth in this new revenue sharing/NIL era. We have to hope to retain quality starters and get starter quality transfers from the portal using the funds we have. Paying for a depth contributor just seems like it will cost us a starter at another critical spot. I'm sure some of the freshmen will get some more looks for playing time earlier now.
I mean realistically, if you have $20.5MM to spend in revenue sharing (NIL is there but will get more scrutiny now from Deloitte so no more ridiculous pay for play deals, or at least will be more difficult), a starting caliber QB right now has a market rate of upper 6 figures/7 figures. That's around 5% of your salary cap there, then think of the market rate for quality OL, DL, LB. We're going to have to start playing money ball and letting players who have big pay demands walk if we don't see the ROI.
This seems like you're assuming a backup will want almost as much as a starter. Theoretically, NIL is for name, image, and likeness, which you would be getting paid for the use of those respective things, like if an apparel company put your name on a jersey. They aren't doing that for backups. I'd guess that applies pretty much anywhere. Unless you're a 5 star QB that is next in line at one of the top 5-10 schools, backups probably are getting next to nothing, if not nothing at all lot of schools outside the top few.
NIL is 100% pay for play. Can we stop with the pre-tense? Triumph gives kids a figure... they do not and will not match it to Shelor motor park paying for commercials. That's why they are called "collectives"... Its simply pay for play
This. And to the market rates for starters vs backups, that is all relative to a particular team. We may have a player that we don't see the ROI on, but another team may see potential or have a need and be willing to pay starter money for someone who would only be a depth/rotational player here. We shouldn't and wouldn't pay to match that offer for a depth player in that case. Would be nice to have them, but not if the return isn't there.
Quite frankly, I think we could have a freshman or portal transfer taking that spot from Lawson and at the very least tread water from where we were last year, if not improve. They might have had experience, but they were still making freshman level mistakes out there, it was time to move on.
Disagree here. He's a good athlete but was still completely lost on the field at LB, probably the most tentative LB we had that saw significant time never looked confident in his positioning or decision making.
He was in the wrong position. Should have been a Star LB the entire time. Inside he would get washed away easily. Almost all of his great plays were in space (Star).
This seems like even more of an indictment of the Linebacker and star coaches (I think stars are under Quinn, right?) in terms of recognizing the strengths of the players, and if they aren't playing people at positions they "get" better. If they're playing Lawson at the wrong position just because he's built a certain way is idiotic.
I mean he was physically large, but kind of sucked on the field. Getting some new players in at LB won't have me shedding tears this year.
This... there are 50 guys in the portal better than Lawson. I've not seen worse technique from a P4 LB ever.
Classic looks like Tarzan plays like Jane player
Jalen Stroman enters the portal.
This one sucks. He's had injury issues but showed promise.
crap would have liked to keep Stro on board.
Really good player when healthy, but has rarely been healthy. Best of luck to him.
He's a starter when healthy, this is a huge loss
Agree this one stinks. Just not sure why he would transfer. He's #1 when healthy and would get whatever NIL money he wanted. Would be drafted (high) if he could play most of the season (VT puts DBs on the league). His playing time was a result of injury.
I'm assuming the staff doesn't have a high degree of certainty that he will be healthy/remain healthy enough to pay him starting safety pay this year.
Why he would transfer? This is one of those "hard conversations" the staff is having. If they wanted him back, he would be back. This is the NFL now... they want to budget the safety money to younger players. IIWII. Pry better bet correctly however.
How do we know this? Safeties like him don't grow on trees and while he has been injured for a while, he would command a certain amount of money and interest for what he's already accomplished
We know because of his age/eligibility remaining and the timing. That is exactly what these decisions are made on at this time of year whether fans like it or not. It's not about ability anymore- its about business. As in a budget that is going to be given to kids with more eligibility. Cold hard facts. Its what the fans wanted though.
This sounds exactly like my NCAA25 dynasty strategy.... I bring in too many recruits every year and then when making cuts I keep a 85 OVR sophomore and cut an 86 Senior
There is no way this staff did that. Pry is big on local/Va kids, legacies and brothers.
I'm sure they would like to keep him, but they could've said your
NIL packageportion of the athletics revenue share is X and Stro could've said I'm worth more than that and is going to get his money via the portal.I think this was Stroman's decision not the staff.
That's what I'm saying. I also think it's a financial decision, not bad blood or anything.
Important distinction - it's no longer an 'NIL package' paying these players primarily. Rosters will be funded by the $20.5 MM revenue sharing allotment for each school under the House settlement starting with the 2025-2026 sports year. NIL is still around, but the Big 4 audit firm Deloitte is now the NIL clearinghouse. Any cumulative payments to a player over $600 (the IRS reportable compensation minimum) will be sent to them to clear. If they cannot determine that the payment amount is based on an actual fair market value of services to the payor, then it will be deemed an impermissible pay-for-play payment. So the clamps are about to come down on NIL except for the players who actually do have a significant commerical/NIL value.
Everyone now has to work within their $20.5 MM salary cap for the most part. No surprise the VT staff is going to really evaluate the ROI of each player within their budget.
Edit - should also mention the $20.5 MM revenue sharing allotment is across all sports. VT has said they're going to put about 75% of that toward football, with the other 25% split between MBB and WBB. Non-revenue sports will see some increased scholarships only.
Thanks, I didn't know the details of when rev sharing started or how the NIL supplementation worked and assumed everyone would still be getting sizable NIL money on top of the revenue share.
It would be interesting to see how Deloitte determines market value.
From what I have read/seen online, they will look to see if the NIL payor (collective or individual/business) is actually getting a commensurate amount of services from the athlete in return. So if player X gets a $1 MM NIL deal to basically appear at a car dealership one time and sign some autographs, that's pay for play and illegal. But if they have to film several advertisements, make numerous appearances, etc. then it could be deemed a fair exchange transaction.
"So if player X gets a $1 MM NIL deal to basically appear at a car dealership one time and sign some autographs, that's pay for play and illegal" So Texas's backup QB who makes 6 million per in NIL will be a thing of the past? I doubt it.
Nah, they'll just find a different way to give him his bag, the same way they did before NIL.
These NIL Shops will make the contracts work. They will find the minimum thresholds for each range of $$ and boilerplate it in contracts.
For sure, but at least there's a minimum now.
Oh no doubt - the big collectives will figure out whatever they have to do to make it work. But this is at least a step in the right direction if we're going toward a professional model. The next step will be collective bargaining and contracts. It may be a few more years of this interim phase until we get there, but this will at least slow down the ridiculous NIL money being thrown around if it has to have some teeth to it. A big audit firm like Deloitte has the resources to dig deep, and you don't want to land yourselves in trouble with the IRS.
Yeah.. I don't see this being a big change except that there's basically a $20.5 million roster minimum. NIL deals on top of that are not going away and will continue to be a pay-for-play equivalent.
Because if Auburn grad's car dealership is willing to pay a VT player $100k for a TV ad if they happen to be on Auburns roster next year, and an Alabama booster is willing to pay $120k for advertising his kids lemonade stand, Deloitte will conclude the market value for that player's endorsement is "around $120k" and VT booster's offer of $50k for a radio commercial won't cut it.
I would love - honestly- love to know where all this fucking money comes from. Seriously. Who are these boosters in the state of Alabama that love Auburn football so much that they can raise/pay millions in NIL???? hedge fund managers? What mega corp is headquartered in Auburn, Ala? I seriously can't wrap my head around it. THE issue this election was a tough economy for Americans... yet there is literally billions in fan booster money in the SEC. For 12 games a year of enjoyment. It is 100% throw away/disposable money- millions of it. Where does it come from?
Auburn and Alabama are the nearest thing that state has to pro teams. Remember reading an article about Bama a couple years ago that said 70% of donations to the AD or close to it came from non-alums.
That's a good stat and all, but you don't see people donating yacht money to the New Orleans Saints. I don't know anyone who thinks they should shell out 6 figures so the Houston Texans can win more games. Maybe for season luxury suite tickets, but that's usually done through their corporations. I'm with DC. I understand that some people's lives and personalities are 100% invested in the success of these football teams and they are paying for "pleasure" via wins, but WHO is donating? Maybe it's old money and the investment of old money creates the ability to donate 6 or 7 figures to help a college sports team win, without feeling it in their bank account.
I guess we can't all be born into old money.
Salary cap, multi-year contracts and open books regarding revenue/spending. Those are the things that can save college football.
Anything else is just whistling past the graveyard.
None of the power player schools will agree to this.
Seems like something the IRS might want to look into.
Really? So Stroman- a legacy that has been in Blacksburg 4 years just said "peace out I'm going to the SEC"?
ouch!
Xavier Chaplain in the portal, can't embed the tweet at the moment. I imagine he will be getting quite the payout from someone. OL is in a rough spot.
Oh no, he was by far our best OL, local to where I live now, gotta go talk to some of his friends.
Uh this is terrible. Seeing as we do not have a replacement anywhere close on our roster. And very little depth outside the 5 man rising r-jr class that Chaplin was part of.
He's open to coming back. Just wayyyyy too much money for him to not test out the portal. As we all know, competent OL is difficult to bring in via portal, he's going to be a hot commodity.
Can we compete financially with other leagues? OL are the hottest commodity in the portal. It is going to cost a fortune to keep him.
No.
His post said he was gone. Maybe not, but I wouldn't count on it.
Gulp
This hurts. Maybe we will give him his bag, thus impacting other positions. Lose/Lose scenario IMO
Some rumors behind paywalls on other sites that some teams got into a bidding war for him and his market value went sky high. He's good but nowhere near worth some of the figures I saw floating around for him. Sucks a lot to lose him but we can't pay that much for an OL who isn't absolutely elite.
Allegedly man got a crazy $$$ offer from Maryland and maybe one from Shane too.
This is where we're going to see the P2 conference discrepancy take shape. Huge bummer because, imo, moving onto his 3rd position coach in 4 years isn't awesome for his long term development. But also, if TSL offered me seven figures I'd take my happy ass off this board in a heartbeat, so 🤷♂️
Fist bump Jay Bilas you fucking fuck.
hahaha you're the best
I feel like I am missing a reference here
I fucking hate Jay Bilas... why? He was one of the first to beat the drum that D1 athletes that fly on charters and wear designer clothes were "slaves". I feel that VT can't compete seriously again because this constant emotional false narrative was pushed, so we HAD to go to a pro model. Fuck Jay Bilas.
But I see this as more of a one-year thing rather than ongoing. Every team will have to work under the revenue sharing amount moving forward. I guess a lot of schools are going to frontload their NIL this offseason into some big ridiculous deals and go out with a bang until the House settlement takes effect later next year. But overpaying for players shouldn't be the norm for most schools I would think. That would just be bad business.
In VT's case it won't take much to "overpay" and it only takes one school to offer stupid money to your starting LT.
House Settlement ($20.5m or whatever) is not going to replace collectives IMO. They will still exist.
Agree, but the thing is the current VT OL coach (who we hired from South Dakota) lacks a competent resume, therefore he will probably immediately get better coaching right away at other P4 schools.
Our current OL coach who was the OL coach on the Cincinnati team that went to the playoffs lacks a competent resume?
You can say he hasn't done a good job here or that he was a bad hire, but he basically has the best resume of any OL coach VT has had in 3 decades.
He did a really good job at WVU.
Can't blame him
I'd cash in now, too if I was highly regarded at OL and currently being coached by our staff
$1.5M is what I saw
I expected to lose Lawson, losing Stro sucks but not end of the world.
