Sorry for the long subject line.
https://x.com/dougbowman247/status/1953992135088255299?s=46
(Not sure how to embed from mobile)
Saw this post on X by Doug Bowman. It's a pretty in depth thread that goes through the planned talking points with the publicly available slides for the presentation. Pretty interesting and a little depressing at times in looking at where we stand in terms of funding amongst the ACC.
Basically last of the public schools. Anyhow won't go into too much detail on it cause I'm posting from my phone and it's a decently long thread with the slides.
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Comments
Is this a BIG presentation or a B1G presentation?
Also, am I the only one that DGAF about LEDs?
I'm kinda with you. It would have been cool if we were among the first to do it. But doing it now would just be chasing the crowd, which is lame
I can't stand the light show TD celebration and I know we will wear that shit out for the first season or two.
Once we start doing light strobes during football games I don't plan to go to another game. I don't need anymore stimuli during a game. Audio is already a problem for most of the home games, I don't need the lights to be a problem also.
It's a very interesting read and, it paints a pretty grim picture for the current state of Virginia Tech. Our athletic funding is the worst in the ACC. We are falling dramatically in viewership in both sports that determine revenue sharing within the conference. We are at a crossroads right now where we either wake up and fund our athletics like our peers or we are going to be in a death spiral we cannot get out of. We have multiple options in order to start making things better but a choice must be made immediately or it will be too late.
It's not great when this is the second slide of the presentation:
Also,
By our own research, the ACC is financially going to be the weakest of the 4 big conferences very soon, and with an estimated per school revenue deficit of about $60m to both the SEC and Big Ten within 10 years time.
The conclusion of this presentation is that the only realistic way we are going to pull ourselves out is by being better on the field. And in order to be better on the field we absolutely must fund athletics appropriately. We can no longer rely on donations and tv revenue to cover these costs, they must come from within. But being better will cause revenue streams to go up which will make the investment worth it.
Very much pleading to the BoV that if we want to have a viable athletic department going forward we must be allowed to spend.
The presentation had several ways to raise capital. And that getting better on the field was only part of the solution.
When I read stuff like this, it makes me think the issue with VT athletics is less about Whit and more about the landscape and university (yes - I know Whit is giving this presentation so it's a bit of a biased take)
My current strong opinion (very loosely held), is that, had Whit done everything 'right' (no twitter blunders, fire fuente earlier, etc) that he could have in the last decade, we'd be in the same spot, with a few million more in the bank (a few million more is marginal).
This has been my point for several years now.
I would argue these things and more needed to happen during Weaver's tenure.
The department became complacent during the success of the 2000's and the results began to show during the 2012 season.
Yep, our terminal glide path was set long before we got here. We failed to lever up during the post natty 2000s. We settled and rested and that doomed us.
Maybe my favorite slide:
YALL
Also fascinating:
That's personally the most concerning line of the whole thing. They installed that videoboard when I was a student so it can't be that old... well shoot.
They need to purchase those Metallica towers at a discount after their tour finishes and find a way to utilize those. /s
Only if we get our own branded beach balls that are massively oversized to release during games.
Didn't we try that w paper airplanes?
/ducks
Yeah, but now that our team is worse we need larger distractions. I assume it's the same reason they keep turning up the volume on the PA system.
Well at least Whit is trying, but where was this 3 years ago? I would say 7 years ago but that would be too much vision for VT athletics. And let's face it, we had a top 50 offense with the cheapest OC in the P5, so we still did more with less.
Maybe there has been a wake up call in Blacksburg as we fired a cheap statistical top 40 DC (stats are really ignoring 3nd and long) and we finally spent more than UVA for an OC. But we've been profitable for 3 straight years, Why hasn't the budget gone up for football. Where has that $10-15m gone?
Yeah, this is the heart of the problem.
We were (at best) complacent during the early 2000's and now are way behind and grasping at ideas that we should have had 10-15 years ago.
But we also have to be honest, VT is poorly built to compete in the Pay For Play world, even with a bunch of "bright ideas" for revenue production. Building a bunch of "Premium" experiences only works if you have a realistic market to fill them with---and there's only so many Advance Auto execs to try to squeeze into some Corporate Suites.
The ACC is obviously a sinking ship, positioning ourselves to be taken up by the P2 Seems to be the only realistic plan at this point. But as we continue to middle away, we become a less and less attractive as a candidate.
Yeah it's wierd that the ACC is better than the Big 12 yet the Big 12 are in a much better position.
The premium expirences are where lots of things are going for lots of reasons but VT is great and producing alumni with upper middle class jobs. I am not sure the demographics of our fan base support this.
I'm well off (less now with 3 kids), but every year it's look at the auction and there isnt a single thing there i would want for the starting price. These just aren't for me amd im sure there's a lot of fans out there like that.
This is where I'm at. I don't want more shit in my house.
Even the experiences like party at PKs with assistant coaches just isnt something I want. I'd rather pay them to go watch more film to figure out why we were 6-7.
You know what I want – plan my trip to Lane. Bundle my airfare, my ticket and lodging together so I can book it all at once without thinking. I'll pay a premium for that.
Add in transportation to and from the game. Add a friday/ Saturday fight from dulles or Reagan and Charlotte into bburg. WVU normally charters flights for bowl games and it works out to be a great deal when you account for time involved.
EDIT: I can charter a 160 seat plan for $110 per hour per seat. That's less than $400 for the trip to bburg and back
.
We did not have the 3rd highest staff in 2001, Frank Beamer got the 3rd highest public contract for about 3 weeks until other schools past us. Stoops signed a massive deal after winning the title which was right after Frank got his deal. We have no idea what JoePa made, or what ND was paying. By 2005 our staff was outside the top 15 for public salaries.
I agree with this. It wasn't just being too loyal with staff, the department/university became complacent.
See my previous comment. Changes needed to begin during Weaver's tenure.
Looking back, it feels like everyone felt the school had finally checked all the boxes necessary to have a successful program and we just needed to be patient; a NC would eventually happen.
I do wonder how much did Weaver's fight with Parkinsons factor as a distraction late in his tenure
I think it was less complacency, and more... lacking creativity or foresight? The Weaver/Steger administration could not fathom the 2025 reality of college sports. If you time traveled 15 years back in time and explained the new reality to them, you'd be laughed out of the room. The idea that the ACC could fall apart was laughable. In 2010, each ACC team brought in $12.9m before any post season paycheck. The idea that in 15 years that number would triple(!!!) but the ACC would be such a mess that it had to resort to unequal revenue sharing would be insane.
Meanwhile, the SEC and B10 were continuously pushing boundaries.
I mean, we literally had an empty trophy case sitting there for 15 years. I think you nailed it.
I don't think it had anything to do with Parkinsons. Weaver was of a different era and had a different mindset. He could not fathom a reality where an exec from MGM resorts or the COO of Rock Nation are hired to be conference commissioners.
The TSL pod had an episode in the last year or so where they mentioned that in 2006, the ACC per team revenue share was the highest of all the Power conferences. This was right after the expansion was completed and we were being hailed as a super league for adding Miami and VT to pair with FSU and Clemson. And then the SEC-ESPN mega deal went into effect soon after that, and the race was on.
Not only was the ACC the highest per team revenue in 2006, but I believe they were the highest for like decades straight. The ACC basketball tournament was considered the greatest money make in college sports through the 80s and 90s.
I really think of the BTN launching as being the big change agent - which happened the following year, and led to the B10 immediately jumping the ACC in revenue.
It's very frustrating because I remember back around 10-15 years ago anyone who suggested we needed to be investing more into the program was ridiculed and mocked for not being happy with how good things were at the time.
We got so complacent and we may never recover. We have always wanted to be a small time regional school and made damn well sure we are going to stay there in the long term. If it all collapses and we are left out of expansion going forward we only have ourselves to blame and we absolutely deserve it.
This terrible leadership from the BoV down just makes it that much easier for me to complete mentally divest from being emotionally invested in the school anymore, and more willing to send my kids to any of the in state NC schools.
Which was ridiculous because Fuente walked in the door and was paid almost 2x Frank. Doesn't matter how good of a hire we would have made there are very few coaches worth twice Frank.
Also thr 2009-2011 recruiting showed we were losing it too, it took until about 2013 to really see it but thats still 12 years ago.
Frank gave us a big fucking discount. So did Bud. So did Wiles. So did Torrian.
I think it's a bit ridiculous to suggest that Frank did a disservice by not price gouging us, but I do think his willingness to give us a significant hometown discount had a lasting, cultural impact on the way that the Virginia Tech administration, boosters, and fans view the sport.
Frank didn't do us a disservice, we did it to him, even if he didn't want the money, we should have been investing like we had a bigger budget
Heard. Stadium forest should never have been an issue. Zero chance a couple of trees (in an area rich with trees) would have stopped Oregon or pick your other school from building something.
Hard disagree. VT had/has land other than the old growth forest for expansion. It just wasn't easy.
Will you elaborate on your not-so-easy land for expansion that VT passed up on?
Not directly next to Cassell or where the practice field and Beamer Barn are located. They could have built out a ton of stuff on chicken hill (further away) and used the area behind Cassell for intermural sports. Or the areas where the upper rec fields are. And cutting old growth forests are never easy. It sounds simple, but it will take another 150 years + to replace what is there now.
My point is that BluebloodU wouldn't give a fuck about the "replace what is there now" part.
We aren't BluebloodU...and it aint happening either.
no, we're not, nor have we ever been, BluebloodU -
we're not even nouveau riche
This was needed 20 years ago, in hindsight. We should have woken up as an athletics department not even after the move to the ACC ink was drying, but BEFORE. We needed to recognize what we were asking for and the commitment to keep us and the conference relevant. Instead we continued to do what we do until it was too late.
This all needed to happen much earlier. I've previously said that the world changed in 2010 but in reality that's when it caught up to us. The time to make these changes would have been coincidental with joining the ACC, AT THE LATEST. And instead we came into a weak league in a strong position and failed to get stronger. This shitty tree was planted 25 years ago.
