Back in the lab 🧪#ThisIsHome pic.twitter.com/0WKDZ4KvZn— Virginia Tech Football (@HokiesFB) January 22, 2025
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Back in the lab 🧪#ThisIsHome pic.twitter.com/0WKDZ4KvZn— Virginia Tech Football (@HokiesFB) January 22, 2025
Comments
A lot of squatting clips. Maybe they're taking the "skinny leg" criticism to heart.
Now to take the "who's our damned DC" criticism to heart.
Definitely was intentional.
HELL. YEAH.
So this the new DC thread, awesome!
Love seeing the coach post it, but I want to see the top players in the middle of everything.
This makes me numb, wtf Iin the lab? The job isn't tests and expirements, if we don't know what works we hired the wrong guy. Luckily PR means 0 and results matter so this doesn't matter.
In the lab is a pretty common reference to working out in the gym. It's used in a lot of different ways (rappers in their studios, etc) but on this post it's referring to working out in the gym. Hope this helps
Yeah JF doesn't need to appeal to a bunch of 40+ year old white guys. If "in the lab" gets the team and potential recruits fired up, I'm all for it.
Yeah this is my Okay Boomer moment because this slang just sounds weak, I dont want IR&D I want production, I dont want strategy i want logistics, but yeah what I thinks doesn't matter
The social media should hit the Facebook crowd with something like this:
We're just bending over backwards to find things to criticize now.
To me we are a failure of a program right now. We have a head coach that will most likely be fired in the next couple of seasons and videos like this are a microcosm of the problems. We are all talk. The brightest spot of the program is we fired assistant coaches for the first time in 3 decades, yet we are still out there putting stuff like this on social media, its not helping recruiting that's for sure. Why are we wasting time and effort on fluff? That's been the entire Pry coaching experience, fluff. I really wanted him to succeed because he seems like the type of guy you want leading the program, but he isn't recruiting well, his coaching is suspect at best, his coaching hires have been mostly questionable (Mines is probably the only one without critism right now, maybe price). But this staff puts out lots of media which hasn't translated to anything. If I'm and opposing coach I'm showing Minnesota push us around like we're a JV team, no amount of weight lifting videos are going to over come the fact that aren't tough. And honestly, what in this video couldn't have been filmed under Galt?
This is a results oriented job and the results suck. How does this video or any of the fluff help us win? Wouldn't the tine and money to create this be better spent watching tape? Fans aren't showing up for this, they show up for wins.
I fully understand that I am completely out of touch when it comes to social media because I don't understand it at all and dont participate and I could be wrong, but how does this help us win? I really want this staff to succeed but they keep doing stuff that seems like a waste of time and resources. If we we recruiting well I'd chalk this up to that's what 18 year olds want to see, but we aren't recruiting well. We're program that is trailing Duke in football, we need to be focused on what makes us better and I doubt that is videos on social media. I'd rather have Ferguson go to a press conference say "we busy" and walk out. It would give me more excitement than anything the program has put our in the past decade. I just want wins and everyone seems more focused on the perception and not the wins.
If Pry didn't care about wins, he wouldn't have made staffing changes in this offseason.
It's fair to criticize the record, or the actions they're taking, but it isn't fair to say they aren't trying, when they've clearly made some changes to the program. A football program is more like an aircraft carrier than a speedboat, and it does take time to turn one around, particularly when you're on a budget that's smaller than many other teams.
Duke has made some progress with their football program. They've made some good hires. UNC has made some big splash hires, that helped with recruting.
And this is all happening under a backdrop of massive TV contracts and "pay to play" being quickly and recently introduced into college football.
It's hard to do more with less when the competition is pouring money into college football at alarming rates. Ohio State spent $20 million on the team that just won the National Championship, and this is on top of lucrative TV contracts and an already strong program. It's going to be very hard to compete with programs that have aimless money.
Virginia Tech has had some level of success with consistency in the past. We've never been a program that could fire head coaches after three years, pay their expensive buy-out, and try another one. We just don't have that kind of $$$. So we have to give them a little longer and hope they can work some things out with incremental change.