The big ones to me are Mansoor, Benji and X. If we can keep all three, that's a good start to transfer season.
I'd be surprised if Delane didn't go to the NFL
After the season he had this year??? He'd be lucky to be picked on the middle school playground
I was thinking the same thing, but somewhere on TKP in the past week or so people were talking about him being a projected 1st rounder from some external source. How he managed to jump over Strong as our best DB in the eyes of NFL scouts surprised me.
He was listed as a Top 5 draft eligible CB before the season. Strong was listed as the fourth best senior CB.
https://www.thekeyplay.com/comment/1264525#comment-1264525
Draft projection on Delane from early October was first round here
Second round at end of October here
He was 3rd team All-ACC. 8 PBU's. Not his best year, but he wasn't awful, and he's had very good years. He's also got decent size and can move. Looking at free scouting websites (little sketch, but the best I've got) I'm seeing late 1st to 2nd round grades.
Did you not see him get torched at least once a game?????????
He might a little old for the league, but I'd root for him.
Just trying to add some levity to all the depressing news...
EDIT: No fair! You corrected it! /s
Blame McHokie for responding immediately after I commented and drawing my attention to it
After this season? I wouldn't be surprised if he came back or just entered portal.
Late on the draw.
Malachi Thomas in. The RB room is fairly talented with young guys but Thomas seemed to improve every year.
5 to play 5... let him cook at some new scenery.
Wouldn't he have been RB1 next year?
Likely but with how the younger guys played I don't think he was going to be a feature back, likely would have been an OR with somewhere around half of the RB carries.
Doubt it. He either would've been passed by Mason or Coney, or we get a transfer RB. He was losing snaps to PJ before PJ got hurt.
FWIW, he's coming off his worst season in terms of yards per attempt and lowest total attempts outside of 2022 where he played three games.
Seeing Griffin Duggan, OT also going into portal
We need OL depth but at the same time OL that didn't get a lot of playing time with the OL roster we had this year probably wasn't going to cut it.
Apparently played in 13 games here the last two seasons.
I don't think he took any offensive snaps though he was playing special teams - I could be wrong here as OL is probably the hardest position to notice snap count because of lack of stats there.
Special Teams I believe
Uh oh.
We're fucked.
or maybe the guy that coaches safeties is getting fired?
I'll believe it when I see it.
We're gonna go 0fer in conference next year with the high school talent we'll have left and this joke of a coaching staff.
I had the same thought. Either the players know a change is coming or they know one isn't and they don't like being coached by a MAC level squad. We basically need transfers for every position on defense and an entire offensive line.
Can almost guarantee you that no coaching changes are going to happen. If they were, they would have happened already or at least an announcement.
Then seriously expect more of the same - the win fairy is not going to come down and touch Pry's head.
Oh I totally agree. At this point, I think we are going to have a 6-6 or likely worse year next year and we're probably looking at a new AD and HC after that. Hate to say it but that's where this is headed. The schedule gets much more difficult next year too, and if this was Pry's most senior-laden and talented team, prepare for a massive step back next year barring no staff changes.
Kinda doubt they're going to fire the backup (assumed starter) RB dad.
WTAF?? Pry loves Phillips. He is getting a huge bag offer? fuck all of this.
Yes, VT values Phillips, (BWW he was rated the #46 of 51 safeties in the ACC rated by PFF), but not as much as he values himself.
per TSL... Philips was planning on staying @ VT then got involved with an agent who convinced him to ask for more $$$. So much more $$ that VT was like.. we'll do half that if you stay. And Phillips chose to leave and hit the Portal.
Highly unlikely that anyone is going to pony up the kind of money he is asking for. Great chance he winds up getting less than VT's offer.
Which means he probably ends up back at Tech for more money than if he hadn't tested the portal.
1. VT's offer was best and final at the time.. they are not going higher
2. VT's offer may have been rescinded entirely and he's not welcome back
3. IF he comes back hat in hand, AND VT takes him back... who is to say he doesn't get a smaller offer from VT?
This is what folks wanted. Pay for play NIL
Yep- what could go wrong? Pry earns a salary, so should Mose Phillips.
Yikes, about one starter away from me pushing the panic button.
Panic button pressed
Seems to have caught several teammates by surprise with this one.
Several others also had things to say.
fuck. tell me Pry has a plan, please
What a shit show college sports has become.
No such thing as college sports anymore at the P4 level. Ship has sailed.
So Lawson, Malachi, Stroman, Mose, Chaplin. That's 5 contributors. I think Pry said it would be 8-10.
Take Minnesota minus whatever points. This is the pinstripe bowl part dueax
My thoughts as well... I loaded up on Minny ML but points might be ok too
Sounds like Mose and Chaplin are testing the waters, or trying to get some offers matched. Hopefully we can retain them if the price isn't too steep.
Makes sense, to be honest.
But at the same time, this is life of a non-P2 school. At best we are a feeder program to everyone else. We're the Triple-A football team for the SEC and Big Ten
Even moreso than being a non-P2 school. We aren't very good, in any context. We are a mediocre team, and we've gone 6-6 back to back seasons. We haven't been consistently good since 2011.
Chaplin, in particular, is at an uber-premium position in the portal ecosystem. There are lots of top teams he would start for. Hopefully, we can keep him here without sacrificing majorly elsewhere.
Plus we're not even competing for AAA championships. Next major round of re-alignment and we will be an AA squad.
Fuck it. I'm all-in on bass fishing, rugby and ice hockey. That's where my my money (donations) are going
Thinking out loud a bit but wonder if Philips and Stroman know their coaching is changing...i.e. P.P. is out??
Stroman particularly makes no sense... I don't think there are tons of teams looking to throw $$ @ a guy who's spent most of the last 2 years injured.
Chaplin---is what it is...this was always where NIL/Portal was heading...P2 uses everyone else as a Minor League. It completely sucks, but somewhere there is a 17 year-old with a Ferrari that he wouldn't have otherwise had...so few eggs to make an omelet, yeah??
Remember last year when Pry was able to convince everyone to come back for another year? Sure miss those days.
I think two factors are at play this offseason
1) I think the staff probably realizes they overpaid for a lot of the players they retained last year, and concentrated too much cash on the QB and WR room and had other holes that they failed to cover (OL, LB, S come to mind). I think they're going to have to let some guys walk to fill more holes on the roster this year.
2) I think there was palpable momentum and optimism going into last offseason. But now I think the book is out on Pry and his staff, and there's probably some thought by some of these portal entrants that this staff isn't going to take them where they want to go. Hard to spin this year into the same offseason hype as last year, especially if no coaches changes whatsoever.
Remember when we laughed at the "I'm coming back" posts?
To be honest, that always felt like a senior led effort to make an impact this year. I think that push was unlikely to return when so many of the reasons to stay were the seniors graduating.
Next year VT Football is gonna feel like this year VT Basketball isn't it?
I don't think it will be that bad. The basketball team has lower-level G5 talent. We aren't gonna be great but we also aren't gonna be Akron.
But here are 5 words that should send a shiver down everyone's spine:
Starting Left Tackle Parker Clements
No shiver. But I did get a second look at lunch.
Bit more than a shiver if you're in the VTQB room.
I almost just threw up reading this...
LB Josh Hand has entered the portal. Redshirt Sophomore has mainly been a special teams guy.
EDIT: Was supposed to be a reply to above. I'm not smart.
OL Gunner Givens entered the portal
This one doesn't seem surprising all things considered
Eh he was actually a backup on the depth chart all year. I think this is ma more significant loss than people realize
Another 4 star bust. SMH
Drinks
Some thoughts on portal movement so far today:
1) Xavier Chaplin- I think a case study with what is wrong with the composition of the program. There is so much hand wringing about his departure, but his performance, while at times was serviceable, wasn't top tier. His footwork and effort took steps backwards as the season progressed, was constantly missing snaps because of a shoulder issue, and never was good in pass protection. The problem? The Hokies didn't have someone with higher upside in development. The OL were mostly Fuente era holdovers, and we have yet to see anyone where the relationship was established with this staff take a big leap forward. Meadows got a last second offer. Braelin had the family tie in with his brother. Then to look and only see two scholarhship takes at a position where there are rarely difference makers in the portal is very frustrating.
2) Mose Phillips- this one is a mixed bag. It is troubling because Pry made him a priority and identified him early as a part of the solution. Either it was a missed evaluation or awful coaching, because there isn't anything in his performance that would indicate he would be a huge loss. Sometimes those upside guys just never get their feet to catch up with their heads (see Hunter, Devon), but the optics aren't good.
3) Malachai Thomas- clearly lost his explosiveness and probably was a "tough conversation because of how effective Coney was in limited touches. I liked his toughness (minus the Marlowe Wax play in the Dome), but for a guy whose next season is likely his last and wants to play, a reduced role probably isn't appealing.
4) Gunner Givens- he was never going to play at VT. Physical tools, but mental toughness and williningess to take coaching were always going to be issues. I am still shocked he stayed in the program this long. Dead wood.
Sums up a lot of my take on it too. These are guys where the ROI isn't matching up to likely what they want, either compensation or playing time next season. So makes sense for both sides to move on. The amount of money floating around that Chaplin was commanding is absolutely absurd given his performance. That is more than a lot of top-tier starting P4 QBs will get if those numbers are remotely accurate.
Pretty good takes here.
Sucks to lose some guys, but it's possible we can find someone better in the portal or develop over the offseason.
Mose would have been fine with stroman back, but we are now down 3 safeties that have playing time.
Thomas would have been fine for senior leadership and banging out some yards to keep wear and tear down on all the backs but Coney, Prioleau, and Mason seem good
Chaplin sucks because who is going to play? Moore is gone too. We don't have bodies. We're now an i jury away from Givens playing OG and he's gone. While big picture he's not a loss, we just don't have anyone.
It feels like since there isn't a salary cap were seeing NFL QB stupidity for every position. Serviceable OTs getting paid like Trevor Lawrence. Dak, Trevor, Love, Burrow, and Tua are the top 5 paid QBs in the NFL, Burrow is probably thr only one that should be there. How does Kylar Murray make more than Allen or Mahomes? It's gonna get stupid
Braelin Moore
https://x.com/mzenitz/status/1866254706680410331?t=6MHHJaxsDe15tN33b5jMHQ&s=19
That's four of the five line gone for next season.
Braelin Moore and Xavier Chaplin in the portal. Parker Clements and Kaden Moore graduate
I mean outside of Chaplin, we didn't have anyone good on the line. Replacing them isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's not like having everyone return this year helped us at all.
Upgrading is borderline impossible with how much linemen cost in the portal though. And even if we upgrade at 3 starting positions (very big IF), the line will still have basically zero depth
Considering how in demand O Line is, do we really think this staff is going to be able to cobble together an equal line...especially with Chaplin putting it out there one of his reasons for looking is a perceived lack of development from this staff?
Nope. We are proper fucked.
Did he say that? Link?
Where did he say that? His statement doesn't read that way at all....
They got Delane too
Confirmed to LSU. Apparently he was the highest rated Interior Offensive Lineman in the On3 Portal Rankings.
Braelin Moore in the portal now. Are we going to have any warm bodies at OL?
Our O Line depth right now (I'm being very generous and listing Johnny Garrett as a starter):
r-Sr - 1 reserve
r-Jr - 1 starter, 1 backup
r-So - 1 backup, 1 reserve
r-Fr - 3
Fr - 2
Total: 1 starter 2 backups 2 reserves. There was no plan for this. Gunnar Givens and Lance Williams would likely both start given the current roster. This is not something that can be fixed even with multiple plug and play portal transfers (which if they do exist will cost an incredible amount of money).