Call me crazy, but I would rather be bad at sports than spend tuition and fees from students trying to have an affordable education on athletics.
Generally I agree with you that VT should prioritize student education first and I don't like the idea of increasing student fees to fund athletics. However I do think there are reasonable arguments to be made for the athletics program as advertising increasing the value of the diploma a student receives by increasing brand recognition of the university and attracting a larger pool of applicants with whom to make professional connections. If athletics fees were to increase higher than students or their family valued the potential benefits, there would still be other universities to chose from with lower fees. It's probably an option the board should at least consider.
I'm on this boat as well. I hate the idea of increasing student fees, but I also recognize that the universities are (and have been for some time now) advertising themselves as 'an experience', not just an education.
If VT is selling a 'college experience' (as opposed to a college degree), and part of that 'experience' is watching football... well, it makes sense to charge your customers enough to actually fund the experience.
Now, I don't this is how universities should be selling themselves, but from what I can tell, they're all doing it, so might as well lean in.
Charging students as a fee isnt really done at most of the P4, which is why i don't like it. I really think that if you prioritize sports then you do so academically by things like our helmet test lab, nutrition research, sports science research, sleep research, sports medicine, etc. Use the brains to further the sport. Sports journalism is important too, its how Mizzou ended up in the SEC. Hospitality majors working with recruits. Create a top tier marketing program. Create alumni in key positions you need for athletics and get research money to further the sport. Ifvyou want to really get top players you go hire the Suns sports medicine team and show every recruit you've got the best people in the business keeping them at top shape. Use the academics.
Are you sure this is true? I feel like a lot of data. I've seen suggest that VTs student fee are a much cheaper than most. On mobile now, so can't really look it up, but I thought this is something that's changed drastically in the last decade.
Student Fees amount for 5% of all FBS revenue (for all sports)
For the SEC it is 1%, $14m or less than $1m per school
Big Ten is 1% which is $30m or less than $2m per school.
However, schools like Nebraska, Alabama, Michigan, Wisconsin, LSU all have zero revenue from student fees. They aren't the onlying ones but like you I'm on mobile so I cant get a good chart of them all easily.
In the ACC, UVA and VT get more money from students than the other universities.
Workaround: make the student athletics fee exorbitant, but only for cadets on ROTC scholarships. Scholarships cover tuition AND fees. Adopt the Academy model of making your athletic budget the taxpayers problem.
Okay - so here's something interesting: if you use the Knight Commission to pull data, you'll see that Virginia Tech student fees are higher than most public ACC schools:
However, if you filter by 'institutional support' - which includes student fees + state gov't funding + money sent from 'main campus' - you see that VT is getting far less institutional support than other schools most years:
Am I reading the second chart wrong where VT has one of the highest values every year?
I don't really know how to interpret any of these numbers.
When I hear complaints about student fees and see comparisons with other universities, I just have to wonder what numbers aren't captured. I'm happier if the numbers are out in the open, as I suspect they are with UVa and Virginia Tech, as opposed to via hidden subsidy, as I suspect they are at most schools.
At the end of the day, you have to compare total costs vs total costs. That's the bottom line.
I appreciate Whit's open approach to asking these questions. The BOV has to appreciate the value of revenue sports, and what it's going to take to support successful athletic programs. I see a lot of value in them, and I hope they do as well.
And this is where the BoV comes in as we are charging our students while the rest are finding ways for the university to pay, which while you might think that juat comes from tuition, our tuition isnt much different from UMD or UNC or NC State for out of state schools.
This goes back to my comment about making academics focus on sports, it includes multi-purpose buildings and other things that lots of other universities do.
Virginia law requires that "auxiliaries" (parking, dining, athletics, etc.) be self-funding. No E&G (education and general fund) money can be used. There are limited instances of being able to loan money from the university to athletics but those are generally in the realm of capital projects because there is a justifiable benefit to students in being able to use facilities. We are somewhat hamstrung by state laws and a BOV that has been loathe to increase costs borne by students, because of our status as a land grant. We are meant to be an accessible, affordable state institution. That mission may be somewhat at odds with the current reality of athletics. I don't know what the answer is, but I know what many of the budgetary constraints are.
And yet if you read the chart above UVA is definitely supplementing their student fees.
ok
So why is UVa's institutional support of athletics $10m more than us per year, nearly doubling what we are allotted. If we are both playing by the same rules, what are they doing that we aren't
Might be same rules, but their endowment is nearly 3 times what ours is...
If I'm reading that correctly, I don't think it has to do with the endowment, its public funding, from "athletic fees, state money, and diversions from "main campus".
The definition is:
More details here (scroll to INSTITUTIONAL/GOVERNMENT SUPPORT)
That should therefore include the athetics fee charged to students, which at UVA is twice what VT charges, last I knew.
If you need a reference point that backs this up you need to go back to the difference in freshman applications for the '98-99 school year and compare it to what happened next. The football team served as a massive advertisement campaign and that year I think we saw at least a 2x increase in student applications.
Thinking a Metallica song right now... Sad but True.
I feel like we need something more drastic. The things they are suggesting are okay, but unless there's an unknown agreement already in place, I don't think it's enough. I'm personally of the opinion that we need to cut everything we can that isn't football, basketball, and possibly one smaller sport to actually try and win a natty in. Pool what resource we have and whatever we can get into that and shoot our shot. Maybe it works and we can launch ourselves into a legitimate seat at the table. Maybe it doesn't, and that's how it would've gone anyways. Maybe it's already too late, but the longer we sit on our hands the closer the window gets to being shut for good.
To be a D1 school, the NCAA requires that you offer 14 sports (at least 6 men's sports and 8 women's sports). The ACC requires you to offer football, men's basketball, women's basketball, and either women's soccer or women's volleyball.
Today, VT offers 22 sports (11 mens, 11 womens). VT offers the 8th fewest varsity sports amongst the 17 ACC programs.
GT offers the fewest varsity programs of any ACC school at 14. BC is the most at 31.
The reality is that a lot of athletes in non-revenue sports won't be getting scholarships anymore (and will thus bring revenue in the form of tuition to 'main campus')
So we can cut 8 programs to direct more funds to our revenue generating programs.
We should do that immediately. Consider bringing them back when the athletic department is healthy. Right now, it's not just sick, it's dying. Drastic measures must be made soon.
Here's the crazy thing. I feel like you, I, and others have had this thought for at least five years - and the fact that nothing has happened speaks to the ignorance of the BOV. It's maddening!
I feel like this is representative of a lot of business leadership in America. Too many leaders are afraid to take the blame if something goes wrong so they ride the slowly sinking ship to the bottom of the ocean instead of taking a risk and rocking the boat.
Gotta get that nice salary and sweet, sweet retirement.
This is what I have been saying for 15+ years.
Believe the House Settlement raised the requirement to 16 sports. Not sure on the gender breakout. Would guess its in compliance with Title IX
If the chart about the ACC being the worst of the P4 for growth, and/or an assessment on minimum vs offered scholarship sports doesn't get some sort of change regarding athletics funding going, I dont think anything will. And I've seen enough inaction from Sands and others to doubt it amounts to anything unfortunately
Seems like a great presentation, that should have been made 4 or 5 years ago...
Board of Visitors members
I was hoping for some contact info to send some emails expressing our concerns and wishes, but looks like all you get is P. O. boxes to snail mail.
EDIT: VT people search had them all, hopefully they actually look at their VT email.
Be nice, these are people with Tech's best interest in mind (hopefully).
John Rocovich -Rector - jrocovic@vt.edu
Sandy Davis - dsandra22@vt.edu
Rosa Atkins - ratkins@vt.edu
Edward Baine - ehbaine@vt.edu
Nancy Dye - ndye@vt.edu
Theodore Hanson - tedh@vt.edu
William Holtzman - willih2@vt.edu
Starlette Johnson - starlette@vt.edu
Ryan McCarthy - ryandm24@vt.edu
Jim Miller - jmiller9@vt.edu
Robert Moser - rmose@vt.edu
James Pearson - jpearson1987@vt.edu
Margaret Ann Smith - margaretannsmith@vt.edu
Jeanne Stosser - jeanne13@vt.edu
Side note - spent some time researching these people, and I'm pretty impressed that there seems to be a lot of career diversity amongst them. A couple high school educators, a couple people in talent acquisition/career advancement, a couple people from the NRV (a lawyer and real estate developer), a handful of execs... I had much lower expectations lol
Ahem, your friendly neighborhood moderator actually happens to be the faculty representative to the BOV.
https://news.vt.edu/articles/2025/07/cm-newfacultyandstaffrepresentative...
I'll be at the retreat next week. Happy to report back what I learn and bend a few BOV members' ears while we're having coffee, lunch, etc. I have a few bigger fish to fry on behalf of VT faculty, but I think folks are much more likely to want to chat about football over what I need to bring up...
Don't forget to bring some Hardee's Giftcards - instead of bending ears, try guiding their stomachs. A burger, fries, and a supersized investment in VT athletics.
In all seriousness, congrats on your promotion/enhanced roll! Pretty cool!
Making the Hardee's coupon joke even better, the location on Price's Fork closed a couple months ago...
I don't know, I bet the BOD will be interested in your "live guitar music in every food hall" program. Don't sell yourself short. I believe in you.
Oh it's underway.
Whatever you do, don't mention Buc-ee's to Bill Holtzman...
I'm looking forward to reading this. I've been reading your comments in this thread too. Favor -- would you mind making a new post after you gather your thoughts so they are all in one spot?
Absolutely! I'll learn more in a few days.
Am I the only one who skimmed through this list and thought I saw "Scarlett Johansson"?
She kinda looks like Meryl Streep
Though this was very detailed and insightful, this is AT LEAST 5 years too late. Babcock has always had a reactive approach to everything VT football. Need an AD that is more proactive that has better foresight and vision vs waiting to see what other schools are doing.