We have high expectations, but an average budget. Pry needs to hire the best he can get at this point, as if his job depends on it. Because it does. As far as I'm concerned, he can take all the time he needs.
"We just don't have that kind of $$$"- fact, not changing anytime soon and makes the ceiling 7 wins if we learn how to use timeouts and manage duplicate numbers. It is what it is . "Recruiting Virginia" is not going to bring us back to the ACC CG. It's a hope and a prayer and nothing else.
Why would you think i care about VT coaching competing against OSU? I dont care about the playoffs, I dont care about a national title. Beat Vandy,beat Duke, beat rutgers beat the programs that have been at the bottom of college football for my entire life. We are 26th lifetime winning percentage, Duke is 99th, Rutgers 100, and Vandy is 106st. 9 wins would have been a great year. If beating 3 of the worst programs of all time is high expectations then yes my expectations are too high. I just want 8 wins with no embarrassing losses.
Of course the goal is 8 wins (or higher) with no embarrassing losses. If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.
This is a long term goal, and fans may well need to realize that Vandy, Duke and Rutgers are better than their historical norms right now, while VT is not. I get why people don't like that - I don't either.
That said, VT is better now than when Pry showed up. Can he continue to improve the team? I hope he can. Because the college football landscape is changing rapidly, and some teams will be left behind.
The fact is that VT doesn't have millions to pay in buyouts every three years, so fans need some level of patience as coaches attempt to dial in team improvements. Nobody ever said it was easy to be a VT fan.
I'm confused. What exactly do you expect to see from our new strength coach after 1 week on the job to set your mind at ease?
The results after 1 week? The video doesn't help us win, the content of the video does. Players getting stronger helps the team be better. What should our strength coach be watching tape of? Or do you think the entire football coaching staff got together to shoot, edit, and post this video?
I get being unhappy with the results from this past season, but picking this one video by our strength coach showing players working out as an example of how we're not good enough is legitimately baffling.
Strength coaches watch video? No, some one took the time to produce and edit. The video shows nothing special I could have made this video at any other college, or could have made this video with Galt here or with Hilgart here. I doubt anyone thinks Galt is at home watching this video think why he didn't think about having players lift weights.
Why make the video, how does this help us win?
Sorry man, I just think you've picked a really weird hill to die on.
Fan engagement - you give people a look behind the curtain, they become more emotionally invested in not only the team but as players as individual people. Each little video builds a little more of a connection.
Teams that are winning games don't need to do this for fans to buy-in. However, given the past few seasons, we're on the fast track to fan apathy. When the fans are apathetic, less people don't come to games and those who do aren't enthusiastic (e.g. UVa). Social media helps to temporarily stave that off - yes it's a band-aid, but a band-aid is better than nothing at all.
Pound for pound, we have one the best fanbases in college football. The program cannot take that for granted.
We want to keeps fans engaged to maintain our home field advantage. Players want to play somewhere where people care about the football team, both in the real and digital world.
Also, in 2025 if you aren't active on social media, you don't exist for anyone under 40. We can't sit here and have a thousand posts bitching about the lack of communication regarding the DC hire, and then roast the new strength coach for posting a 15 second video on social media instead of "making the team better" or whatever nonsense.
Ummm - it was our JV team that played against Minny. Especially the OL.
Weird take. Every program puts out videos like this. You're frustrated with the program so you're lense that you're viewing things through is tinted with that frustration. Even the worst professional teams put out social media hype. This is no more an indication of where our priorities lie as it would be if we won 9 games this past year.
Our stated goal is to compete for conference championships, that is not everyone's goal. Our revenue is bottom 5* in the P4. So either a) we get more revenue or b) we start cutting stuff. We need a good DC and those cost a lot, so we need to cut to put the money towards the DC. We can't just do things because everyone else does, the progam has lofty goals and for the revenue we have. We have to think ROI for everything we do. We can't live in the fluffy space, because right now we are in the basement and I don't want to be on the same level as UVA.