Good thing the portal is overflowing with decent OL....
...has Pry lost the locker room?
(Or are we just a poverty school in a poverty conference /s)
I have to think it's more the latter. There are always more players in the portal than viable landing spots, and have to assume a lot of these kids aren't just looking for playing time at a lower level as opposed to testing the waters and seeing who will pay.
No you're absolutely right, as this is the new state of play. It was mostly pedantic on my part, and could have put the /s in the first line instead
To that first point:
We are back to the excuses of the Fuente era I see. Fuck us.
is it possible that a significant change to the college football landscape means that a "Fuente-era excuse" isn't actually an excuse any more? Seriously question. Because it can't be both that college football has changed to be unrecognizable from what it was a few years ago and that we as observers should still view it through the same lens as Spring 2021.
"Everyone else's sucks too" recruiting, attrition, etc was the rallying cry for Fuente supporters. Yeah we have a bunch of guys leave but so does Duke. It's horseshit in any era. Call it what it is.. our whole OL just hit the portal.. who gives a fuck how many portal guys uva has?
Except in 2020 it was some indicator that Fuente lost the locker room and the team hated him and there was systemic rot. Now every team in america hates their coach and has systemic rot?
The new norm. Probably consider anything less than 12-15 as a 'win'.
I think we're up to 15 at this point. Phillips, Moore, and Chaplin hurt IMO, but a lot of the guys so far have been PWO or minimal contributors. I'm guessing the portal is going to be overflowing this year with the roster limitations coming.
Edit: I don't know if total number of transfers means much this year and quality losses are going to be more nuanced based on the variability of how rosters are constructed.
Yes teams we want to be like: FSU, Stanford and Pitt.
Lousiville has more NIL than we do and Brohm is a wizard on offense so I wouldn't be too worried about them
Looking at it from a total numbers standpoint is kind of silly....
It would be much more useful to identify how many were in the projected 2-Deep (and particularly projected starters).
One team losing 12 3rd stringers and 3 potential starters is waaay different than losing 15 players and having that ratio be 7:8.
A bunch of portal guys in the 2 deep on a 6-6 team that can't close games doesn't indicate to me they are "passed on the depth" chart, no- it indicates to me that they are looking for greener pastures- money, coaching etc. I won't believe for one second we are sitting on a talent gold mine and these guys were going to be on the bench. not one second. That's what the Fuente defenders said, and you see that that was horseshit.
Do we know if our portal entries are planning to play in the bowl game? We gonna have a line full of freshman and practice squad dudes for Minnesota?
We're having student body tryouts for Oline this week
Slightly surprised Drones hasn't entered yet.
Xayvion Turner-Bradshaw is in the portal
This doesn't really surprise me. Never really broke in on the offense and I heard they were trying him out on defense to see if he could make the field there.
Certainly thought he had the speed but I think Greene getting more run than him was indicative of where he was at on the depth chart.
Greene better work on his hands and ball security, else he is a turnover waiting to happen.
was behind Lane and Heath, and would be behind Anderson
DB Jonathan Pennix is in the portal (RS-F)
At minimum, Pennix was a really good gunner on the punt team this year
I guess the Pennix wasn't mightier.
We were told there might be 5-8 guys entering the portal last week
By the time this is all said and done it's going to be over 20 players
This is a problem
We are currently being told that guys like Pennix, Madison, and Bradshaw can't play here and were being passed- on a 6-6 team that can't beat Duke. I call 100% BS. If that was true we would be winning, not treading water. If it is true, we suck at player evaluation.
They were passed. It's why they didn't see the field.
Then why aren't we winning?
What if they were 3 win guys who got passed by the 6 win guys? (Then it's a recruiting issue)
I think our starters are mid and our backups are worse than mid. So to your point about player evaluation... yeah probably.
I will say I think this staff has hit on some of the younger guys (Woodson and Pop come to mind) as well as good portal evals. I think Pennix and Bradshaw were always going to be somewhat reaches. Their recruiting short lists were very Fuente-ish (VT, a mid P4, G5)
Exactly. Pennix and XTB were always high ceiling development guys who will be moving down to G5 or FCS programs. XTB has a lot of speed, but Pry always said he wasn't consistent. He was passed by Heath this year as well as possibly Adams. Pennix was a reach who played well on special teams but was passed by true freshman Josh Clarke in a DB room that is pretty crowded. Madison was never good and was never going to see the field.
DC, you act as if this group of players leaving were contributors who make us more competitive. They weren't. They're not good players. If they were they would've gotten on the field more.
On the flip side of this, all our portal offers so far seem to be dudes in G5 and FCS programs. I know we struck gold with Tuten, but it is concerning to me that we don't seem to be courting many p4 players.
I would focus on the players' offer list out of the portal, not where they are coming from. If it's an FCS player with an offer from Duke and Rice and us, it's probably not great. If it's an FCS player with an offer from half the SEC, then it's probably a safe eval.
Fair and good point
And we should not get our hopes up
Didn't we beat out UGA for Tuten?
I'm pretty sure we flipped his commitment from BC.
The guys who are staying and starting are the skinniest kids at fat camp.
Why should I even care anymore? This isn't college football anymore it's minor league Wheeling Ironman shit. Where da money is all that matters.
You shouldn't. no more player loyalty, so why should fans be. The "we want guys who want to be here" days are over.
You should only care if we are willing to go all in and buy a team to win. As we saw this year, there's no guarantee that 18-24 or 30-year-olds (I hear ya, DC) will get you more than six wins.
NIL has made a mockery of the sport. Better yet, it's brought the money into the light.
Go to the light, Carol Ann. Go to the light.
This - NIL and the portal have just exposed the underbelly of sport. Fans can no longer be blissfully ignorant. Coaches won't be able to demand the same pay. Administrators can no longer hide money in water slides and putt putt courses. University leaders were willing to sell their souls to broadcasters. Now it's time to collect.
Man the putt putt courses are only not a thing anymore because schools don't have to wow recruits, they just need to pay them. And that money isn't being redirected from admins and coaches, its being diverted from other sports and it depends upon the average fan forking over more of their money.
All so the 18 year olds who already had a leg up on everyone can now make sure their grandkids have a leg up, too
I think that's a good thing?
I fully expect that we will see coaching contracts leveling out, especially at non-P2 schools and tier 2 P2 schools, as soon as House goes into effect.
As far as other sports go... I hear you, truly. I feel conflicted. On one hand, football really fuels everything - there's no denying it - so shouldn't they get a substantially bigger piece of the pie? On the other hand, I do think there's something cool about a competitive olympic sport program. But not as cool as having a great football program.
I mean... Most kids playing other college sports - Baseball, Tennis, Softball, Track, Swimming, etc - already come from a much more privileged background than your typical football or basketball player does. Not sure an equity argument really holds here.
"I fully expect that we will see coaching contracts leveling out, especially at non-P2 schools and tier 2 P2 schools, as soon as House goes into effect."
I think this makes a ton of sense. Coaching salaries ballooned as a function of excess money being available and as a compensation for extremely good recruiters. You could pay a true coach a bit less and then allocate the "premium for a great recruiter" to a bigger budget to buy players.
Its perfectly OK to dial back and limit coaches salaries... but the players? no way- they deserve whatever they can get. lol.
My guy. The football program had some amount of money. There were limited places to dump that money legally before. Coaches were an obvious place to put it, because they had some level of direct impact on winning the games. Now it is possible to pay players, some of whom have a more direct impact on winning the games. So there will be shifting of resources. No one is talking about removing the ability to pay coaches. You can see the difference there, right?
Except now it's going to take a lot more money than just "coach" money to be competitive. We couldn't keep up as it was and now we're gonna have to pony up a player pool of $$$. Where do you think that is going to come from? Our revenue share isn't increasing enough to offset it. You better be ponying up the donations to pay these young athletes. Oh, and you'll also see tuition rates increase and probably a higher "athletic " fee added to each student
Yeah we'll probably see $100k annual tuitions in our lifetime for public schools (sooner than we think, TBH), and one of the main drivers for it will be to pay fellow students to play football, or to build facilities for those athletes which are off limits to the regular students body. But it's fine, squeeze them regular kids to pay the elites more, gotta love it.
Exactly.
"Those poor football players", nothing poor about the majority of them. It takes crazy money to be a part of those 7v7 teams, those camps. Not to mention the elite talent kid from Rhode Island who has no chance of getting noticed so his poor parents send him to Bradenton FL to play for IMG, i know that's dirt cheap for the poor kids.
The true poor kids play D2, D3 or NAIA if at all because they don't have the luxuries of doing camps and scouting events. They'll never get ranked and recruited with the big dogs because they can't afford those events and travels. But hey, let's pay the athletes and make that gap even bigger.
If this were true we'd still be pulling diamonds out of the rough from the 757 boys club, YMCA, and putting together the teams we did in the 90s and 2000s. It isn't and we aren't.
You can't say this and then also say there are no hidden gems anymore because of the internet, hudl, recruiting services, etc. If a player is talented, coaches will know about him.
They are there, look at Tuten. Look at all the juco and fcs players that go into the portal and get offers from the P2/4. Once the get a chance to play and showcase their talents and there's film, then the offers come. There's plenty of diamonds in the rough however with all the talking heads and plethora of recruiting services out there, most people assume all the athletes have been evaluated and THAT'S just not the case. It's all a business and it all comes down to money. If you have money you're in, if you have talent and money you're golden. If you're talented and broke, it takes a shit ton of extra work and luck.
It's what makes the world go 'round
What I have a real fucking problem right now is that you're basically setting the average student up for generational debt with Student Loans in order to prop up the kids who already had it all with free tuition by now giving them generational wealth in NIL payments.
It's so fucking backwards from what college should be. It's not just that athletics is broken, it's now causing academics to break even harder than it was before.
Oh I agree completely, I was just adding commentary that beating down the plebs to benefit the top is basically how our society was designed to work
And I'll leave it at that...
Looks like this is actually happening now with some of the big name coaches. Seems similar to a Tom Brady type of contracts where an individual (or coach) can only take so much compensation before it takes away from the overall ability to get other good players.
Mike Norvell $4.5M https://www.on3.com/college/florida-state-seminoles/news/mike-norvell-to...
Brian Kelly $1M https://www.si.com/college-football/brian-kelly-offering-million-lsu-nil...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2024/12/17/mike-norvell-mike...
Any coach that does this is by definition overpaid.
Almost all college coaches are overpaid
Norvell agreed to a one year 4.5 million dollar dock to his pay for the horrible season instead of being fired.
I'm not sure what would possibly make someone think that. The Unlimited Transfer Portal has enhanced the value of individual coaches incredibly. Possibly less so at the non-P2 level, because when enough money comes calling, those players are leaving regardless.
But absolutely ZERO chance P2 coaching salaries don't continue to balloon exponentially. Having a top-level coach who can both recruit and fundraise is going to be paramount...programs will pay out the nose for that.
Here's a conversation:
Admin:"Coach, you've been tremendously successful so we are prepared to offer you a 4 year extension, with a $10k raise per year"
Coach: "Yeah, that's not gonna work for me"
Admin: "but coach, we have to pay players now, so we need to save money somewhere"
Coach: "Great, I'm gonna go coach at Rival U. and take at least 6-8 of this team's best players with me"
And non-P2 salaries may be stagnant because it will be a glorified minor league and a stepping stone level for coaches who want to get the big money in P2.