The sooner Whit goes, the better. But I fear it's already too late even if you hit a grand slam with new AD
agree that it's too late
I don't have any idea how much (if any) merit there is the rumor that VT held an invitation to the SEC back in ~2010 but if that's true and we declined that was where we sealed our fate. If we had been in the SEC for the last 15 years I don't think our outlook would be so dire at the moment. Though, with our current leadership, I'm not entirely sure it would be that much better. We'd probably still make all the same dumb decisions but we'd have more money for it so....there's that, I guess.
Alas, we're trapped in a sinking ship of a league in the ACC. All there is left for us to do is drown. I guess we can probably take solace in the fact that VT athletics won't die alone. We're going to be one of many programs that meets their demise as the wealth gap continues to widen between the top 20ish programs and everyone else. VT used to be part of a "middle class" of football programs that is rapidly disintegrating. In the next 10-20 years we'll see the "household" teams dominating the sport and everyone else just giving up. I won't be surprised if two decades from now it won't even be possible to get a VT game on television. The only thing that could fix that would be a revolution within the sport and I don't know if that's ever going to materialize. It's just a game, after all.
Right now, you are too much doom and gloom for a Monday morning. The system is going to need to be adjusted and will be. The B1G and SEC can't exist alone without other programs to play. It is in their best interest for everybody to get a piece of the pie sufficient for everybody.
TKP (well, college football, but since TKP is my only outlet for it) is the one area I allow myself to be overly negative. It gets it out of my system and then I can be more up-beat and positive in every other aspect of my life. TKP is my negative Nancy dumping ground because its sports and sports really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. I get some shit off my chest and then I can move on with life and smell the roses.
Hey man, Monday's already suck. Didn't need this level of depression shot into my veins lol. But all jokes aside, I fear you are more closer to truth than not.
IF we did decline an SEC invitation (big IF), then I agree we wouldn't be close to this stage. Lane probably has gone through an expansion and we wouldn't be that far behind the arms race.
Honestly, not because Shane is there, but we'd probably be equivalent to USC if we were in SEC. Small town, great fan base. Good enough to win some big games, lose your head scratchers here and there, better/modern facilities (that don't take years to complete/start) with better TV money, recruiting better players, but always middle to above average in the standings. Averaging 8-4/9-3 year in and year out. Probably have better chance at a few CFP appearances with all the ranked team chances you have to move up in rankings too with SEC bias.
yeah, I agree with you completely. I think we'd be a pesky team in the SEC that most years would win probably just over half our games (7 or 8 wins) and some years, if we get a couple of great recruits, or coach up a few players beyond their scouting, we make some noise with 10 wins and maybe find ourselves in the SEC championship race in November. That would be disappointing to some fans, but it would be a HELL OF A LOT BETTER than what we've had for the last 1.5 decades and what we have to look forward to for, well at least another decade (and honestly, probably much longer than that)
While being in the SEC would be nice, I'm wondering why we aren't consistently doing that in the ACC.
two big reasons
1. The cashflow we would have in the SEC compared to the ACC would enable us to go out and purchase better coaches and players so that we could compete. We just don't have the finances to keep up even in the ACC. Having that nice SEC media check would bolster us tremendously
2. The reputation of the SEC would make recruiting 100X easier and we would be able to bring in the types of athletes we would need to be competitive. The biggest challenge we'd have is competing against other SEC schools. I'm not trying to pretend that we'd suddenly be on Florida's or Alabama's level just by joining. But surely we'd be competitive with the tier that includes Missouri, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, SCAR, Ole Miss, Auburn, and Miss St. The worst team in the SEC would probably finish middle of the ACC regularly, and challenge for the league occasionally. Right now, we're not even capable of doing that. But with SEC money and recruiting chops, even if we were the worst team in the SEC, we'd still be better than we are today.
This assumes that the influx of funds would be handled responsibly.
And I fear we'd be moving "tax brackets" but still in the same relative spot in the crowd.
As has been pointed out about VA law, our past "commitment" to athletics, and decisions made, I'm not sure we vault up the totem pole. We'd be in new air for us, but breathing the same air as USCe and Mizzou...
Careful what we ask for...
I tend to agree with #2.
The athletic did a pole of a bunch of miscellaneous coaches across the power five, and they all said that the SEC has a prestige or cachet associated with it that allows mid schools to punch above their weight class.
I also think that based on where we're located geographically, we offer unique appeal to kids from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc who want to play for an SEC school, but may not want to live in the deep south/be immersed in the culture of the deep south.
Let's be honest, though. We'd have more money, and be recruiting better, but we'd be in a conference where everyone had more money, and recruited better.
If we're saying that we are capable of stepping it up among people with similar resources, we should be able to do that in the ACC.
I agree that we'd have more resources and be more competitive if we had SEC resources, but if we could be middle of the pack in the SEC, why aren't we able to do that in the ACC, where the competition is also hamstrung? Though that's changing, and we're going to have to fight a bit harder to be in the "haves" category.
I never said we'd be middle of the pack in the SEC. I said we'd be a pesky team that would win about half our games each year - when 3 or 4 of those are non-con then what we're really talking about is 2 or 3 wins in the conference, which likely isn't going to be "middle of the pack" - so we would basically be at the same station in the SEC that we are currently in the ACC but with better funding and access to better recruits and resources our program would still be elevated on the whole. We wouldn't be losing games to ODU - those would be cake-walk warm-up games most years and, at worst, nail-biters that the refs help us win (because #SEC just means more) in bad years. We would be a better team overall, with better resourcing and more potential to hit on a homerun coach or nab a couple under-the-radar recruits that help us make some noise once a decade or something. That would still be WAY better than where we are now. Being at the bottom of the SEC would still be better than being in the middle of the ACC. That's what I'm trying to say
If we had SEC backing and SEC money, we would probably be on the verge of being a breakout basketball program if not already there given where we are and the additional money we would be bringing in. Cassell and Lane would have state of the art upgrades, and we'd be the unquestioned top dog in both revenue sports in Virginia.
We might be middle of the pack SEC, but middle of the pack SEC still has national title aspirations every year in both football and basketball. Right now, we might be further away from both than we have been at any point this century.
No one middle of the pack SEC has title aspirations in football, Kentucky auto renews it coach at 7-5.
Im not sure we'd get a lot better players for football either. Players arent going to Miss State or Mizzou instead of VT, we are losing recruits to Clemson, PSU, OSU, Bama, FSU, Georgia. That's a different level than VT has every really been. In the SEC we'd still lose players to those schools. Im not saying we wouldn't improve our roster but we aren't pulling 5* recruits anytime soon and I'm not sure we'd pull in many more 4* cause they're already going to higher tier football teams.
Is it though?
absolutely 1000% it is. Case in point - Vandy beat us last year. They are a bottom third SEC team and we went 4-4 in the ACC
Vandy had Pavia (new mexico's QB) and Jerry Kill. They are impossible to beat.
Vandy out coached us, having better athletes doesn't fix that game.
So...they beat us and went 3-5 in the $EC. Therefore, we would have gone 2-6, or 1-7, or got skunked. You think things are bad at 4-4...wait til we go 2-6 for 3 straight seasons. That's BETTER?!
SEC money also pays for a whole hell of a lot of other things.
With SEC money we actually might have been able to legitimately challenge for a wrestling, softball or baseball natty by now, and at least with softball and baseball have been able to sustain the momentum we were building. And in both men's and women's basketball we'd very likely be a part of their current ramping up to prominence. And might have been able to keep Kenny Brooks and Buzz Williams longer than we did.
If we were to find ourselves in one of the P2, this is the most exciting part for me.
As others are lamenting, we'd likely be a middle of the road (if we're lucky) football team in one of those conferences. Maybe we catch lightning in a bottle one year and could get in the playoffs, but that would be the ceiling IMO.
But it would let us compete at a higher level in a lot of sports; basketball being the most exciting of those to me, where we've had some success but not consistently.
if we go the SEC and get better funding that we can use for facilities upgrades to recruit better players and pay better coaches we will be a better football team than we are now. Even if we go 2-6 in the SEC we'll still likely win 3 or 4 of our non-con games and finish 6-6 which is what we've been doing for the last 15 years for the most part. It would be "status quo" in terms of overall record and results but the floor of the program would be elevated substantially and with a couple of great hires and a handful of good recruits we might even be able to go 8-4 every few years. Maybe once a decade we'll win 10+ games.
I have serious doubts whether VT will even come close to winning 9 games at any point between now and 2035. We haven't won 9 games since 2017 and we're not showing any signs of turning that around any time soon. We struggle to beat the likes of ODU and Liberty, for crying out loud. JMU would absolutely mash us right now. If we were in the SEC that wouldn't happen. Even if we're the SEC's punching bag, we'd still be better than most teams not in the P2 in pretty short order. I'll take a 4-0 non con record and a 2-6 SEC record (at worst) most years with the occasional season where we manage to win 4 to 6 SEC games and finish near 9 or 10 wins. If we stay put in the dead and dying ACC we're just going to keep turning in 5 and 6 win seasons with 3 or 4 non-con losses and a handful of wins against similarly crappy ACC teams (BC, UVA, Duke, Cuse, GT, Pitt, etc.)
Took the words from my mouth. This is nice and all, but far too little too late. It's great that leadership is finally realizing that the VTAD needs a foundational overhaul and can't just rely on nostalgia and clinging to relics of the Beamer era to compete, but the gap is so wide now that we have little if any hope of ever catching up. And since we have allowed the luster and shine of the program to stagnate for over a decade now, we are nowhere near as attractive to the SEC as we once were (we were going to be the 14th team, not Missouri). We have made our bed as a program and now we are going to have to lie in it.
So, what should VT do then? Keep the status quo? Roll over and die? Play the 1995 Sugar Bowl on the Lane Stadium billboard on repeat?
It's never too late to become more efficient or improve your performance.
Do I wish they had done this in 2005? Oh, hell yeah. Do I wish they had done it in 2015? Oh, hell yeah.
Do I hope they find another gear in 2025? Oh, hell yeah.
At this point, if Whit goes, who in their right mind would take the job? Especially now that this presentation is out there effectively begging the school to actually fund athletics so that we can compete.
