Here we go again, except this time it hits right into our own backyard.
Per Finebaum:
"I actually had a source today tell me that North Carolina has a handshake agreement with the SEC," Hamilton said. "That same source tells me Virginia has one with the Big Ten.
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
Brings in a school known for basketball that has no chance of upsetting the football applecart.
Why the fuck not? Right?
We have milkshake agreements with Hardee's!
Whit was concerned their product might go to waste, so he pushed hard for those sweet sweet coupon booklets instead
Whit better get the frick on this. I'm going to dislike him much, much more than Fuente if he screws this up.
Whit has little to nothing to do with conference affiliation. That's on Sands and the BOV
And on top of that, there's very little for Sands to do if we aren't invited
This is why sands has been desperately trying to get aau status
I mean, probably multiple reasons beyond just getting a P2 bid.
Isn't there lobbying though? Why isn't Whit driving and directing the narrative to Sands/BOV that we need a change to stay relevant in high level college sports, and why that's important for the university? Why isn't Sands lobbying the power brokers of these conference about how VT would be a great addition and fit?
What makes you think we aren't doing that?
Well I certainly hope we are, but I haven't seen much proof to back it up. There's no leaks saying VT has a handshake agreement to join the Sun Belt (lol). There's no boosters posting anything about the behind the scenes effort. LAHokie, what news brother?!
These kind of discussions don't leak to sportswriters. They happen at the state capitol and closed BOV meetings
Because the AD and admin at VT are allergic to proactive thinking and have shown over and over that they have zero direction or ambition for the future of VT athletics?
If Sands cannot position us to be picked up in the realignment race he will go down as an absolute failure of a President and overseeing arguably our worst overall period in sustained success in about 100 years when you look at the big picture.
If we are left out, everyone needs to be fired. And the entire BoV will need to be overhauled. Right now they are absolutely failing the school as a whole.
Imagine the fun a decade or so from now when Sands is ranked behind several Confederates when it comes to tenure as VPI president.
UVA does not fit in at all with the Big Ten. Northwestern is the only other small academic school and they don't fit in. The basketball focused bad at football BIG schools (Purdue, IU historically) still have ~50k enrollment.
"Fitting in" means nothing now. It's a matter of acquiring more schools to have a bigger and broader portfolio to drive perceived media value
I disagree (at least at the top levels). All the SEC schools 'fit' a similar (very specific) 'cultural' mold.
Even in the B10, they are looking for pretentious schools with a large student body. That descriptor used to be restricted to the midwest but they're just less regional. They're still focused on being the biggest douche bag conference.
The ACC was once the Big Douche conference. Shame how times have changed...we have been big dogged by bigger douches.
Damn they never should've added VT.
The ACC died when they added Pitt and Syracuse. Dead. Gone. Simply the old big east. dead. huge mistake. To this day I don't know how we avoid Swofford going full fuck stick and adding UCONN. Still don't know how we escaped that one. With Syracuse in your fucking league, you may as well add louisville- not that they bring anything, so yeah do that. And once SMU is in your conference, SMU is in your conference. It's fucked. It can't end soon enough for me.
"Big Douched"
Trust me, our douchebag stock has skyrocketed since we opened up a student body pipeline into NoVa. The VT we went to is not the same as the VT of now.
Being from out of state, hearing people say NoVa always gave me bougie vibes. It's like they were trying to make it clear they are from the "good part" of the state.
Bold of anyone to claim NOVA is the "good part" of the state.
Hear hear!
Other than historical sites, what does that part of the state really have to offer?
being from Charlottesville, I didn't feel that I could really judge anyone from any part of the state....
I've been to Charlottesville a few times. Once to visit my cousin while he was in college. The only thing I can complain about is the college that was unfortunately founded there.
I've always said Charlottesville is a cool little city. Its unfortunate that UVA students live there, too.
Gets a chuckle out of most folks, including UVA grads.
See! They know who they are.
The arts are fantastic here, the plays, musicals, symphonies and everything else is so much more abundant. I've seen rhe terracotta soldiers for like $5 travel costs. I've seen Andy Warhol exhibits and lots of other amazing things. To me it is the biggest saving grace of NoVa. I've never gone to a historical site because it was a historical site.
The Fiddler's Convention, Rhythm & Roots, the RSO, The Jefferson Center, the Moss Center, the Barter Theater, and Wohlfahrt House are plenty enough culture for me to not have to deal with the rest of what NOVA has to offer.
I was raised in Fairfax County so feel comfortable hating on much of the northern VA region.
I'd argue there are some nice parts that actually have character and charm but much of NOVA is culturally neutered.
That's when you hit them with, "Oh, you're a transfer student from NOVA Community College?"
The first week of my freshman year when I heard people say they were from NoVa, I thought they transferred from Villanova. And I'm from Richmond!
You aren't the only one who didn't understand. I said they didn't have much of a Canadian accent despite coming from Nova Scotia.
Yep, as an OOS kid from GA I heard all these people talking about Nova and was shocked we had that many transfers from a small catholic school in Philly
I couldn't sleep at night contemplating this Villanova to VT pipeline...if only we could've snagged Jay Wright too!
We are Douche Nouveau though, unfortunately. Old money douchery still holding us down.
I don't think the BIG is the douche conference at all, that's part of why I don't think UVA fits.
UVA is a perfect fit for a large conference who wants to get into VA to demand more money from TV Carriers. As the SEC/B1G get even more bloated they will want to add good Olympic sports athletic departments where football functions as a half step above a "buy game".
The Pac12 once also had a handshake agreement with the P12, then they poached USC and UCLA
Their handshake was a strong as rice paper.