At the G5 level--whatever % of programs are even still active 10 years from now--is where the real economic impacts will be felt.
But the coaching money isn't going away, it's just going to get shifted to different places. Just like NIL as a whole, not really about the benefit of everyone, just about benefiting a selected few at the detriment of everyone else.
What makes you say this? If the primary decision factor for players is money, wouldn't it make sense to go where there is the most money?
"If the primary decision factor for players is money"- 100%.... and in college football that means these insane endowments and booster money...which happens to coincide with the schools that have the most players drafted- bama and ohio state... so that also checks their second choice for going to a school... getting to the NFL. It's a club and VT aint part of it.
Money is important but players follow coaches to at least an equal extent. These guys have been convinced since early teens that they are going to make big NFL $$ and they trust those who they think can get them there.
One of the biggest causes of exodus in the Portal is the position coach leaving or getting fired.
If Mines left VT, I guarantee we would see a big chunk of the WR room leave too.
Look at Bama last year after Saban left...
That assumes all else being equal – you think if Coach mines leaves for the head coach job at ODU that everyone follows?
This ALL is based on assumption.
But there are coaches who have clear records of being successful recruiters year over year and there will always be tremendous value attached to them.
To imagine they are going to accept a paycut or even stagnation just because colleges are going to be playing players is an extreme leap of logic. The competition is only going to get fiercer for those at the top and bidding wars will ensue.
They only have to follow Mines out the door for it to have a material impact on the Virginia Tech football team though
Yep...this is the point....
They probably won't leave for ODU but they will get poached by other programs who see an opportunity to tamper.
This is why Mines got a raise and new title and why Curt Cignetti got an 8 year extension after one year.
Keeping successful coaches is an integral part to keeping players. Their pay will be commiserate with that.
There's really no reason to. Other than the fans of the top 5-8 Blue Bloods, college football fans are largely being told that they don't matter.
And if they want their team to be competitive, they need to take out a reverse mortgage on their house to help pay ridiculous NIL money for guys who mostly have no chance whatsoever to ever play in the NFL.
Guys like Malik Murphy who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and no NFL scout takes seriously somehow has 6-figure value in this broken-ass Market.
It's not sustainable, never has been, and most of the teams not in the top echelon are going to flounder and ultimately fail financially.
This was always where the system was headed without any oversight. It was stupid from the start and never about actually "fairly" compensating players.
Fans of VT football, should have seen this coming from a mile away, and called bullshit on it from the start.
Most of us (and football fandom, to be honest) saw this coming, but we were shouted down because any criticism of the system was met with bad faith arguments taking evetything as a offense to those poor college kids who were just trying to make a few dollars to pay for textbooks.
We all saw this coming. We saw that it would kill non rev sports, we saw that it would kill the vast majority of non-P2 schools, we saw that it would create an unsurvivable power imbalance and we were told to shut up.
So yeah I don't know why anyone is a fan anymore. Fuck the whole system. Hope it burns
We're fans because regardless of how they get there, there will be 100+ kids wearing maroon and orange on the sidelines representing our school. And, generally speaking, we like our school.
I can hate the system, hate the roster construction, hate the portal, hate the playoffs, hate everything about CFB, but come Saturdays, I will never hate the team that suits up. They're playing for us, literally for our entertainment, and I'll root for them.
Never close to 100 on the dress squad. Never. Which is why I fucking melt down at multiple number penalties.
Oh right. I forgot we only support people who dress. The other kids are still there too, ya know
I was just making a point
This should not have 5 down votes, even if we are all pissed about the portal
I started as a VT fan. I became a CFB fan. I enjoyed watching all the games - including the ones that didn't feature VT
Now, I ONLY watch VT - and the product has been poop for the last 15 years so my patience is running really thin. I just can't watch CFB anymore - it is not entertaining to me anymore
If you're not finding the games entertaining then sure, I get it. But for the 2-3 hours of actual football, I still find the games worth watching and entertaining. The end result does not change the fact that I turned off my brain for a couple of hours, had a couple of drinks with friends, and as was the case for this year, saw a lot of close back and forth games that had me tuned in to every play.
back when I thought VT had even the slightest chance of reaching the summit I was interested in watching other games and seeing how they might impact the post season picture. Now that it's basically a foregone conclusion and the powers-that-be are unashamedly pushing the agendas of a select few teams I have very little interest in the sport at large. It's a direct result of the failed CFP structure, conference realignment, and networks putting all their eggs in two baskets. The sport just isn't interesting anymore because anyone not named Georgia, Bama, LSU, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, Texas stand no chance. Regional rivalries are dying. Teams in California are playing the ACC. Oregon is in the B1G. The SEC appears to run the show. ESPN proudly slobbers all over the SECs unit. Guys like Herbstreit have become total clowns with no integrity. I. Just. Can't. Watch. Anymore.
I've joined an EPL fantasy league with my brother and have found watching soccer on the weekends to be FAR MORE ENJOYABLE than football. I watch one football game a week (VT) and then focus on soccer. It's been great.
FTFY
Pretty sure Bama just got left out of the playoffs for SMU.
SMU, Vandy, Tulane, Indiana - all are historically dead end programs that have capitalized on the new world of College Football. There's a lot of room for upward mobility in the sport. Arguably more than ever before.
VT just doesn't have a way to capitalize on it right now.
Because at the program level, we're cheap and ignorant relatively speaking. Our AD has repeatedly kneecapped us. He signed a shit Nike deal because it was "on his desk" from the guy before him. He's extended coaches who don't deserve it, so we can't fire them. He's spent a fortune on non revenue sports while neglecting football for a decade. We need stadium wifi, LED lights, new locker rooms, and better entry access. Instead we got knockoff seatbacks and protected the salamanders. Sure, we shifted some resources around this year to focus on football. Welcome to the party guys. So did everyone else. You can't neglect a program for 10 years then expect it to change in a season. That'd be like showing up only in the 4th quarter and expecting to win. That's how you lose to Vanderbilt and Rutgers. And then you've got the audacity to raise ticket prices and blame the fans rather than having an ounce of introspection.
Yea... my big concern is that VT's struggles are less related to personnel and (significantly) more related to donors, geography, and conference affiliation.
Replacing people is easy. Changing culture is challenging but doable. The challenges I mentioned above are really difficult to deal with.
Agree fully. The "This is Home" Beamer-style homespun culture is just not working in this era of college football. Players are going to go where there's a good playing and financial opportunity, chance to play in big spotlight games, and get prepped for the NFL. The old way of doing things just isn't working. VT big money donors are going to have to realize this, and the VTAD is going to have to get more aggressive top down. We can't hang on to under achieving coaches for 4-5+ years and hope it will work out like Beamer did. We can't beat our chest when we thump UVA and tout that we are the flagship VA program - that does not matter to top recruits even in VA anymore. The culture at VT is just so behind and it will take a ton to get caught up at this rate. There's just not one easy hire/fix to revamp these cultural and programmatic issues.
I wouldn't say the "this is home" approach isn't working, but it's not enough by itself.
The amount of talent in our six hour radius is small relative to the number of schools competing for that talent. THAT is the big problem.
So either we need to find a way to win with less talent, or we need to find a way to compete for that talent. OR we need to find talent outside of that radius.
At this point in terms of VT athletics, it comes down to leadership. Since 2011- the Beamer transaction and how it was handled, Fuente, Pry, NIL etc. Whit has had opportunities to make program changing decisions and here we are spinning wheels for 10 plus years. If you are going to allow Beamer to coach as long as he wants, then give him the tools to win- hire more analysts, hire better coaches. To be fair, Beamer was making bowl games- which is what we are doing now, so any decision there was tough. Had Beamer gone 2-10, decisions would have been easier. Fast forward to Fuente- at the time, great hire- When he got to Memphis, there was nothing and no support. He won there, and kudos to him. That is a different animal than VT though and Whit deserves heat for that. He is supposed to really "pay attention to" recruiting, and that was Fu'd blindspot and it took Whit too long to see it. So now you have a highly unpopular coach- ask Tre Turner, ask Dwight Vick, ask the 99 team he blew off. So football starved, great fans VT have an abrasive, unpopular coach that is allegedly talking to other schools and he is not winning. The team doesn't want to play in bowls etc. Could not be more toxic- recruiting, losing, players hate the coach. Pretty much worse case scenario. So Whit is left with the most critical decision of his tenure. He chooses to hire a guy that has never been a head coach before to clean up the most critical piece of his department. Why? Well he has ties to Beamer and VT. No other reason really. Pry was only a coordinator at a P4 school for 4 years- and that was basically co-coordinator for a head coach that brings elite talent in. Whit rolled the dice that the Beamer old VT connection was THE factor for a new coach. Not recruiting, not X and O's, not prior HC experience, not the hottest commodity. Now everyone will say Whit has no money to work with and that is what all decisions are based on- well Whit needs to pitch VT football to the board better then. It's part of his job. Its not like he supports Olympic coaches either- he hand stings them at every turn. We have no leadership- that's why we are 12-12 in our last 24. That's why we signed the 43rd best class, that's why we are a lower/mid ACC program now. Leadership. Lack Of.
I agree with a lot of this, but I think this part is straight up wrong:
The perception post-Fuente was that VT needed a coach who had experience recruiting at a 'big boy football program,' and - in addition to coaching and recruiting - that person could install the infrastructure that VT didn't have.
This is false:
There are a lot of reasonable arguments against the Pry hire:
You can't tell me that Pry was hired 'just' because of a Beamer connection. His resume fit the gaps (recruiting, program management, personality, etc) that VT was trying to fill at the time.
hindsight narrative building.
"omg omg omg he GETS US" we all exclaimed in his first offseason here -- now because he hasn't been winning, it's the only qualification he had
💯💯💯
When I look at the Fuente hire, it's clear that Whit had blindspots. He didn't realize how far behind our program infrastructure was, and because he didn't know that, he couldn't properly evaluate Fuente.
When I look at the Pry hire, I see the challenge of deciding trade offs with limited resources - Do you prioritize head coach experience or Power school experience? Do you prioritize development or recruiting?
I think I'm more lenient to Whit on the Pry hiring and associated blind spots/risks. I've never interviewed anyone for a head coaching job, but I would think that assessing someone's game management ability would be kind of difficult. What do you do - ask them hypothetical questions about how to handle the last two minutes of a game? Pry checked a lot of boxes that we thought we needed Post-Fuente, so I can understand how we got here.
I know everybody thought Fuente was a great hire at the time, but I have a lot of questions about you hire somebody to be a head football coach at the Division 1 level and not realize that they have essentially zero plan or ability to recruit. So yes, dummies (like myself) thought "good offensive coach + Bud Foster = championship". But the Athletic Director not realizing at all what a successful, modern D1 program looks like is less forgivable.
I'm not done with Pry yet. I'm close... but I'm not done yet. If we groundhog day it with the same exact staff heading into the Sugar Shane game expecting the win fairy to show up, I am more than done with Pry/Whit. Why? because Shane will smoke us and for 3 hours in prime time we get to hear Sean McDonough say "former hokie, dad was a legend, how sweet this must be for him" - and I'd rather the hokies win in that spot.
Boy that is going to sting. I've got like 8 months to prepare myself.
At least I won't hear that regardless of the outcome as I plan to be AT the game not watching the broadcast so.....
Agreed. We hired Pry because he knew what "big time football" looked like. Well if he brings back the same staff that underachieved to go 6-6, that aint big time football.