If he's unable to get through to the BoV, we are in a death spiral we will not climb out of. No quality AD will take this job knowing they won't get the funding to compete. No coach would have us on their short list, as they know the expectations would not meet the ability to compete. Things will get much worse before they get better, and there is no guarantee they will ever get better than they currently are if the BoV balks at this ask.
Thing is, yes, this should have happened 5 years ago, but its unlikely the BoV would have done anything at that point. At that time we still had this foolish idea that the ACC could compete long term despite every data point out there beating us over the head that it wouldn't. We had our heads buried in the sand, and instead were giving full pushes toward alumni giving thinking that donations would make up the difference, going so far as to say it would pay for things like the Cassell renovation that at this point will never happen. I mean shit, 5 years ago we were actively balking at the thought of firing a severely underperforming Fuente because of optics over COVID furloughs, something that other programs wouldn't give 2 shits about if it meant being better in the long term.
Virginia Tech is desperate to be a small time backwoods regional school that never grows beyond its small town quaint background and will subconsciously sabotage its own aspirations to keep ourselves there. We will actively kneecap ourselves over things other schools just dismiss away, like the Stadium Woods mess, knowing doing what is necessary to remain relevant isn't always going to align with what the vocal minority will cry about. You honestly think Clemson, FSU, or even UNC/NC State would have allowed that project to be derailed like we did? No way in hell
This is overstated. The question is does VT want to be a top 20/30 program, or a top 50/60 program. There are still only 130 FBS jobs, about half of which VT is indisputably better equipped/supported than.
But I then worry about future stagnation. What if the BOV gives a clear signal from this presentation that they prefer the latter, and the fan base and donors start to check out because we know we are never going to be serious about competing with the top echelon of the sport again? If ticket sales and donations then suffer, we could completely go under and be more like a G5 in a hurry.
That's unlikely.
Look at all the options in this slide:
In every one of these scenarios, VT remains in the top half (arguably top third) of FBS.
The reality is - even though VT is in dire straits, almost every school that isn't in the SEC or B10 is as well.
I know you think very little of our administration. They may not have the 'killer instinct' required to compete for a natty in a revenue sport, but they're not dumb. They know the value of being in a conference with reputable sports and peer institutions. They will not tank our program to be a G5/6.
I do think this slide is a little optimistic on the state of the ACC. I don't consider the ACC and B12 to be equal - maybe currently, but not longer-term. The B12 is relatively stable now having already been raided, and they've been aggressive in adding members/value where they can and negotiating a tv deal. The ACC is still ripe for the picking. If we lose Clemson/FSU/Miami/UNC, there is no way in hell the ACC remains on par with the B12 moving forward.
The ACC is better than the B12 currently, but agree that when those 4 head out, the ACC drops to Pac12 status.
This is a key point: there are 30-40 other schools that are in the same boat as VT. We should maybe start playing football with them. Maybe organize around similar sized schools in our regional footprint. Build up some rivalries that mean something to the area and alumni... it just might work.
That's crazy talk. Next thing you'll be suggesting that the players should be actual students working toward a degree from their representative institution.
My dream is the 10-team Appalachian Athletic Conference with:
Will never happen but damn it would be fun.
I also want the all-cocaine-conference that includes Duke, Vandy, SMU, TCU, Rice, Wake, Tulane, Miami, Baylor, and Tulsa. You could even break it up into two divisions along religious lines.
All Cocaine Conference: You've never seen so many snow games this early in the season...
This would be loads of fun. I love how it excludes Penn State too
So i thought about leagues based on vices and then i had the all roofie league and well I had a sad
These will never happen in real life, but I think I'm about to make both of them reality in my next EA CFB dynasty. Thank you!
I can actually see the all cocaine conference happening one day (obviously under a different name lol). It's small/medium sized southern private schools that are expensive AF.
Completely tangential, but has anyone seen videos of the amateur wrestler spoofing Kane named CoKane? He gets worn down in a match then pulls out a bag from his tights and dumps it all over his face, giving him the energy to deliver a punishing Cokeslam to finish the match.
That's f@#$ing amazing!
My dream is that we will never be in a conference with Fucking App State and Marshall.
I mean, how is it much different from being in a conference with BC and Duke? Cuse? UVA? Wake? GT?
At least App State and Marshall care about football
And if we connect all sports to this conference, we don't need to go to Cali, Miami, and upstate NY for field hockey, volleyball, soccer, etc...
It's alot different. Casual fans have heard of Boston College. Duke is the top college hoops program in the country since John Wooden and its not close. Syracuse is the top P4 school in the state of NY and has a storied tradition in hoops and has had some damn good football teams too. Wake has been in the ACC for decades and has competed well in hoops and the olympic sports. GT same... App fucking state was D2 5 minutes ago and Marshall has done none of the above. You didn't know it was in WV until Randy Moss went there- when they were FCS BTW. It's not comparable.
This feels like a stones/glass houses kind of situation given the last decade of Hokie football
FTFY
IDK in the south I think App State has more name recognition than BC or Syracuse.
I think it would be fun to have conferences be geographical again. Instead of having the Sunbelt and the SEC, a south eastern conference that has FBS schools from the south east, a golf coast conference that has ALL of the bama schools (including troy, UAB, etc), Mississippi schools, louisianna schools, etc, and a southwestern conference with all the FBS texas/oklahoma schools.
Anyways, it's never happening because *gestures everywhere*, just a fantasy.
The casual college football fan didn't know App St existed until they upset Michigan
An event almost two decades ago
They (and to a lesser extent, Marshall) have the name recognition as a lower-level school that occasionally punches above their weight. That is all.
Hey now. Frank Loria died in that plane crash. There's more than a passing connection.
I'm gonna quote you on this next time we lose to Cuse, BC, Wake and/or Duke.
LOL - this was my point exactly. DC loves to trash our team/coaches whenever we don't completely pound one of those teams into the dirt
and yet, they're somehow a league above the likes of App State and Marshall - feels like a double standard to me
You happy with VT football losing to Cuse every single time in the carrier dome? I thought so. I know you were giddy after that loss (again) last year. Kudos. All is well. and 2. My post had nothing to do with VT. If you don't like the fact that BC is a bigger brand than app state. Oh well. Its fact.
am I happy about it? No.
I don't like half the trash teams in the ACC and I don't like that we're stuck with them. But if we're going to be stuck with a bunch of garbage teams, it would be more fun for it to be more regional - I'd rather play Marshall and App State than BC and Cuse, given the choice.
Part of your point stands. Those teams aren't Bama or Michigan and they never will be (by the way, neither is VT). Would I rather play the best of the best? Yes. That's why I so desperately wanted VT to get into the SEC. But that seems incredibly unlikely at this point. I just don't see why you're getting bent out of shape at the prospect of us playing Marshall and App State in a hypothetical conference that will never, ever exist.
Since we're dealing with hypotheticals, why don't you join the fun instead of just trashing it. Instead of ridiculing the idea of playing lowly teams from the mountains, how about you put together your ideal conference for VT. What teams would you love VT to play regularly?
Dream conference:
VT
UVA
JMU
Liberty
ODU
W&M
Richmond
VMI
The ACC - All Commonwealth Conference. Easily attend all road games!
/s
I think I speak for everybody here when I post this gif in response to this "Dream conference".
No kidding, that list is trash. He left out WVU and Marshall.
How do you think the presentation got to twitter? You think Babcock was trying to keep this secret?
I agree. And that's why this presentation is "leaked" before it is presented. To put the reality of the situation out there and to put pressure on the BoV.
I'm not going to say Babcock is a good AD. But, I do think that regardless of the AD, VT has had institutional issues that held the program back. And if Babcock and Pry are fired this year, it will not matter who they hire as the next AD and the next football HC if the BoV does not enable the program for success. If they don't, they might as well fall back to G5 status.
Can someone give me the lowdown on why this is still happening? I know it has to do with town of Blacksburg not wanting to give it up or something, but unless VT wants to be a serious program with actual expansion (facilities, parking, multi-use buildings, Land expansion/easier to get into Lane, etc.), then those trees need to go or there needs to be some kind of compromise.
Salamanders
To my knowledge it's not 'still happening' - it's just evidence that we're not serious about competing at a top 25 level year in/year out.
Come on, not cutting some old trees down means we aren't serious about being a top 25 football team???
You're better than that. And that's a crazy conclusion right there.
No, I don't think that not cutting some old trees down means we aren't serious about being a top 25 football team.
But I do know that when Ryan Day, James Franklin, Nick Saban, Dabo, Marcus Freeman, Mike Norvell, Harbaugh, Brian Kelly, etc say 'jump' the university says 'how high?'
The fight that our generational coach had with our administration is emblematic of the difference between how our admin prioritizes football and how the administrators at other schools view football.
Just saw this pop up. Our obsession with scheduling the likes of ODU, Liberty, Richmond and VMI is actually now going to start costing us in TV revenue sharing. Probably a main driver for why the ODU series was canceled, and would not be surprised to see many more cancellations follow. Simply put, VMI or Liberty absolutely cannot be our opponent in what needs to be a showcase weekend going forward.
Also the expectation is that a main push here is that we are looking to build up the area around Lane like you see in Battery Park in Atlanta or even similar to what they are doing around Carter-Finley in Raleigh
Part of me really wonders if some big time donors/Sands basically told Whit to get his shit together and make this presentation to the BOV. I find it unfathomable that the same person now begging the BOV for more money and the need to schedule higher-caliber opening games is also the one who actively scheduled all these garbage teams in the first place, and suddenly has all these solutions. Where has this been for the last five years?
The scheduling aspect is definitely a lesson learned from Pry. Babcock F'ed that up, but he was also continuing the status quo from the Weaver years. One of VT's issues was they were a lesser program forever and made a meteoric rise under Beamer. Weaver never acted like an AD from a top-tier program. Babcock came from a G5 school. Fuente came from a G5 school. Nobody knew how to run a P4 athletic department. And they suffered from imposter syndrome and handicapped themselves instead of learning from and/or hiring P4-level experienced admins. It wasn't until Pry did anyone suggest that VT is a major football program and should act like one.