I don't know anything about how the AD works but I highly doubt #1 that if we were to cut positions from the social media team that we would reallocate those funds towards a new DC and #2 that the salary amount saved would make a lick of difference in who we could afford to attract
Edit to add: I'm fairly certain any school allocating funds towards its football team has a goal of becoming conference champions. How realistic it is may vary wildly but I would bet they aren't doing it for funsies
LMAO tell me you're over 40 without telling me your over 40
"In the lab" just means you're busy doing the work that no sees.
I'm 47, and I knew he wasn't talking about running experiments to figure out what works.
Bruh thought they were using the scientific method
He clearly ran a design of experiments to land on the best method for his scientific trials.
#NotAllGenXers
Yeah he's clearly talking about getting in (the mind) of a lab(rador retriever). Can't get that dog in ya without first getting into the dog
As a proud parent of two beautiful Labrador Retrievers (and three human children, but who cares about that), I approve of this.
To add on...
"in the lab" is just in the gym to become a physical freak. I don't really know the origin, but to me seems to be derived from comic book culture, like making super soldiers, the Hulk, the Flash, X-men, etc.
Love the energy. Really rooting for Ferguson and hope he can bring back that old VT toughness. We have been physically outmanned way too much in recent years. Need the edge back.
For anyone who thinks this hire is underwhelming, I'm really not sure what they are expecting. Ferguson's combination of resume and his relationship with Virginia Tech is outstanding. He's 100% qualified for this position.
Jarrett Ferguson Press Release
Ferguson is one of a long line of Virginia Tech fullbacks that I usually don't even remember exactly when they played (Ferguson was 1998-2001 FWIW), but when I hear their names I just nod and say, "yeah, that guy was awesome." Like Brian Edmunds or Joe Swarm.
Someone with the last name "Swarm" should be on defense.
His brother, Bill Swarm, was a linebacker for us
For anyone who doesn't know, here's a PSA on how awesome Joe Swarm was:
He was a huge foundational stone as Virginia Tech Football entered the national stage in the early-mid 90s.
Was he 38 and playing on his 14th year of eligibility? Look at that hairline.
Everyone in college looked like that back then.
I think it was caused by the giant shoulder pads.
That, or the helmets that used to squeeze your brains out of your ears. And maybe the smoking.
All I hear is the sweet, sweet sounds of Bill Roth! THE Voice of the Hokies, still kicking.
I've watched that whole video twice now, not for the Joe Swarm highlights, but to listen to Bill and reminisce about hard nosed Hokie football on Jefferson Pilot sports, filmed on a camera made with a steel coffee can.
Maybe Nike was onto something - that maroon looks brown. maybe "purpling" it up to actually look maroon was the right move.
Also TV from the 90s looks like it was filmed for Soviet television in 1963.
I miss the old I formation fullback handoff
3rd and 8 and we handed to the FB up the middle, good thing we didn't have the internet back then.
Ahhh, Dooleyball. I remember it well. Three yards and a cloud of dust. Over and over and over.
Precisely! I was a student during the twilight of the Dooley years. DID get to see the very first Hokies bowl win!
I didn't have the wherewithal to see that Indiana bowl game, but I was around for a bit too much Dooleyball. We had some good players back then, but if the coach didn't like you, you were not gonna get much chance to show it.
I'm just happy to see multiple people working out in the weight room at the same time. I feel like every old weight room video was always 40 guys standing around watching 1 dude set a squat PR lol.
I hope they get after it, I really do. And I also want to know who Ferg is paired with to get the nutritional stuff done right to compliment what's being done in the gym. FFS please make sure they aren't getting crappy protein and low-grade creatine supps...
and maybe use our Food & Science department to develop a proprietary "Hokie Hi" pre-workout mix
It appears that Jordan Bass got a head start on the "Hokie Hi" (sic) part of it!
leg
Was not sure what thread to put this in, quote from Jennings on NFL Pro-Day about our new S&C Coach.
"He's like a little fireball, man," Jennings said of Ferguson. "You can tell that he cares about our health and our performance, and he implies that in our training, make sure we're prepared for everything that we're about to do, and ... I can't wait to get back to training with him."
Seems like Ferguson is doing something right.
I'm watching Carter Stallard and I'm gobsmack that this kid is 18. unbelievable. Ferg is going to make this guy a man mountain. if he can be half an asshole as jake grove....