If they mix it up, it at least says they know what should happen. Whether they'll be able to execute and win games is always a different story
agreed
I think 2016 was in the midst of a rather large change in college football. The idea of a 'CEO coach' was not popularized - Dabo was the only one doing it. Promoting a G5 coach to the P5 was very en vogue. I think a lot of people (including Fuente and Whit and fans) thought that VT could just recruit itself and churn out top 20-30 classes.
The landscape of College Football changed so much from 2015-2020 (and even more from 2020-2024). Whit was ever so slightly behind the curve when he hired Fuente. It was costly.
At the time, I was 100% on board with the logic that if you can win at dumpster fire Memphis, you can win at VT- I was very much on board with that. It was wrong. VT's facilities that people like to bang on are literally the Taj Mahal in every way compared to Memphis... and Fu won there. The logic was solid.
Yeah and this is the part that i think is very dumb of an athletic director. Yes - CFB changed drastically in the last ten years, but coaches have always had to be able to go in a recruit's living room and talk to him and his parents. That is the bare minimum and Fuente sucked at it and couldn't be bothered to try improving.
Fu even did Whit a favor by embarrassing the entire VT community at ODU. That was a disgrace. If Whit fired him that week, named an interim coach- nobody would have batted an eye. Am I making too much of one game? No I am not. Fuente had not won shit. He had no equity and he embarrassed the school as much as ever on a football field. If Whit was serious about winning, he would have sent a message then. The program was out of control, and the talent on the field was so poor and poorly coached that a 3 win ODU beat you. An in state school- it killed recruiting for years. Whit missed a huge opportunity.
This was not Fuente's problem IMO. It's not that he wasn't a good enough salesman. It's that he didn't know how to run an organization, train others, etc.
Of course its hindsight. If you prefer foresight- what would the reaction on this board be if I told you- 3 years into Pry's tenure, we will be 6-6, lose to Rutgers twice, lose to Duke and sign classes in the 40's? zero people on here would defend that. None.
nobody is asking you to defend the results. but dont let the mediocre results change the way you evaluate the hire at the time it was made.
if pry is a bad hire it's because he loses too many one score games and cant manage a clock. not because his only qualification was apparently being part of the Blacksburg Old Boys Club. not only is that a sour grapes take, it's wrong and it's not rooted in reality
What are you seeing that I am not? Serious question. Brent Pry had never been a head coach. Brent Pry was a DC for 5 years under Franklin. Brent Pry was not on the short list of "hot upcoming coaches" like Fuente was. He was very much under the radar. Pry was a great recruiter? maybe, but he had a Penn State polo on and an elite closer as a boss. I'm not seeing much besides the connection to VT. If there is nothing to that, why didn't Whit hire someone with Pry's exact resume not associated with VT? Or better yet someone that had been an HC before? I honestly think it was a huge, huge factor in the hire.
These are absolutely accurate and fair points.
if "connection to beamer" was the only selling point, why wasn't anyone else the guy? Why was it someone whose only connection was as a GA 25 years prior? Could have had JC Price, already in the building and way cheaper! Could have hired Scot Loeffler with his HC experience! Could have hired Shane with a godfather offer, he's LITERALLY A BEAMER!Brent Pry was so far under the radar that bar1990 suggested him as a potential candidate as soon as it was clear that Fuente was gone. Yes the connection to VT had a say in it -- that was biggest criticism of Fuente! Didn't get it, didn't understand it, didn't make an effort. Culture fit matters, but someone being a culture fit doesn't mean that it was their only qualification.Should we have hired Manny Diaz to replace Fuente after he got canned at Miami? honest question -- that's like the only name that can come to mind immediately for P5 HC criteria who was available that cycle.
edit: leaving the top part for posterity but i don't feel like getting into this now. Manny is a fun alternative though!
Probably... why? because he would be better than 1-12 in one score games. why? because you can't be worse. We aren;t winning a natty in football, so hindsight, Diaz probably fucks up less timeouts than Pry.
Manny in Blacksburg is weird to think about, but I also think it's weird to see him at Penn State or Duke. I happen to think he's a good coach who got shafted at Miami.
According to wiki, Pry was a co-DC from 2011-2016... from 2016 until he got the VT job, he was DC at a P4 school- 5 years. I said 4... my mistake.
bar covered this well about how this comment is half very legit and half complete nonsense. Addressing the no HC experience point, remember all the conversations on this board about what we needed in a HC before and after Fuente got fired? The number one thing people were pointing to was high-level P5 experience. What we know from around the country is that prior HC experience is not a guarantee of success. Coaches who had no previous HC experience:
There's a pretty big gulf between where we were (which was not equitable) and where we are now (which is not sustainable).
Not paying athletes in the 80s was fine. But by the mid-2010s, with schools, coaches and TV networks making billions, it was absolutely clear that student athletes were being exploited. Tuition and board was a fine compensation in the 80s. Much less defensible in the 2010s. Recognizing that and advocating that athletes get a cut of the vast sums their work is generating isn't advocating for where we are now.
We're where we are now because no one had the courage to just come out and say that college football is a pro sport. We're trying to layer professional features on top of an amateur infrastructure. It will not work. Demonstrably.
The fix is to fully embrace the professional nature of the sport and get government permission to set up things like salary caps, trading windows, etc.
We all could see this coming, yes. Agreed. That doesn't mean the way it was was right.
And I'll die on the hill saying that not graduating with student debt was a massive fucking leg up and benefit that every scholarship athlete enjoyed and it's horseshit that we were gaslit by the talking heads into thinking it wasn't.
That's fair. My counter point would be that that benefit was no longer commensurate with the value generated to schools and networks by CFB collectively.
If I can ever get motivated, I want to read this book on the topic.
Networks generate money by raising subscription fees. The majority of which subscribers never watch a college football game. They also generate money through ad revenue during said game. To that point, Army Navy game ads- a game played by kids that can not accept NIL and don't chose the school by how much bag they get- command as much as the SEC title game. That's where CBS gets their money- not from Lynn Kidd or Xavier Chaplain- live sports content played by literally fucking anyone - and turned over every 4 years- is where they make their billions. If not Chaplain, someone fucking else- bank on that. It's fucked logic to tie the 2 together. You think people only watch the rose bowl if there are highly ranked recruiting classes in it? fucking nope. They watch it because its "school x vs. school y" and its live sports. The over valuation of these players, the over payng of these players is going to kill the sport- and then what violin will we play for ballers that get a free 250K dollar education? when they kill that goose?
Not sure what point you're making. I agree with your entire post. However, who populates the teams representing "school x" and "school y"?
Looking at it another way, if every player refused to play the 2025 season, and they all had their scholarships revoked, but schools, conferences and coaches also didn't get their TV money, who took the bigger hit? Who would have the bigger motivation to try to get those games played?
"if every player refused to play the 2025 season"- the hundreds of G5 players, walk ons, prospects that were overlooked would line up and play. Look VT is going to turn over 1/3 of our roster between now and march... and players aren't replaceable? come on
And with those walk ons and G5 players, would ESPN, Fox and CBS just shrug their shoulders and say "yeah, that seems pretty close to what we're paying billions for"? Of course not. Come on.
Yes they would. They pay millions more now than they did when Johnny Manziel was irreplaceable. They pay more now than when Leonard Fornette was too big/good for college football. When Sheduer and Travis Hunter leave this year, you think anyone will air colorado games next season? VT sold out lane this year for not Michael Vick or anyone close. Facts. Would ESPN pay for SEC football? you bet your ass.
I see where you're going with this, and I agree in principle. The charm of college football is the "college" part. It's why CFB succeeds where the XFL and other attempts have failed. But if you believe that ESPN would pay their current rates for club football, I think you're dreaming.
They pay what they do now BECAUSE Manziel was irreplaceable. His lore added to the intrigue of college football. So did Mike Vick's.
Why is ESPN paying so much more for the SEC? Because that's where the best teams are. And why are they the best teams? Because they have the best players.
biggest fanbases, not best teams
example: Auburn
Most NFL players every year, by any league, by a wide margin, for over 15 years. Best players. 100%
I think his point was that ESPN pays for the SEC because of the bigger fanbases. They weren't the best league at the time that ESPN started pumping them.
They are now, because of the best players, but that's the result, not the cause.
This times a Million.
Here's the other point that none of the NIL proponents have been able to answer..what happens 5 years down the line???...say you give a college football player $750k over 4 years to score you 9 total TDs. After taxes, that's slightly more than $450k. A nice chunk of change but not set for life kind of money.
Even if that player is investing that money incredibly wisely (feel free to LOL at this point), they are still going to need a consistent source of income.
And since we have allowed them to transfer 3 times and decided that their education isn't real compensation, they have no degree and are left as a 30 year old with no real marketable skills. Is that really progress???
Let's examine the choices for American (and foreign) high school seniors in the real world. 1. Go to college- there are a myriad of levels here. You can go to Johns Hopkins to study pre-med and then med, you can go to Harvard to study business, you can go to Yale to study law- IF- huge IF- you are in the top 3% of your high school class. If not, you can go to a fine school- Virginia Tech. Off you go to find yourself and get an education. You don't get 6 figures for showing up though- so take note. 2. Get a job- for 99.99% of high school graduates, this is going to be an entry level job or trade apprentice. Many good honest livings out there- but right out of high school, you are not getting a 6 or 7 figure check for showing up your first day. 3. Join the Military- for 30K dollars per year. 4. Not do anything and live in moms basement- or something similar 5. Go backpacking in europe or 6. Join the NBA G league- if you are one of the 40 best basketball prospects in the world- for 85K per year. or you can do the totally equitable and realistic choice behind door number 7... sign with BYU hoops for 7 million dollars before you play a game, or extort virginia tech after you redshirt for 500K dollars before you scored a touchdown. Seems totally fucking real world and "fair" huh?
Not disagreeing, but how do we determine which athletes are really generating profits and how do we then divy it up? Certainly no one on the Water Polo team is generating any profit....so do they deserve nothing?? Is their work and dedication not equally as taxing and worthwhile as the QB #1??? If QB#1 has a bad year do we then get to take back some of his money?
Which is why the SENSIBLE THING to do from the start would have been to have allow players to sign with Agents. (Like actual agents here...not NIL Agents who are mostly College Students or recent Grads who look like they had sub-3.0 GPAs in Business School) Guess what, Agents aren't looking to sign the 3rd string RB or every 17 year-old who has 3* or more on 247----that's because those individuals don't actually have any monetary value in the real world.
Let those that can profit off of merchandise, autographs, video game royalties, ect. That is real "NIL"
I don't think anyone here had a problem with that, but like Alum07 said above, if anyone said anything slightly disparaging about paying players they were met with contempt by those that feel like all those "poor 20 year olds" have been so exploited....with multimillion dollar facilities, private chefs, the highest quality training, and free academic assistance.
That I don't have the answer to. I'll fall back on my prior observation that the mess we're in is because we don't have the courage to call this a pro sport. Things like letting athletes get agents is a pro sport concession. We (collectively) cling to the amateur nature of the sport because that's part of the charm.
But amateurism and billion dollar TV contracts cannot exist together for any length of time.
As for that 3 star not having any monetary value, I agree. As an individual, he doesn't. But in the aggregate, recognizing that you can't field 138 football teams (and thus merit those TV $$$$) w/out a whole lot of 3 stars, they do have some value.
An honest reckoning of what college football has become would have allowed us to understand and compensate for that value. We haven't had that honest reckoning yet.