Sorry - calling bullshit here. I'm not going to sit here and defend Whit as the perfect AD (he's not), and I'm not even suggesting that we should not replace him (we should), but it's ignorant to act like this has been some issue for ages now that Whit has just brought up, when in reality these changes are being driven by changes agreed to 6 months ago, finalized 6 weeks ago.
The scheduling change is 100% driven by a change to the ACC revenue share that was announced on March 4, 2025 and approved on June 3, 2025.
Before this change, all TV revenue from all games played on an ACC team's home field were added up and split 17 ways. Filling up a schedule can be expensive, and that's where body bag games come in. Let's all remember that in 2024, 9 schools paid over $1m for body bag games. Even at lower levels; G5 teams (GSU, UAB) are paying FCS teams (SC State, Alabama State) >$300k per game.
So from a purely financial standpoint (I know... it's probably not reasonable to look at this from a 'purely financial' standpoint, but I digress), the ODU deal (which was costs $250k per game) was pretty savvy - it had virtually no impact on revenue, and saved us at least $500k/year (relative to the next best option).
The cost/benefit analysis has changed in the last 6 weeks. I bet a chunk of this presentation was completed shortly after March 2025, and actual numbers were swapped in as soon as they were available. This is pretty fast for universities, which typically move at a glacial pace.
Setting aside the financial implications from the new revenue sharing agreement, which I agree is a recent development that does affect the bottom line, the general tone of the presentation to the BOV is that more exposure is a good thing and makes up and then some from the expense of giving the AD more money. That sentiment is as true today as it was five or ten years ago. So if we are making that argument to get the BOV to buy in and fund the AD for success, then why wasn't this pitch made before now? Sorry, it still just smacks of being totally late and reactive to the whole dynamic of college football, which is typical VT. The majority of our fan base knew years ago that being asked to pay more and more for tickets and per seat donations to watch an increasingly crappier slate of games was not setting us up for success. It may have been a slick accounting move though.
I don't think it's so much that 'more exposure is good' - I think it's saying there is now a direct link between exposure and AD funding.
I'm guessing that - and Guitarman can correct me - when things are brought before the BOV, they are not things being discussed for the first time. Kinda like when a conference votes to add a member, the members have already been whipped, and the result is a foregone conclusion. Now maybe this decision isn't a foregone conclusion. Maybe this is part of an effort to change VA law (which guitarman discusses in the thread).
I'll level with you - IF this is completely late and reactive, then I completely agree with you. But I can't imagine these people - Sands, Whit, and the BoV (which has multiple members who own/run NRV businesses) - are deferential to the cultural and economic impact of VT football. They would have to be absolute buffoons, and I don't believe that VT (as a university) would be as successful as it is if this is the case.
VT is a public institution - I'm sure there have been some finance committee-level discussions with board members or 1-on-1s with administration. But unless they're violating sunshine laws and all conspiring behind closed doors about this for a while now, this is the first big substantive presentation to the board. And this will just open the door for more discussion and meetings before they make any big decisions as a body.
Conferences are not public institutions - they are private non-profits typically which are not subject to FOIA and similar public meeting and communications laws like state entities. So I think this is the first big opening salvo to the board as a collective. Again, I'm sure small group or one-on-one discussions have occurred. But this is going to be a lengthy official process that I think is just getting started publicly with the board as a whole.
We don't need a discussion, we need a decision.
Every year they delay a decision we fall multiple years behind in catching up
This probably isn't the first time the BOV is hearing about this topic but it is the first public discussion of it. A lot of BOV business gets done behind closed doors - not in an illegal sense at all, but the structure and content of a BOV meeting is highly choreographed. The outcomes are usually known. An administrator once told me "the open meeting is theater, everything has already been discussed." Again, not making any accusation of illegal dealings, but with the vast amount of information at each meeting (briefing materials are routinely over 1000 pages, this meeting is "short" at just over 800), everyone should realize that a lot of the job is done ahead of time. Pretty much all of it is subject to FOIA, but the legal counsel and folks who work to support the board are top notch at doing stuff by the book exactly.
Exactly. As long as you have a committee of board members that is less than a quorum, you can discuss business all day long. That's typically how business gets done with public entity boards - committees and then one on ones between board members/staff. So no I don't think the board is hearing any of this for the first time, but this is definitely the first of the official public discourse on the topic with the board as a full body. I don't also see any action items requested so this will just be the beginning of the discussion which will move into budget season for next year. So some good discussion should come out of this but don't expect any official action for a while.
Through my job, I have the great pleasure of working with local elected/appointed boards and frequently attend public meetings. What you're describing is my default assumption for any public board meeting. The outcome is almost always pre-determined.
Scheduling ODU and Liberty as an ever-present part of our schedule always impressed me as both unimaginative and lazy.
I have always screamed from the roof tops to everyone that scheduling these type of programs were a "lose/lose" situation. I fucking hated them but Weaver and Babcock just wanted (supposed to be) easy W's and fill Lane while on shitty Raycom.
Beat them - Cool, you were expected to (not so much nowadays lol), but no one cares, it didn't draw any additional eyes on the TV/team, and didn't really affect you for the season outside of a meaningless W. Total waste of time and money (especially if you paid them to play in Lane), and waste of an opportunity to play bigger name program.
Lose to them - An absolute nightmare. National embarrassment. Highlights of game throughout weekend and constantly reminded of the loss for next week/remaining of season, coaches/players feel pressure to rebound, basically no chance of being ranked and (in post CFP era), little to no chance at CFP birth if you don't win ACC. I could go on as I am probably missing some but you get the gist.
This is exactly why ODU was canceled. TSL discussed it on the most recent pod.
One little issue with the origination post. It is wrong. We are not opening with ODU or Liberty. We are opening with South Carolina.
2026 opens with VMI. 2027, 2028, and 2029 open with Liberty.
I sure hope they are trying to adjust it now, but they have a terrible labor-day-weekend opener for the next 4 years.
You know that Whit is trying to find another P4 team with the same issue to reschedule. That is literally part of his job and a more important one since the revenue changes have been made.
Rumors of WVU are flying.
I would love that. I hate WVU more than UVA, and would love to see us pound them.
Yes, please.
Well Liberty could be preseason Top 25 in those years the way they are throwing cash at their program. They already have more votes than we do this year
In which case I STILL don't want to play them.
Exactly. Avoid Hypocrisy U at all costs, please.
We have reached a point in the program where an online Christian school 50 miles up the road is better at football than VT. They didn't have a program in 1999. That's where we are. Hoping we can beat fucking Liberty.
the original post is talking about the next 4 years. Not this year. Next year we open with VMI, then the following two years we open with Liberty and then in 2029 we open with liberty again. Our 2030 opener is against Arizona (for now, subject to change, of course) but for the next 4 years our openers are poop.
Arizona will most likely play out like the Wisconsin and Penn State series did. Hope I am wrong though
So we'll play them in 2053 and 2054 when I'm 88-89 years old?
(Based on the original Wisconsin dates being 2008-9 and now 2031-2) ? sadly NOT /s
Last I checked the Braves and Hurricanes are pro teams with 41 and 81 home dates respectively and can fill the "mixed use" areas much more often.
Go Braves
Agree with the folks saying it's too little, too late.
One of y'all get lucky on the stock market and throw some of that stupid T Boone Pickens money at the VTAD
Right now I am just hoping my investment accounts stay level with this market.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
All these folks saying it's too late. What should Whit do, just give up and NOT push the BOV? At least he's doing something now.
At this point treat it like a major incident at any major web based company.
1 and 2 are insanely difficult to do. Can't just double revenue lol.
You can eliminate extraneous expenditures until you're on more stable footing. And by that I mean eliminating as many non-revs as it takes.
Matt Brown - the foremost expert in the back office of college sports - just published a piece titled Virginia Tech just spelled out the math behind college football's future.
Nothing new, but I highly recommend giving a full read - especially if you didn't want to read the slides/thread one by one.
The excerpt I think we all personally identify with most:
To anyone wondering how we got to this point, you get what you pay for. Our school thought they could own a Ferrari on a Honda's budget. In order to win 9 games you need to pay for a program capable of winning 9 games, and when we routinely fund our athletics at one of the worst rates in the conference, it doesn't fucking matter how much history or tradition we have, we're going to have disappointing results.
This is a topic discussed ad nauseam on TKP for probably 10 years now. We don't budget enough money to have the results that are expected of us. We're so obsessed with never running in the red that we have been trying to win in college sports with one hand tied behind our back for the last 25+ years. In an environment that has routinely showed those who spend money tend to rake in more money long term, we decided to stop taking risks and play it safe.
We are exactly where we deserve to be right now.
Remember back in what, 2020, when they laid out plans to fund our programs into the top third or quartile of the ACC? That was a thing right? That completely collapsed. I knew the macro was bad but seeing us well beneath Cal... woof.
2021, and I believe we were top 3 highest payroll in the ACC for 6 weeks.
Read this on my commute to work this morning. If Whit is smart he'll point to this being picked up by major media during his presentation to the BOV. He absolutely needs to stress how critical this juncture is and the fact that people outside of our sphere are discussing it may be helpful to his narrative.
The BoV would be ostriches with their head in the sand to not take immediate action. It is clear that the institutions within VT including the BoV have ignored the importance of positioning the football team for success. The noise these slides have made within the alumni base, local media and national media was pretty loud and impossible to ignore now. The most passionate alumni and fans are watching closesly.
The decision to put this presentation together and publicly leak it in advance of the BoV meeting was a very savvy PR move and very unlike VT. And the ppt slides are way more professional than what we're used to seeing from the VT athletic department (for example, the sloppy coaching contracts; the Comic Sans font for recruiting; the Hokis cups; the press conference to not fire Fuente; "weights way the same"; etc). Makes me wonder who within the athletic department developed this plan or if they hired a consulting agency. And kudos to Babcock for greenlighting the leak and putting his name behind it.
I'm not in such circles these days, and have only seen the discussion here. What other noises are people hearing?