Trying to look at this as neutrally as possible, how does adding UVA make any of the big 10 schools more money?
Because i cant see them doing it unless they're getting more money. And people dont watch or go to uva games
It would help solidify B10 as a nationwide brand. Tough to say how that translates to tv dollars
How so? They already got umd which geographically is pretty close to UVA when we're talking about the scale of the big 10's footprint
VA starts to get into 'the south' which is a market where the B10 doesn't have a team.
But I tend to agree that adding UVA doesn't do anything for the B10, unless it's a package deal with another school(s).
I also strongly believe that realignment news is always fanfic until it's official. If theres a 'handshake deal' but no one has announced anything in 48 hours, then I call bullshit.
In agreement that "getting into the south" sounds nice to fans but is definitely overselling what UVA is in reality and how much that would add value to the big 10.
Also definitely agree with that last part. Why would conferences make handshake deals for things to happen multiple years from now? Who does a handshake deal for something so far away? Look how much college sports have changed in the last few years. It just doesn't make sense to me how these schools would be on board with this "deal"
Even written "contracts' don't seem enforceable given the portal and IDK scheduling games with Wisconsin ...
Isn't Wisconsin suing both a player and Miami for player tampering and breach of contract? In this case the student had signed a contract for NIL and then is attempting to transfer.
Sure. If only the B10 could be a national brand...
I've always felt the same way, especially with College Park covering the NoVA market. UVa football is irrelevant in their own state, let alone nationally.
The only market B10 is getting with UVa is the coveted Charlottesville market that has more wineries than football fans.
According to supposedly impartial TV numbers, UVA has a bigger TV draw than Tech. Just not an attendance or traveling crowd.
No way. Who the hell is still watching uva football? I doubt the wineries put the game on.
Sauce?
https://medium.com/run-it-back-with-zach/which-college-football-programs-bring-in-the-most-tv-viewers-efc03c689e50
This shows from 15-19, VT was more than double of loluva. And last year we outdrew them overall for the season and in the "bigger" draw games.
ESPN and the ACC apparently. It was mentioned a couple years ago. But those might have been total TV numbers including basketball. But I am VERY happy to be wrong if that is the case.
I know what you're referring to
That metric counts for only games where viewers are announced. For many of our bigger games during that time ESPN tried to get them to the ACCNetwork to influence people to tune in there, and we would otherwise regularly show up on ESPN 2 level broadcasts because we would actually draw marginal numbers in otherwise poor broadcast windows. ACCN doesn't announce viewership numbers, so having some of our bigger games there significantly skewed our numbers poorly over this time, when the only times UVa was on main networks that report was against the likes of Clemson, ND, and us. Fanbases that would prop up an otherwise terrible metric.
Like vtnerf said, I'd like to see a source for that. When one team consistently sells more tickets to their games, I find it very hard to believe that the other has better TV ratings or streaming numbers
Edit: and even if they are a bigger draw than us, are they really a big enough draw that the big 10 can negotiate larger media deals than they already have to the point they can offset sharing revenue with them? Again i find that hard to believe. UVA is not a national brand or fan base the way UNC is. The fan base is not huge enough to be worthy of this treatment if I were to guess
I'm looking forward to hearing that VT has a handshake deal with the SEC.
Fuck them all - I hope they all leave- this afternoon if possible. Fuck them, fuck Clemson, fuck Florida State. When VT was whipping Tommy Bowden's ass up and down the field, Clemson wasn't looking to leave then. When Willie Taggart was losing to Duke, nobody gave a shit about FSU. You can't have less juice in a football program than UVA- you can't- if their program went away nobody would notice. So fuck all of them. Leave the ACC this afternoon if you can.
...and take us with them.
Meh.
Just my initial gut reaction, but I feel like right now we're only on their radar in terms of recruiting...like a pesky fly they just have to swat away as they poach from our recruiting areas. But if we join their conference, they're going to dump a lot more resources into making sure we are forever bottom feeders in their conference...an easy W on their conference schedules.
The change in home game scenery would be nice, though.
I haven't really been following too closely on all the GoR issues, lawsuits, etc. What would this mean if lolUVA did accept a bid, in terms of exiting the ACC? Would the Big Ten have to help foot the early exit fee from the ACC? Would lolUVA just sue forever, hoping to get a settlement for a lower fee?
There were changes made as part of the new Revenue distribution model changes.
Next year exit would be $165M. It decreases $18M annually until reaching $75M in 2030-31. That is the new floor.
Ughhh...while that would hurt, it certainly isn't a major deterrent if you're going to a P2. I mean, according to the interwebs, SMU gave up over $200 million to join the ACC.
ACC: the About to Cave Conference
Basically, we've got 5 seasons to make football relevant again before 30-31 exodus begins.
Step 1. Stop the endless fucking excuses- either you want to play big boy football or you don't. If you are too poor to pay NIL, then move down to FCS, etc.
But with the new limits on NIL after this season (haha, wink, wink), we should be able to keep up, since the playing field will be leveled, right? Right!?!
This is without a doubt the funniest thing ever posted on here. So long as there is no employment contracts and no union, there is no rules regarding NIL. No clearinghouse, no governing body, no nothing. Until they have contracts, backup QBs are going to pull in 7 figures from boosters in the south. Bank on that.
This is how I see DC when any news about VT sports comes out. Any news.
Hardly.
Maybe you should pull this out.
I can't hear "handshake deal" without my mind instantly going here.
Same. Nice pull.
And for some reason the only voice I can hear when I see that is that of Jesse Gemstone
Yeah and we all still have our Football Throuple promise rings from that one weird weekend with the PAC, BIG, and ACC.