First I appreciate the way you are communicating your point. It is how you would talk to someone in person if you really wanted to have a conversation which is lacking on the internet 99% of the time.
We have opposing views on this. I consider the dollar value of the tv contracts a red herring when been used as a benchmark for player compensation. I see college football players in the same vein as the participants on Survivor or American Idol. Those shows draw huge audiences and generate tons of money for the network but the value creation isn't happening at the individual contestant level. The Olympics are another example. Those are amateur athletes competing on the largest stage that generates tons of money for NBC. The players, game show contestants, etc, are all cogs in a wheel from a value creation standpoint.
I'm not unsympathetic towards the rigors of being a college athlete but I'm also not going to treat them as being victimized. Being a D1 college football or basketball player is a unique experience that most people never get to have. They get an education, travel experience, the best coaching in their field, the best strength and nutrition, a platform to showcase their talents, and if I remember correctly from my time at VT...tons of girls.
The participants in those shows have done the math and decided that the chance to win $1M is fair compensation for the time they're putting in and a fair cut of the money that NBC is making.
For a long time, CFB players felt things were equitable for them as well. It seems (possibly with some prompting by outside agitators) that they look at the money being made now and at their compensation, and have decided that's not the case any more.
If we had collectively recognized that the money involved in all this means it's not an amateur sport any more, we could have figured out what compensation (and labor management) should look like. My guess is that the vast majority of CFB players are fairly compensated as things stood before all this. That is, room, board, and all the stuff you mentioned. But I don't think you're arguing that those things you listed are fair compensation for Cam Ward. Or put another way, I don't think you're suggesting that Cam Ward delivers the same value to the ecosystem that a 3rd string punter does. That was the implication in the pre-NIL era.
All of this - we have arrived at a place where regular fans with jobs paying in the thousands are being asked to fund the compensation for players most of whom are also being paid in the thousands, while the top conferences take in billions and even the ACC is paid hundreds of millions. It's perverse.
Long term one of two things will happen.
Option 1: College Football remains a cartel, controlled by a few interests with a lopsided labor market. Interest drops out as the lack of structure tanks the competitive appeal for all but 20-ish teams who form their own division of the sport. The rest of the programs starve and I get another hobby.
Option 2: Substantial reform. Players form an association and receive a significant fraction of the value generated by television viewers and advertisers. A competitive structure is formed with rules bargained between the universities and the players association that deals with the allocation of compensation, talent, rules for treatment of contracts, endorsements, etc.
Option 2 is the better and sustainable model. Option 1 is the more likely model, in part because of what I started with above. People are so fucked off at the concept of sharing the big pie that they'd rather everyone get none of it but like 20 people.
It sucks.
Welcome to Corporate America.
Yep
If Option 2 doesn't happen college football will lose a HUGE amount of its viewers and the money source that feeds it will dry up.
Option 1 where a bunch of Billionaire alumni supporting their own college team can't support this model alone.
If Option 1 wins its over in less than 4-5 years. And the powers driving the current jack-assery can thank themselves for the loss of THOUSANDS of college scholarships for athletics oriented kids of the future (I thknk Option 2 does support this need).
I think the whole thing is going to crash and burn before they ask the NCAA or a similar group to reform and start over. So I guess Option 1.
Oligarchies are so hot right now!
Even I- yes no bullshit- would have been fine with a true and regulated NIL model. If hardees legitimately wanted to sign Drones to be in a commercial in the NRV and he gets paid for it- fine. Most normal people would not have had a problem with it. If fanatics sells x number or player jerseys- and like the NFL- Tuten got a legit cut of that? fine- nobody would take issue with it. But every school short of Texas, Bama, and Ohio State- whose boosters literally donate GDPs of small countries levels for "Go my school, yay" - they ALL knew they couldn't generate real NIL money for these kids. So they quickly went to pay for play- and the NCAA is too fucking weak to control it. Take even some SEC schools- take Ole Miss and Arkansas- 2 small towns in the south where covid and wal mart have killed many many small businesses. Do you think there is a legit bakery in Oxford, MS. that is going to pay Jackson Dart a million dollars to do a commercial for them? in other words, their total revenue for 4 years? nope. not remotely close. All of these schools knew this, thus the collectives were born. A close friend of mine owns several businesses in charlotte, NC and is a huge FSU fan. He is not a mega booster because you don't stay rich giving Willie Taggart 7 figures... but I asked him about his businesses getting involved in NIL for FSU players. He laughed at me and told me he's not a fan of throwing money away and that paid endorsements are a tax and book keeping nightmare. It's a fucking joke, all because we felt there was no "value" in a 250K dollar education.
If you are a freshman LB at South Carolina now you get a $1.5m to wear the cock
I have to say that I haven't watched a single basketball game this season and have lost almost all interest in doing so. Why? I practically don't know anyone on this roster from last year. NIL has created an almost wholesale change to our roster and this will continue. M&O may be the same colors but the annual rotation of large swaths of our roster has taken away the "connection" to our teams' human identity.
We are about to experience this with Football.
For example, I remember Eddie Royal's first game he played in and when I did, I said, "I can't wait to see what he does in year 2 and 3. Those days are gone on what we are about to lay witness to....significant annual roster exodus.
This point in time is likely a bubble in the NIL market. With the new laws coming into effect where schools can pay players, there will be more money in the market than ever before. You are right in that it is probably unsustainable. But in the short term, any school that can throw money at winning will. I would guess this winter window and maybe the next spring window would be the peak of the feeding frenzy. After going through a season or two, schools will start to figure out he cost/benefit of their NIL investments and the market will start to correct. But for the moment, the players - and in particular the agents who are in their ears - should probably be licking their chops. Crazy.
There is no short term on that, there will always be schools willing to throw more money at winning than anyone else. Look at baseball, the "free market" now has some teams paying individual players more money than small markets can afford to pay an entire payroll, and those smaller markets are being absolutely crushed at the gate with plummeting fan attendance and engagement.
Free markets never correct if there are entities out there willing and capable of asserting their dominance. Bad faith actors will always work to create power imbalances that assert dominance over the rest of the market and regulations are vital to preventing that from happening. And as long as we keep treating NIL as the wild West, and no, none of the new laws will really curtail any of it or put rigid guardrails around any of it, well then nothing will change and we will continue going down this path. The rich are getting richer and the poor are being rapidly squeezed to death.
Like look at this
Kid is a high school senior and is getting $7m guaranteed before he picks up a ball at the collegiate level. Fucking ridiculous.
The whole goddamn system has jumped the fucking shark. We've gone from whining about kids who were already graduating college without ANY student debt (at a time when tuition already costs upwards of $60k per year at most schools, especially put of state) being so poor they can't afford food (when it's literally been supplied for them in school and athletic run dining halls) to now needing upwards of 8 figures per year just to be in the race for their services.
Fucking ridiculous. If you aren't P2 or have absurd oil or religious money backing you, you cannot compete anymore.
LMFAO so 4 times the NBA rookie salary for a lottery pick.... fucking clown show. I thought Mormons were great businessmen?
ftfy
There ought to be development of a new minor league, totally divested from college sports. All the 18-24 year olds with the top talent go to that league and jump from team to team pocketing as much as possible until they're eligible for the draft for the NFL
Return college football to how it was before the portal/NIL days. This will be for the players not as talented as the minor leaguers, but still wanting to continue to play football. Pay the players and set a standard leaguewide individual salary cap. The on-field product won't be as good, and yeah, you'll still have boosters paying under the table - but the players that are good enough for that kinda money can go to the minor league.
Players good enough make their bank, players not as good get to continue playing, and maybe still develop into NFL talent. Fans won't see the skill on display that we have now, but we'll cheer for a consistent team of people who are proud of where they play and want to be there.
Before the portal and NIL days, I couldn't care less about the NFL. I was all in on college football, consumed my Saturdays. And during the week, I was reading about other teams and what all I missed. Nowadays, I watch VT (usually) and that is it. Don't keep up with rankings, coaches, league standings - none of it. Over the past couple of years I have gotten more and more into the NFL. At least when you have an NFL team, those players are locked into a contract (to a degree) and you know who you are going to be watching from year to year.
It's hard to get emotionally invested in a team that is going to have a full new roster every season. Crazy to say this as from about 2000 onward I have been a diehard VT fan, but the way things are going coupled with how bad we are - I'm getting to the point where I really don't care and may just give up on college sports.
Will never happen- why? Because no life loser whose whole identity is Alabama football will pay their players more than this league will. People in Ohio who would have never sniffed admission to OSU will donate millions to the buckeyes because its the most important thing in their lives. This minor league can't compete with stupidity. Little can. The casino industry is built on it.
No I know, there is no chance of it working. But damn, this shit is just stupid now
I think the next logical thing in the whole NIL/Pay for play will need to be contracts that you can't break for minimum of 2-3 years. This whole transferring every year, taking a bag, not doing shit then transferring again for more money is not sustainable.
Contracts are always breakable. And efficient breaking of contracts will always happen.
There is no way a contract that prevents player transfer would be legal unless there is an overarching association that has an agreement with a players union (like professional sports).
Without an Association/Union agreement, a multi-year contract could include one or more of the following to limit transfers:
Of course, if any suitor is rich enough, they can compensate a player for breaking any of those terms, rendering them useless. And with the wealth divide between P2 and everyone else, there is no solution without an association/union agreement. And I don't see how any school in the P2 would want to include themselves in an association that is nonP2.
You're going to see players get paid on a per-game basis (this will limit opt outs for most players). You're going to see players have buy-outs (which will effectively be transfer fees).
I've got it! Everyone is so hung up on football and basketball with NIL - we will NEVER keep up with either of them. Let's reroute all our NIL money and become the most dominate men's soccer club in America!
UNC women just won their 23rd national title in soccer. VT has zero in anything all time. So there is a blueprint out there.
The Drone Racing team would like a word.
Air Force winning Skydiving seems like a gimme.
I'm sure Army and Navy have competent sky Diving teams.
Just ask the Army 82nd and 101st airborne, army and navy special forces. Air Force uses ejection seats.
Chair Force.
Funny you should say that. When my son was at the AFA and played for the Falcon football team we went to the AF - Navy game in Colorado Springs. As you drive up to the AFA exit on I-25 you can see the stadium really clearly with the home stands facing the interstate. The Navy has done a few midnight pranks that week including building a 3-D submarine profile (out of a wood frame and black plastic tarps) in the center of the classes quad with 2-3 guys in the conning tower. Also, the home stands in the stadium has "AIR FORCE" painted across the seats. The Navy painted "CH" in front of it and it was visible for miles. Pretty hilarious.
They did it again!!
UVA = Pickleball
Hey easy now, some of us Gen X pickleball fans don't appreciate you giving loluva any credit in our new favorite sport.
Chachi, this isn't personal, but any sentence containing "pickleball" and "sport" gives big UVA vibes.
Pickleball is to tennis what wiffleball is to baseball: a casual yard game version of a sport that requires none of the athletic ability, enjoyed primarily by middle aged suburbanites on at least their third beer.
No offense taken, the sport has a reputation fostered by comedians for being a game for geriatrics and aging athletes like me. I recommend you watch some pro-level singles matches and decide if it's not a sport. I have never been more gassed playing tennis, racketball, squash, volleyball or basketball than I have been playing pickleball singles. Doubles has less running, but more strategy. I play at the 4.0 level and love beating players half my age, but I have worn out a shoulder requiring rotator cuff surgery and torn my right knee meniscus while playing over the past five years. The beauty of it all is that almost anyone can play and find a challenge. Considering that tennis has been dying for 30 years in the USA, and I love tennis having started playing in 1972, it's great that pickleball has filled in the gap to resuscitate racket/paddle sports in America. Hope you give it a try, it's notoriously addictive. Go Hokies!