This is not a leak. BOV materials are routinely posted ahead of time. The information and meeting itself is technically public, although the invitation list to the retreat where it will be presented is very small, by design.
I was in a meeting today and the BOV clearly would dump lots of money into football if it were feasible. It will take political pressure to change laws in VA or otherwise advocate for contributions from the General Assembly. What I was told today by President Sands was "the BOV would tell us to pour $50M into athletics today, but there are structural challenges (that they understand) that will require legislative action."
Yup. As much as we love sports and want them all to succeed, they are just a part of what makes up VPI and Sands is ultimately responsible for all of it. What I dont really like from that quote is it sounds like he's aware of the changes that are necessary and has not shown any evidence that he's taken the steps to help usher those changes along.
When bribing state officials to change a law you dont really want evidence/s
"Lobbying."
He spends as much time in Richmond these days lobbying for various causes (yes, that includes athletics) as he does in Blacksburg. I'll leave it at that. I'm trying to give you all a peek behind the curtain but there are some things I know that I am not going to post, even behind a TKPer wall. And some things are so up in the air, I wouldn't feel confident projecting. But the man is working.
VT to SEC confirmed! You heard it here first!
I'll say this - the revenue sharing deal that the ACC hammered out is a risk for VT but was the only way to keep FSU and Clemson in the fold. They wanted more money, obviously. VT currently gets about $44M from the revenue sharing deal but with the new model, we might get as low as $30M or as high as $65M. We're gambling on ourselves, but it also means the conference is almost certain to fracture in the near future with loads of money continuing to go to top programs, fueling competitive imbalance. When that happens, we hope to be in a position to attract attention from the P2. We have to win on the field to get a higher share of revenue and to put some luster back on the program. It all comes down to winning.
Don't know how much you may be privy to on this or what you can reveal, but do you have any sense or gut feeling on which P2 option would be the preference? Obviously getting a seat at either table is the most important thing. But looking at this objectively, I see the academic-side alignment with the Big Ten/big research universities and AAU affiliation, which we are knocking on the door of currently.
But as far as fan interest and a sense of cultural rivalries, I think the SEC makes far more sense. VT fans traveled in droves to the Vandy game in Nashville this past year. I also think we have ready-made rivalry potential with UT and the Battle of Bristol (SEC loves to hype up that kind of pageantry). Also some other compelling potential with schools like UK, South Carolina. I just don't see the same kind of enthusiasm and potential talking trips to Iowa or Purdue or Illinois. Or even Maryland at Rutgers for that matter.
There is drama among the AAU institutions now, related to politics. I won't get into it because of CGs, but suffice it to say some AAU schools want to deal with the federal government differently than others. We are positioning ourselves in many ways to be attractive to AAU institutions, but it's one of those unspoken rules - don't ask to be invited. And we're not. We're strengthening what we do well, and looking for areas to grow our reputation and influence (including a University Mission Initiative to provide better resourcing for doctoral student education that I was deeply involved in - I wrote the thing). But we're watching what happens across the landscape of higher ed, for sure.
SEC makes a lot of sense athletically, Big Ten may make more sense academically. I have no idea where that might land, but I know we want to make ourselves attractive to either in the case of realignment.
And I think Tech would accept either if offered. The football fan wants SEC, the engineering/academic part of me prefers the B1G.
There is also a part of me that prefers putting on additional layers to combat the cold than baking in November in Florida or GA for an away game.
I agree
I also have overwhelming doubt that the current leaders from the BoV to Sands to Whit have the insight or ability to position us to be attractive. We are at a point where we must borrow money against our future, much like Maryland did when they joined the Big Ten. Go into debt for the next few years to position ourselves to be an attractive get for the P2. If it works, the additional money we bring in from the TV will quickly pay that debt down, if it doesn't, its not like it matter anyway. And the absolute cynic in me (who has seen this play out in other areas) says the most likely scenario if we do this is that regardless of where we end up, in about 10 years or so after everyone has forgotten about it, the state government just writes it off, eventually having the taxpayers cover it with public funding anyway.
But I don't have any faith that anyone involved wants to actually play the game to do that. They don't have the appetite for playing in the mud like their peers are doing. We'd rather die with our heads held high than do whatever it takes to stay alive.
See my post from yesterday - the BOV would literally throw piles of money at Athletics if the money were there. They want our athletic program to be top notch, but there are constraints. Sands knows the game, he gets the importance. He chaired the NCAA Presidents group last year so he has all the insight in the world right now about where things are going. We're not sitting on our hands, but we have a lot of squandered years to account for.
Then go into debt. If we truly honestly believe what you are saying, then being in the P2 is the only option going forward, and we know from our own calculations that a P2 TV deal would be worth something like $60m per year more than we are getting now.
If we are going to bet on ourselves, actually do it. Go into debt with intention to pay it back with the increased P2 revenues. Go all in with a singular focus to get there, damn the costs. Anything short of that from here on out says they don't actually honestly believe the things they are saying.
I'll believe it when I see it. We have 20+ years of inaction that leads me to be incredibly skeptical of anything this school says in regards to being on top of the situation and having their finger on the pulse of college athletics. At this point, I don't give 2 ounces of a shit about what any of the VT leaders say, all I care about is what gets done. Their actions are all that matters.
Yes, we do. I also don't care. This same group of people from the BoV to Sands to Whit made this bed. They were the ones who squandered those years. They didn't inherit this situation, they created it. So the pleas to give it time because of the woeful state we are in fall flat to me. Its years past time that these individuals needed to act, we need decisions and remediations implemented now.
You do make a compelling point. If VT is going to bet on itself, why not issue debt to pay for a few years of needed extra funding to do these things to put us into contender status. I see that as better than asking the taxpayer to foot the bill. We should have some skin in the game if we are going to truly go all in and bet on ourselves.
But it almost seems to me like a cop out - make an extreme ask with little chance of it being funded, only to then throw your hands up and say "well we tried, it's not on us!" Make a pitch to the BOV to finance this plan with the anticipated future revenue streams as source of repayment and the university reserves as a backstop.
In short - fuckin' A.
Let's stop pissing in the wind, shall we?
Do. What. Is. Necessary.
Boom. Like it or not, this is it
100% fuck both of them. The ACC should have let them leave that day.
Fascinating
Can I ask why we kept FSU/Clemson in the fold? My take has always been they're leaving no matter what, so why let them grab any money on the way out?
I do not have a 100% answer on that, but I think basically if they exited at the time they did, the ACC would have largely folded and left everyone scrambling. Cut a deal, survive and advance knowing full well that things are going to shake up in the next couple years.
Out of curiosity, what type of legislative action? What would need to happen on the state level?
Greater appropriations from the state legislature to support the athletics programs, changes to laws about using university funds for athletics, etc.
Yeah this is where I start to draw the line. Money from the university is one thing - I know people say "ah but it should be all about education!" And I agree to an extent, but relatively little of VT's operating funds come from the state these days. Universities are like businesses and investment funds these days with these large endowments and various sources of income. I'm aware a large chunk of that comes from tuition and student fees, but that's the price that comes along with attendance at a large P4 university honestly. Athletics and the exposure it brings is a massive part of that equation. If you want it to be all about the education, attend a school that deemphasizes athletics.
However, if we are talking sizable appropriations from state tax revenues to bank roll VT athletics...yeah, I'm starting to be out. It should not fall on the tax payer and general tax revenues to support athletics at large state universities. This is starting to border on insanity if that's what the ask truly will be.
An interesting part of the discussion today was Olympic sports. Football drives revenue and most, if not all, other sports consume money. Basketball might turn a profit at some schools. So effectively, universities across the country are subsidizing US Olympic sports. Sands wondered if at some point, the taxpayers would be asked to make a choice as to whether they want their dollars to pay for the US Olympic program and free up money for the revenue generators at universities. It was an interesting thought.
That's where I think the craziness could play out. The General Assembly can't just do that for VT, what about UVA? Then what about JMU, they want to compete too. Then what if VMI decides one day it wants to ramp up football, they're going to need the state to pick up the tab for Olympic sports now too.
You have to do this for all (which is going to be expensive and really hard to envision) or none. Government shouldn't start picking winners and losers.
Yep, exactly. All public schools would have to be treated the same. That's a slippery slope and extremely costly. The bubble is going to break before too long. The road we're on isn't sustainable on any level.
Fact. The only way its sustainable is to tie the actual huge money - TV money - directly to paying players. This will not happen until there is contracts and collective bargaining. ESPN is not going to tie money to the punter - even in the SEC. They aren't going to do that without collective bargaining. The shitshow will 100% continue as long as billionaire boosters are funding the top 10 teams payrolls. Unless you reign that in, shitshow is what you have.
To be fair, most modernized countries have a state-funded Olympic sports complex. The US - which
essentiallypartially outsources Olympic sport development to universities - is the outlier.Ummm..USA skiing, basketball, hockey, gymnastics are huge funded orgs not affiliated with any colleges. Pretty much all of "USA" olympics is not funded nor supported by college athletes in any considerable way.
I updated my comments to be more accurate/less exaggerated, but I think the point stands: 75% of American Olympic medalist in the Paris Olympics competed as college athletes where they presumably got a lot of training. This is unusual across the global.
Right, and my language should have been more precise above. It's not that universities are 100% subsidizing it, but they are bearing a large cost that other nations don't. And the time will come when the public will be asked if they want to put money behind those teams. Most people probably have no idea whatsoever about the current state of things.
Not 100% true. If we are only funding at 15% of an allowed 20% that is 5% more that could be allocated tomorrow.
Sorry, what are these figures?
We're maxing out at the House settlement level for NIL revenue sharing at $20.5M, and that has been a lift. And that's from the central university budget, per the provisions of that settlement.
There have been comments elsewhere that indicate there's some VA law that requires no more than 20% of an athletics budget to come from the university. And apparently we are only getting 15% of our athletics budget from the university. That's what he's talking about
It's 20% from Athletic Fees for Students. Law applies to UVA and us. It was put in place before any other public university in Virginia moved to D1.
Yup that was the article and figures that I remember reading.
We had several of the "Hoakies" cups from that season. I think the last one broke 20 years ago after being retired to the dog kibble bag for the last couple of seasons of it's sad existence. One of my buddies still will call them the Ho-ack-ies upon occasion. Football was a lot more fun in those days, the cup fiasco notwithstanding.
Texas paid their backup QB 6 million dollars last year. If you aren't prepared to do that, you are in the minor leagues. It's the NFL with marching bands and homecoming now. Nothing more.
Texas did not pay Arch Manning $6 million.
I heard they did
Heard from who?
CBS 'reported' that the duke qb was getting $4m. I know someone who has seen the contract says his max annual pay is $800k.
Times 5 years because eligibility doesnt exist any more and you get $4m, right?
Hey parents of Johnny non athlete student. You now have to pay much more in fees so that Sean Pedulla can leave anyway after a year. Keep in mind that 99% of the ballers you are subsidizing aren't going pro in sports- just like your johnny student is not.
That's the thing that annoys me the most about this whole thing. It's one thing when athletics is a separate entity funding-wise. It's another when it siphons dollars from education. As much as I love VT athletics, I'm not sure that I want dollars that were earmarked for student education being reprogrammed for athletics. And I know that the big dog schools are doing that, and to keep up, that's what we need to do. I'm just not sure that that's what we should do, you know?
I'm hating the direction college athletics is going, and as exciting as it was in 1999, I'm just not sure it's worth the cost to try to get back there in this landscape. /shrug
Yep. 2000 grad. 1999 was amazing and that world no longer exists. It's bittersweet but I can't see VT getting 50% more funding just to be middling. It's irresponsible.
I'm right there with you all. Do I want more public funding to be paying for VT athletics? No, but at the same I also realize that other states are funding their public schools athletic department and allocating more tax money to keep their athletic departments afloat, so if we don't we are going to fall so far behind where even 5 years from now being a perennial .500 team might be a pipe dream and it'll be impossible for us to catch back up.
At this point, make a decision. Are we going to do this or not. Are we going to bend the rules to the extent that everyone else is, operate like everyone else where we push every boundary and threaten lawsuits when we are caught to get away with it all, or are we going to keep doing what we have been doing. Are we going to do everything in our power to squeeze every penny we can find in extra university funding to pay for our main revenue driver or not. And if we aren't, we are accepting that we are in the death spiral and we are choosing to not pull ourselves out. And if that is the case, at what point does it make more sense to go the IVY League route where you eliminate scholarships and just treat the athletic department as a more formal club division of the university, taking in revenue while spending the bare minimum on expenditures, accepting that your days of having nationally relevant and competitive teams are permanently behind you.
The sport needs reform so badly. We need subdivision by afford-levels. We have spent a laughable amount of time pretending that USF and Michigan are competing in the same tier. And now members of the ACC aren't even on the same level of funding because the conference agreed to be strangled slowly with unequal revenue sharing that will compound until FSU and Clemson leave anyway. Great job Jim. Ace leadership.
Nope this IS your REFORM. This is it. Nick Saban was making 10 million dollars a year while Greg McElroy - competing as an amateur student- ONLY got a world class 200K valued education, monthly stipend, food, rent, tutoring, medical and priceless exposure on ESPN every Saturday. That just sucked and was unfair. So here is your reform.
They are greatly over-estimating the chance that I'm going to continue throwing money into the empty well.
You and many other fans and then is when the slow swirling in the toilet bowl really starts to accelerate. Especially when we start not going to the games with our season tickets.
I'm checked out on any specifics, or really anything that's happened with this program in the last 8 months. So considering my ignorance, this all seems too little, too late.
Did Whit include this in his briefing?
Interesting that the 2019 year goes from LOLUVA at 85 weeks to West Virginia at 100 weeks.
I, too, was confused, so I looked at the archives.
WVU Poll History
UVA Poll History
WVU ended the 2018 season ranked, so I guess they consider that 2019 since the 2018 season goes into the 2019 calendar year? IMO it should list WVU at 100 weeks/2018.
Not SoFun Fact: Rutgers' poll drought going back to 2012 is coincidentally the last year VT beat them (granted, we went 11 seasons without playing).And the big 10 allegedly wants to add UVA? So they can make themselves a weaker football conference?
The b10 is striving to be the most pretentious conference ever.
Based on that list, uva will for right in! B1G is the most represented conference.
Hey, we're doing better than UVa, which for a significant portion of the fanbase is all that actually matters in the end
Low bar
Saying it's the biggest game every year isn't all that actually matters in the end, but for many of us it is maybe a bit more important than for others is that we have to live with, near and familiarly in proximity with those entitled pricks all around us, and it at least gives us something we're just better at than they are, regardless of our team's accomplishments, or lack thereof, in any given year. They now own basketball and baseball and about all of the Olympic sports and it rankles. But no, I don't believe that a significant portion of the fanbase thinks that game "is all that actually matters in the end."
UVa is who we benchmark ourselves against. I've watched it play out year after year within the fanbase and even within the AD. We might suck on the field, we might not be invited to a bowl, but we beat UVa and end up higher than them in the standings, so in the big picture that's ok.
We've been benchmarking ourselves against the shittiest program in the ACC for the past 25 years and we wonder why we slip into complete obscurity watching us get passed by schools that 15 years ago we all would have thought were below us. But we have never felt the fire under our feet because UVa is a complete dumpster fire that is incapable of challenging us.
Shit, at this point we'd be better off benchmarking ourselves against Liberty or JMU than UVa. Some would argue those 2 are better overall programs than we are right now.
This is a great point - we've never really been reaching for a high bar - the lower bar might be easier to clear, but once cleared, there's no fight to continue.
shoot for the stars, land on the moon
shoot for the toilet bowl, land in the tub. That's kinda where we are at the moment
There are countless examples right under our noses. VCU committed to actually being good in men's hoops. They made it to a final four and are consistently good and in the dance. JMU committed to going to FBS in football. They won national championships and now own the sunbelt in 5 mins. Coastal Carolina has committed to being good in baseball. Alabama was so pissed at going 9-3, they paid Saban more than any NFL coach to come rescue their program. VT refused to commit to Kenny Brooks. VT refused to give Mike Young any competitive NIL and instead hoped to catch a miracle in football by paying Ali Jennings. That's not commitment that's half cocked bullshit.
We had an empty National Championship trophy case for two decades! ;^)
Yeah, but that's because we felt like it was manifest destiny to happen, and not something we had to continually strive to earn
Many years ago, when there were more than four websites that people used to communicate with each other, I had a signature banner that had a checklist of football goals on it for each season, and I would update it each week depending on how the Hokies did. It went something like:
1. Compete for a national championship.
2. Play in a BCS / Top Tier Bowl
3. Win the ACC
4. Play in the ACC Championship
5. Beat UVA.
Beating UVA was always the least and lowest goal... and now... here we are.
Your comment, and the ones that follow in the sub-thread above, are correct when you are looking at the state of the season just before and after Thanksgiving. VT is not, at all, like Virginia in that we are establishing goals in Fall camp, and the #1 priority is "Beat Virginia". I am not saying that you said that, but want to make clear the part of the fanbase that constitutes me and the people I interact with does not prepare to be happy with a season as long as we beat Virginia. Rather, when looking back on a shitty season where we fail to get to the playoffs, fail to win the ACCCG, fail to make it to the ACCG, fail to win 10+ games, fail to be 0.500+, we can at least hang our hats on the fact we can, almost always, take care of business against our in-state foes. But by no means do I see that as a benchmark of success. I see it as having avoiding an absolutely pathetic excuse for a season for a football program of our pedigree.
Again, I understand your point, but sometimes, as written, it comes across like we are all hanging posters & banners in our Hokie caves celebrating each season where we beat Virginia. Rather, I keep drinking until I forget things like our last bowl game against that team that also has a maroon color and a rodent-like mascot.
Whit, Pry have been pretty clear- win the ACC is the primary goal. That gets you in the playoffs where anything can happen and usually means you have a pretty good team. The exception is FSU won it, were undefeated, and we left out for the 3rd place SEC team.
As much as that was a despicable, cowardly, and unfair decision they did have the extraordinary happenstance of FSU losing their primary and backup QB's for the season in their last two games.
Let undefeated Alabama, OSU or LSU lose their entire offense and be left out... I'll be quiet then.
Oh, I agree. I didn't like the decision then and don't now. The committee bowed to SEC and B1G pressure. If they had pretended to want to be fair, then FSU should have at least been paid for getting in and not playing.
Who cares
They already had announced the backup would be back for the playoff and we had just seen the Eagles waltz their way through the playoffs to a Lombardi after Foles took over from Wentz who at the time was having a legitimate MVP caliber season. The FSU team, much like the Eagles, had earned their spot by winning on the field and it was taken away from them because of some bureaucratic asshole in a closed door meeting deeming their worth was only as good as their QB.
FSU's season was over before the first game was played, and they went undefeated.
precisely why the whole playoff structure is completely asinine.
Anyway, it's why most CFB fans who are fans of teams not in the P2 are going to walk away from the sport in the next decade - it's pretty clear that if you're not in the P2 you're not at the table
Undefeated in a non-cupcake schedule is still undefeated. They still had sufficient players to field a full team is criteria met.
And we have lost to half of these bottom feeders during this drought.
Fucking Embarrassing. gif
We have a chance to add Cal this year
We also have a chance to get ranked and get off the list entirely.
The mere fact that we're associated with a list like that should be enough to spur some action. This is pretty bleak, and this will not improve unless there are dramatic changes.
Can someone describe said list? I can't reach it from work.
It's a list of schools that have gone the longest without being ranked in the AP poll.
Rutgers - 201 weeks, WVU - 100 weeks, Stanford, MD, Cal in the 90s, UVA at 85, Northwestern and VT in the 60s.
VT was swept by WVU and Rutgers recently.
Bitter and David Cunningham are in the meeting today and tweeting out updates as they fly. Would recommend following if you aren't VTGuitarman and somewhere in this pic:
Also,
If that isn't a whole bucket of WAKE THE FUCK UP cold water being dumped on the BoV, I don't know what is.