Some words should not be mixed with "pro-level".
Pickleball is one of those.
I thought the same thing until I stumbled some YouTube footage of some matches. The play and reaction times are insane!
A lot of people play pickleball in cities too!
Meat Judging..... LOL
"The game loses all its meaning if you don't berate the other guy for being a fucking meat gazer..."
- Raddimus (Waiting, 2005)
Ngl, at first read i thought it said meat juggling
Hip Hop Dancing - BYU?!?
Gaelic football sounds like a good time. Though it seems the 'irish' would have a leg up in it already.
This is what the SEC did with their media dollars
You joke, but some schools are going to do this.
Came to TKP - Saw 70+ new comments. Assumed Drones had entered portal and I missed it. Nope, nothing to see here.
Maybe this is a hot take, but assuming we are working with a limited pool of funds, it feels like the smart personnel management decision would be to let Drones walk, ride with Pop in 2025, and use those funds to sign portal players at positions need.
No. This is not a hot take. You're 100% correct.
Especially Oline.
Not a hot take at all- We are 6-6. Drones is OK, he's not Montana. He's not winning 10 games. It's not all on him, but you can get 6-6 with less money.
Can we get a new thread for VT Portal entrants?
Its a good opportunity for someone to open a 'The Portal Taketh Away: Outgoing Players' thread
I tried. I put up another post with the updated list of portal entries.
The good news is that thread doesn't have new news (right now), so it's still just rehashing the same old stuff in this thread
Joshua Gholston has entered the portal as a graduate transfer.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15iCDbPgnP/
These guys are not in the portal.
Army vs Navy ROTC Flag Football post game with Pry at Worsham Field
Kinda jealous. Wish we coulda used Lane for the Pearl Harbor Classic (annual HT freshman/sophomore football game).
I'd imagine Army has a pretty solid advantage. Bigger player pool, and they PT three times a week vs Navy's once.
Navy apparently won this one 19-12 in the pouring rain. No idea on past games.
oof, there it is
gee i wonder which school dropped the bag on him
As a bass fishing school this stat hurts.
In addition to the legs (both above and below), I award you 🧦🧦🧦🧦 for that excellent dad joke!
Secondary getting raided... maybe a sign of coaching changes 👀 🙏
Nah, just a sign we're a de-facto mid-major program.
If that were the case - I think the time to announce it would be yesterday.
1) So we could find someone worth finding before they get hired elsewhere
2) So the players know who it would be so they can try to keep some of them
3) So we can start to lure some portal players over
Feels like Georgia Amoore all over again.
So are we fucking concerned yet? Or was he "passed on the depth chart"????
well, it fits with burn it all into the sun!
Wonder what the chances are that he's going to go play with his brother?
He may go be rostered with his brother, but he may not go play with his brother, given his results this year.
Every good returning player we had is gone
Not great
Not to fear... we are offering guys from Richmond, Utah Tech, etc. to replace them.
So we don't have 90% returning production...I predict an undefeated season!
Leg. Couldn't help but chuckle. Although, pretty sure I'll cry later.
Those saying that it is happening everywhere, I didn't have time to look at the whole ACC, but here is what I found, per 247. As of today, we are comparable to FSU. Yikes.
Total in portal, number of players in the 2 deep
BC
10, 6 from two deep
Cal
5, 2 from 2 deep
Clemson
3, 1 from two deep
Duke
4, 1 from two deep
FSU
19, 5 from two deep
GT
10, 5 from two deep
VT
18, 6 from two deep
Louisville
15, 3 from two deep
Miami
4, 1 from two deep
Stanford, 17, 8 from two deep
Pitt 11, 5 from two deep
NC State 8, 5 from two deep
Syracuse 5, 5 from two deep
SMU, 5, 3 from two deep
UVA 13, 6 from two deep
Wake Forest 8, 5 from two deep
The biggest similarity is how many in the two deep have left. Ten schools with five or more from their two deep.
At this point Pry is every bit as bad as losing quality in the portal as Fuente was. Which isn't fucking great given that was supposed to be his big selling point when bringing him in.
I know it looks bad, and maybe it is indeed bad, but let's all remember that it takes longer to get guys out of the portal than it does for them to go into the portal. Not saying every player we're going to pull is Tuten-caliber, but there's always the potential.
Just wanted to look at the silver lining 😂
If you don't want your 2-deep poached relentlessly, you can't underperform in the W-L column. That's the biggest similarity I see between us and FSU. Talent on the roster but don't win = a very easy pitch to transfer from winning programs.
😳😳
It's crazy to me that it's easier to name the players who are staying than the ones who are leaving
This is sending up every red flag that we ignored under Fuente.
The problem isn't the coaching staff. The problem is Virginia Tech. We need to completely clean house of Merryman if we hope to have a functioning D1 athletic department by the end of the decade.
The coaching staff is definitely part of the problem. But yeah, it clearly goes much deeper than that. Unfortunately, I think the people who are in position to make changes either don't care enough about winning or are completely blind to the issues so it's unlikely we're going to see things improve any time soon
I think the coaching staff is a symptom of the real problems we have. We need to be treating the disease, not the symptoms.
BREAKING: We have made it 24 hours with no new portal entries
Well you've definitely jinxed it now
Does Marve, Crook, and Galt count?
6-6 with huge losses to the portal. We dropped the ball so fucking hard this year.
FTFY
Chance Fitzgerald in the portal
This is very surprising
Is it? He's barely seeing the field, and everyone seems to think we recruited over him with last year's class.
Seems like the logical thing for him to do if he wants to get major playing time somewhere.
We fucking suck, we lose to any good team we play, we can't beat Duke. We don't "recruit over" any fucking one. If we did, we would ummm win? no?
Easy there killer.
Surprised from the standpoint that he may have been a guy who got some extra run in the bowl game. And he may have thus had more tape to Portal in the Spring.
At the same point, if it became clear that younger wide receivers were already passing him on the depth chart, the writing may have been on the wall.
Chaplin is expected to head to Auburn.
They have very deep pockets and freeze has to win next year or be fired.
I hate it, but I get it.
VT has officially reached SEC-feeder status.
Once a coveted choice for the SEC, now relegated to giving away their top talent.
Worse than soccer since we don't even get a transfer fee for the trouble either.
Also love how he went from the ACC team that was less than the sum of its parts to the SEC version.
hopefully they are at least paying him a lot of money
Taking a lot for me not to downvote this on principle of how disgusted it makes me
Unless there are hard changes made to NIL, payments, transfers - hard changes- VT is done competing at the top level in college football and basketball- done, finished. I hope everyone enjoyed the "glory years"- they are over.
We were competing at the top level of those sports? Our football record vs top 5 is bad, our record vs top 10 isn't much better. We're 8-24 against ranked teams in the past 11 seasons. We are 7-20 against the top ten winninest programs. We've won the Big Least and all- basketball conferences for out football championships. We've had 4 players win awards in total.
Basketball is worse because the last decade is the pinnacle of VT basketball, an ACC championship, something like 5 straight NCAA tournament appearances, a sweet 16. There isn't a better time for VT basketball.
I am not saying that things don't need to change, but Duke and Cuse both won 9 games. If you think that Xavier Chaplin is going to make a huge difference to Auburn or Gunner Givens is going to make Vanderbilt, it ain't happening. Let Auburn waste their money, let Delane get burned by Ryan Williams. Don't take this as hard feelings they should take the money. But there won't be the ROI anyone is looking for.
Ryan Williams is rumored to be going in the portal.
Auburn saved all its money this past year to go all in this year
Words can't describe how much I HATE that he ended up there
Yeah, that one is going to sting a little.
According to Greg Roberts radio show in Roanoke he's getting $1.5 million next year.
Seeing smoke on Phillips and Delane both to Ole Miss.
Wonder if Dae-Quan Wright has been in their ear about the Grove.
Delane to LSU
I'm not going to root against him. He's probably getting a heck of a compensation package and I would struggle to turn that down as well. With that being said, I just don't see this going well. He's going to be playing against much better competition. The flat-footedness, eyes in the backfield, and ability to fight through blocks this year was alarming. I just don't see the 1. lasting in the SEC 2. lasting with brian kelly (who killed a kid) as a coach.
Reading twitter every thinks they just stole him from the NFL. I wish the best for the kid but they should probably temper their expectations after this year.
There are chances with LSU involved that he makes more bank this year at LSU than as a practice squad member in the NFL.
Which would be a good business decision by him.
Man I hate that sentence about college football.
While it sucks right now, one thing this does is that players are less likely to go to the NFL early because a 4th round pick isn't good enough so college football will have more talent staying in college, which is a good thing at a macro level. At the micro level the SEC can eat a dick.
Great decision by him. The NFL doesn't scout the SEC as hard. the strategy is oh, he played at LSU? He's good- draft him. He will get much more benefit of the doubt playing for them in terms of draft position.
i made to believe by comments on here that he was a package deal with faheem 🤔
The only good that could come out of this whole thing is angering a bunch of anOSU fans.
Osu didn't want him, they're loaded at db.
My comment to follow is not directed to the young men who are taking advantage of the opportunities,but:
Fuck the SEC!
Ben Locklear, QB entered the portal.
This may make Davi Belfort QB2 for the bowl game.
That brings my roster count down to 99 😬. We definitely have some space to fill.
I could be wrong, but I believe he came in for victory formation to end the UVA game.
He's my favorite quarterback on the roster
Gunner Givens to Vanderbilt.
Sucks. Can't play. Peace out
Hopefully he gets to see the field there. I will be interested to see if they picked him up as an OL or DL.
Tyler Smedley, Walk on OL in the portal
Ty'Drez Clements Walk-on RB has entered the portal
Malachi Madison to UMASS
Honestly that makes me feel better about him hitting the portal. Good luck to him at UMass.
You would have to try to do worse than we do at recruiting high school DTs
It's definitely not great out of high school. Big part of why want a second DL coach. But asterisk for Madison who was a Fuente holdover.
You should've felt fine from the beginning
We had a Malachi Madison on the team?
Chance Fitz to Vandy.
...so he can catch passes from Pavia for the next 7 years. /s
He is from Nashville
Breaking news: this was the inevitable result and goal of NIL and the Transfer Portal.
When you decide you need to pay players in an open market without rules or any structure whatsoever, those with the most money are going to win.
So while they still had the chance, the non-P2 schools and commissioners should have fought like hell to create some framework instead of rolling over dead. Now they are in fact that...dead.
With 3 star home grown kids like Mose Phillips leaving simply for more bag, Lane Stadium is totally going to be full in 5 years. Totally. VT fans love not knowing who is on the team year to year. /S - this is going to kill the sport without major changes. People can disagree, but the mega donors- and there are a shit ton fewer of them than their are "normal" fans are keeping the sport alive right now. That is not scalable. Losing money/giving money away is what rich people hate the most. We all have friends that drive BMWs and are VPs that want the check split at lunch. There needs to be sensible action.... 1. Dial back the TV deals or spread them out- this is what they did with March Madness. They have never eliminated an auto bid- never- they have just expanded the field when new conferences were added. 2. Mandate that you must sit a year before transferring- OR you can transfer 14 fucking times, but you are a walk on if you do. Very soon people like Tim Sands are going to push back hard on having to build an entire football team every offseason. That is what it will take.
The problem is the kids won't care that there won't be a scholarship. Their NIL package will cover tuition, room, and board.
As opposed to? The teams that had the most money to pay coaches? The teams that were located in geographically advantageous areas? The teams that made friends with the right other teams a half century ago?
We are all fully aware of the revisionist - players have always been paid, the richest teams have always won, coaches don't deserve a high salary because its the same skill as the players who only got a scholarship, etc. College football has always been the wild west, yeah we get it. Funny how Beamer didn't lose 18 guys off the 1999 team though. Funny how Bama got drilled by cash poor VT in 1998. Funny how Chris Weinke was the exception, not the rule..... the sport sucks for VT now and moving forward. That's what we are pissed about. Now more than ever we are at the kids table, not the adult one... what happened in the SWC in the 80s is irrelevant.
This is my point - When was the last time a team that wasn't 'rich' won a natty? 1990 Colorado/GT? 91 UW? FSU before they were FSU, in 93?
I'm saying, the power structure in college football has been the same for 30 years. You want the sport to go back to where it was 30 years ago? Sure, I get it. But blaming 30 years of change on NIL/portal (each ~a half decade old) just isn't rational.
So the issue is with our donors, not the sport?
The wild thing is, I can make a compelling argument that we should be more confident about the long term future of VT now than I was 5 years ago. We just need a VT fan to hit it big - next big start up, win the lottery, etc, and then we can compete with SECU, regardless of what conference we are in. Way more straightforward path than VT had in the early 90s or even 5 years ago.
You don't see an issue with a sport that needs to be propped up by huge donors? Millionaires to make it work? There are not that many of those that you might think there are. And I'd argue with you on power structure- Miami and Nebraska were once THE power structure in the sport. WV and VT played for national titles. Florida is treading water now- Meyer had them dominant. If you want to say that the P4 was the power structure- sure... but its not always bama and UGA... in fact UGA went 40 years between titles. Texas was firing charlie stong and herman not long ago and Mack Brown had a reputation for underachieving. To pretend that its the same over 30 years is not true.
Great point. This is the issue having a revenue generating sport that is tied to a not-for-profit institution. I don't see a way around this unless:
You can't have half the organization function as a non-profit and the other half function as a for-profit. You can't have donors and amateurs on one hand, then billion dollar TV contracts and employees making 8 figures annually on the other. It doesn't work. Pick one, and commit fully.
Universities have been basically functioning as for profit institutions for a while now. The amount of money that gets pumped into endowments that are managed like large institutional investment funds all tax free has become insane. It was the Yale model for how they invested and managed their endowment that turned them into an endless oasis of cash, and now other universities have followed suit growing their endowments into ridiculous pools of tax free money.
In 2024......ZERO.....as in not a single one 5-Star Recruit signed with a non-P2 school. For the first time since Recruiting Rankings have been tracked. Things have changed massively in 5 years....to pretend like NIL and the Transfer Portal haven't changed the hierarchy isn't rational.
Clemson is case-in-point of this. They have gone from Blueblood to Outside looking in largely based on Dabo's refusal to jump into the Transfer Portal Cesspool. Wake Forest is now dead as a Program due to the Transfer Portal.
D2 and FCS Programs are going to be destroyed by the Pavia Decision because why waste your time there when you can just play JUCO and then have a chance to cash in for 4 years?
I get it, you have made it repeatedly clear that "get your cash, forget the rest" is your view on the best path forward. That attitude is what has led CFB to the chaotic shitshow that it is now and it ultimately going to collapse it from the inside out. Because just like there isn't any Angel Investor coming in to rescue VT Football, there is no Body coming in to actually create a reasonable and competitive structure for CFB. And if you haven't read the room on this (and many other) boards, lots of people are already fed up with the process and product.
IMO issue here is conference expansion, not NIL. If the conferences went back to where they were 10 years ago, then the top is no where near as P2-heavy, then every conference has at least two teams per year that land a 5-star.
I quibble with using the distribution of 5-stars as a metric for parity in recruiting, but if we see that 5-stars are basically being distributed in the same way they have been for the last decade. The problem is that the 4 best PAC Programs and the 2 best B12 programs are now in the P2.
Regardless - I think the point is clear: FBS football is getting less stratified. There's a break into two classes. The upper class is getting a little bit bigger, but the lower class is growing rapidly.
So Clemson is failing due to choice/incompetence. Wake is being replaced by Vandy, Tulane, and Duke.
Wake is completely undeserving of their power status. They got here simply because they were friends with the right schools/people 40+ years ago. They got lucky by hiring a coach who was basically content with a great work life balance (relative to the rest of the college football industry) and was okay never competing for national titles. They've basically been operating like a good-to-bad G5 program for a few decades. They don't have a passionate fanbase. They don't travel, they don't pack out stadiums... They haven't wanted to be involved in 'big-boy' college football... ever? And now they're not 🤷♂️
This could not be further from the truth.
For my entire lifetime as a sports fan (25-30 years, 15ish years as a college football fan), the power in this sport has been concentrated in 20 or so programs. Now that number is closer to 35/40, but there is a stark difference between those on the inside and those on the outside. I just don't think this is the result of NIL; I think it's the result of the top 20 programs consolidating. IMO that's the problem we should be solving for.
There is another factor in play regarding 5 🌟 players and that is the "growth" of the Rating companies and widely different techniques or time investment by those companies. It really has changed significantly.
Two things have become true. On3 really props up scores for those that have committed to the P2 and vice versa seems to negatively score kids not going to P2 schools lower.
Point in case this year there were two 5 🌟 kids in 247Sports and Rivals at ACC schools but On3 score was so much lower it knocked them down to 4 🌟 in the 247 Composite ranking.
There are cause and effect as the raters spend very little time on ANY recruit but if a kid gets a couple SEC offers it increases the amount of time the raters spend looking at them. It's a system that feeds it's own loop.
As for kids getting paid, I don't have an issue with kids getting paid but do support a salary cap similar to the NFL. Kids that then earn real NIL I have no problem with either. It's NIL concealed as pay for play that I don't support. I would estimate 85% of current NIL deals do not return a positive return on investment for businesses. "Donations" by individuals is a lost cause but I don't really have a problem with those dollars if that's how people want to spend their money.
The idea that this is always how its been but NIL brought everything into the light is not absolutely true. Yes I think it is fair to say that some big, powerful, and wealthy school have always worked under the table to incentivize top level talent to come there. However, the fact that it was illegal and all parties were at risk was a major limiting factor to the scale at which it could be employed by schools. No one was paying a backup OT $500,000. The current environment is not merely an extension of the previous environment, it is a completely different environment.
You might be correct that the 2nd tier teams still have a chance to compete, it just comes down to landing the right benefactor (while having a competent coaching staff). Previously the 2nd tier still had hope to compete based on the same conditions that made mid major men's basketball programs so formidable in March:
team filled with upper classmen that had developed, a few underrated stars on the roster, and a rock solid coaching staff. Those conditions allowed fans to get emotionally and financially invested in and stay engaged with the program. Because even if it didn't result in a playoff run you could build a solid program that won 8-11 games a year and occasionally picked off a big win against a blue blood that you had no business beating.
Waiting around for a mega rich donor to buy a roster for a 1 year crack at success is not a recipe to engage and motivate a fan base to be encouraged about the long term.
Very well said.
This is absolutely spot on.
This is the point. Yes, there were absolutely schools paying players under the table. There were Cam Newton's and Laramie Tunsil's--but they were by far the exception not the rule.
Using the anecdote..Player X had a nice car so he must have been getting money to play at school Y is a fallacy. First, it is proof of nothing. Secondly, many of those players in the 90's and 00's we're getting money from Agents and not from schools.
And if the hope for being competitive relies on sudden and unexpected seven figure donations from some unknown wealthy donor, you are not competitive. Period. And no reasonable fan base is going to hang on to rationale is thin as that
The flaw in your argument is using the term "reasonable fan base". I am not sure many of them exist, especially at the P4 level.
Let me acknowledge that:
No one is now either... because being a starter at VT still pays more than being a backup at Texas.
I also cannot disagree with this. However, the movement towards player employment has put a check on (what I would call) unsavory player treatment. I'm talking about situations where the coach lies to a recruit, convinces a player to go there because a booster is lining up a job for his uncle, then when the coach turns out to be a colossal asshole, the player is stuck there because if he leaves his uncle is getting fired (cough gary patterson cough). NIL has put glass walls on the sausage factor AND cleaned it up quite a bit. I doesn't look like a sausage factory any more.
I understand why people are upset at the current state of the sport. I just think it's lazy to suggest 'these problems would all go away if we just don't pay the players' - This was inevitable as soon as TV money got in the mix and started growing rapidly. There were dozens of fixes that could've been implemented beforehand. The system was being held together with duct tape (aka amateurism). The duct tape has torn. The solution is not more duct tape.
We know it is true, but man to hear this from Bitter makes it just that, bitter.
bitter is bitter over wisky. we beat minnesota and he ragequits lol
Looks like we were an SEC caliber team all along.
Mizzou? Ouch.
Imagine a world where we jumped ship for the SEC alongside A&M instead of freaking Mizzou...
dont get too bent out of shape, mizzou shockingly has a top tier nil willing to throw $$$$ at any and everything. doesnt change their ceiling at all, but raises their floor to a mids sec team rather than miss st
as soon as covil committed, mose did his thing. assuming covil gets a medical redshirt for last year, we won here, outside of people catching feelings. moneyball.
tangentially: we smoked them in wrestling with a program that funds itself outside of NIL
Jaden Keller coming back, confirmed on Instagram 👍
Damn!
(But in the voice of Homer Simpson, 'Its funny because it's true!)
That was basically my reaction as well. Nailed every nail in the coffin.
I saw a tweet that said "nope it is not gods plan for you to transfer 8 times" lol
God was just granted an extra year of eligibility, so he will be taking his talents to Mississippi State next season. Greg Sankey's plan.
Not to get religious but the Israelites sure did do a lot of transferring from place to place in the Old Testament so maybe it is the plan
That is epic and part of why the system is starting to crash and burn.
Miles Ellis, CB has entered the portal
CJ McCray DE has entered the portal. Not one I expected to see but his usage this year was minimal after being a regular contributor the prior two years. Went from double digit games in 22 and 23 to 4 this year.
I'm taking this as a sign that he'd been totally passed on the depth chart by people like Stevens. This is the kind of portaling that should be happening.
Tbh I thought he was out of eligibility
LB Caleb Woodson removes his name from the portal, is returning for next year
Makes me wonder if we have a DC and the players/top transfers are being told. If it's Dex we might start hearing something today especially if PSU loses.
When did he even go into the portal??
I never saw it announced and just checked X and no posts there either.
did he even put his name in the portal or just announced hes back?
Keli Lawson committed to UCF
Sam Brumfield is in the portal
Boom
This is interesting given the timing. New DC coming? NIL disagreement? Disinterest in the bowl? What's the tea?
Mike McDaniel quoted a tweet and then said Pry had already paid Keller to be the starting Mike next year so that probably plays a big part.
He now has extra year(s?) of eligibility with the Pavia lawsuit, I think. He had two years of Community College playing time. If Keller has the starter $$, and now he can return and there is only backup $$. Plausible?
No sauces, but I think he was tight with Marve so when his extra eligibility fell into his lap all of a sudden he has options. Plus his playing time did go down as the year went on, so he could just be looking for more snaps.