The idea of VT potentially not having athletics had never occurred to me...that thought makes me sick to my stomach
So far, everything that is being said in this is not news, its things we've all suspected were true for a long time.
It just hits different when our own poverty is confirmed by our own leaders. And if its not poverty, we are too cheap. Either way, if we don't move now we're heading toward being the first P5 program to financially collapse in the new world.
Enough pissing and moaning from the masses, we need to play the same game as our peers.
THIS is infuriating to see. We play the same game as UVa and its a whole different ballgame for us. $35m per year would go A LONG way to helping things out
YOU MUST SPEND MONEY TO MAKE MONEY. We have been saying this for years, and sounds like the BoV has balked at it for a while.
I remember the scandal at the time. We couldn't pay to fire Fuente because of the cuts elsewhere within the school. So, to now hear Whit presenting to the BoV that athletics was the ONLY department to deal with salary cuts at the time is fucking infuriating.
What the fuck is going on with our leadership. We fucking torpedoed ourselves!
Whit isn't long for this job. Which, whatever. But that's a good message right there. We are too damn small time, we accept the excuses too often rather than striving for greatness.
Updating with a Q&A question to Whit -
I am going to give Whit some props for this. He sees the writing on the wall and wants to set up the next guy with bigger budgets and projects. He wants to leave the position and school in a much better place then it was when he got here.
FTFY.
I choose to believe (based on the canceled/adjusted presser and a few other anecdotes/rumors I've read) that the money was there but optics were the primary concern. At the time, that was a somewhat defensible idea. In hindsight... oof what a fuck up.
What optics? firing someone during a pandemic? He was going to get a buy out- of 7 figures- nobody would cry for him having to wear a mask while he was getting paid to not work.
The optics were that they would spend money to buy out Fuente at a time when others were getting furloughed.
In reality, even after being forced to eat the shit sandwich of keeping a failed coach on for another year, Whit is now revealing that athletics was the only department within the university to see wages cut.
And if that doesn't show where Athletics has been prioritized by Sands and the BoV, I don't know what does.
Yeah I never bought the line of thinking that secretly Sands was all along a huge advocate for athletics. Quite the contrary. I think some tough conversations with donors and others of influence have likely prodded him a little in recent years.
yep- the one time where we pretended that college football was like any other aspect of society. lol. Fuente is not like a fucking thing compared to any furloughed worker, but he is when convenient I guess.
Paying $8m to fire someone while other employees were given pay cuts, layoffs, and furloughs.
Welcome to the Baller Industrial Complex. Are you new here? Saban made more than the entire state legislature of Alabama. They are not normal people.
Kind of scary that our funding is behind Wake Forest who has a 16% the amount of students.
The ole "unintended consequences" some of jersey sales and autograph "money" ruining all of VT athletics. Happened quickly too. Sad
Thanks for sharing. A couple that have stood out to me:
^I love that there's no beating around the bush.
^That's a big number
^I never realized that Cassell was such a lost opportunity. I knew that there was room for improvements... but I didn't realize that were ZERO suites/clubs. Going to GT's Basketball Arena... that place is dope.
The whole thread and all of the messaging right now just makes you more frustrated the longer you read.
These people in that room who are leading VT have actively pile-driven Virginia Tech athletics into the dirt, and Whit is actively calling them out on it. What the fuck has our money been going to?
The other lost opportunity is Whit bending over for Nike. Did he cover that revenue loss in his slides?
Cassell Renovation was approved almost 4 years ago but got shelved. Could have made back about half the renovation cost if we brought in what UNC does. 4 years at $12M more per would be $48M versus expected reno cost of $75M.
Same reno now probably costs $125-145M.
I don't think the reno was going to do much more than square up the outside of the building, a new entrance, and fixing the bathroom issues. It wasn't going to add club seats, etc.
As much as I love Cassell, if you want club seats, concert events, etc. We need a whole new $400 million plus facility.
Hokiesports Link
The man presenting this is much of the reason to blame for our position. However, following along dcunna and Bitter, it seems whit is presenting this in a needed urgent manner.
Those words ring pretty fucking hollow when we've been there for about a decade now, Sandy
Gotta love people in positions like this. Applaud each other and give 'atta-boys' for failing at their job because they asked for help 10 years after that help needed to have come in the first place.
Yeah, that's a pretty out of touch comment. We have been consistently behind our ACC peers in fundraising, revenue, athletics budget and getting worse for a long time. Still, this is the first time a presentation on athletics of this magnitude has likely ever been on the BoV agenda. So I place a ton of blame on the administration for never making this an issue to begin with.
I mean Whit is barely hiding his disdain for the BoV and other leaders
The BOV is certainly plenty to blame too. You need the administration to bring the initiatives and recommendations to the table to act on, but BOV members can certainly exert their influence in policy and initiatives as well. It's honestly a complete embarrassing failure of VT leadership in its entirety that we are here now. I think many of us saw it playing out in slow motion for years.
It just reinforces everything we've thought for a while.
We rested on our laurels when we got into the ACC because we thought we had 'made it' and there was no need to continue striving for better. We were where we wanted to be, our goal was reached, we were at the end game. We were now peers with academic insitutions like UNC, GT, and UVa. We don't need athletics anymore, academics now had everything it needed to be a world class institution, the rankings would come in and everyone would swoon over us. We had success cheaply in football before, no reason to think it couldn't last forever, afterall we unlocked the cheat code, right?
Yeah, the BoV needs to fry over this.
The BOV is also complicit in our downfall. They have done nothing to assist, rather downplay athletics. Can't wait for them to pass a budget increase just to feel as if they have contributed something.
Whit has been beating this message since 2016 when he did a presentation to Hokie club members before the spring game. They were celebrating having enough donations to cover tuition finally and being able to move money from that to other expenses.
Oh don't worry, the BoV is now considering funding Athletics as an "emerging focus"
even if something comes of this, I get the impression that it won't happen anytime soon.
Fun Belt here we come!
"emerging focus". That is a brutal quote LOL. All I can do is laugh at this
Like we are going into this with us hoping that this whole presentation was just a formality, that all the discussions had already happened behind closed doors and now was the time for action because, well the real time for action was 10 years ago and better late than never.
It ends with the University COO saying that a properly funded athletics department was an "emerging focus"
How fucking out of touch do these people need to be? Half of them wouldn't be in that role if not for Frank Beamer and the football team from 1995-2010. Making sure our football team is able to survive isn't an "emerging focus", its a crisis that has to be addressed immediately.!
This is quality work. Well done
Whit really seems like he's letting it fly. I guess he figures he's either going to get things going in the right direction or get fired anyway, so might as well try. Just so many mixed feelings about it, but it's really a collective failure. Leadership/the BOV looks pretty bad and out of touch in all of this, yet what would a $200MM budget have really done for us even 3-4 years ago? This is the Athletics Department that decided to place their trust in a 51 year old career coordinator with no HC experience, who then in turned hired coordinators with zero experience, to turn this thing around after the Fuente era? More money is desperately needed, but honestly how can you have any confidence it would have helped in the hands of this leadership?
Bingo - Weaver, Beamer, Whit, Sands, BoV, Fuente, Pry, Boosters, and others all have a hand in this. There's so many responsible parties, it feels impossible to blame one person.
I can blame one person: Whit Babcock. He, like it or not, is the mouthpiece of athletics. It is his job to understand the landscape, the economics, the perceptions, etc....or, at least, he should hire the right people to help him understand that. And if you want to parrot that we are going to be a top-tier athletics program in the conference, or even the nation, you need to be honest and vocal about the fact that our reality is nowhere near our expectations.
But Whit's messaging has never been anywhere close to as dire as his BoV message. In many cases, he would champion that VT athletics was on solid footing, that the programs are competitive and would remain being competitive. That was his Achilles heel. Whit was never in charge during the "glory years" of VT football, save for maybe that ACCCG appearance year. In a way, I feel like successes in other sports like men & (eventually) women's basketball provided enough distraction that all those in power positions didn't really have reason to be upset with him. He was in a position where he could set the cruise control (a bit of hyperbole, I know) and ride out the trip.
If Whit was truly busting his ass, begging for donors to give more so that we could keep up with, or get ahead of the facilities race, begging the university/state for more support, or whatever else he could have done, then he failed, IMO, because there was little to no public perception of that. There was always a perception "more would be nice so that our student-athletes can have a world-class action while they compete on the field." Nothing that was ever remotely close to "if we don't do everything in our power, now, ahead of time, we are 100% going to fall behind and fail." Also, if he was doing all that work behind closed doors, and he was told no, then he really should have explored options to give up his job at VT, because we weren't giving him the resources to succeed. But based on the BoV comments, it really doesn't sound like this was the case at all. It feels more Fuente-esque: use the "this is fine" GIF for years, until you're in a near unescapable situation, and then sort of throw up your hands and say "well, it's either this way with me or your way without me".
I know that Whit has done a lot of good/great things for VT athletics, but when you look back on the body of work compared against who we think our peers are, it is obvious those were a lot of lipstick on a pig. Sure, it looked sexy at the time, but in the end we're still a pig.
To be faaaaaaaaair, Whit did imply that this is by no means the first time the BoV has heard this kind of information, so I'm not sure it's completely fair to say he is to blame. It's entirely possible if not likely that the BoV has just not cared to this point.
If you think this is the first time that Whit has brought this up, then you are mistaken.
Do you think that Whit is going to present information to his superiors and primary stakeholders for the first time in a room full of media members? And in the process more/less throw them under the bus? Wow the whole thing is being reported on?
This is a coordinated efforts by multiple parties to get attention from people outside of Virginia Tech.
I am not under any circumstances saying that Whit is a perfect athletic director. But the argument of "how did it take Whit 5 years to bring this up?!?!" is bullshit.
I guarantee you Whit has been bringing this up since he was hired. At this point its a guarantee that the 2020 press conference was called to fire Fuente and the BoV overruled him and made him go out there and talk about how much confidence we had in him going forward. Between the comments yesterday and his attitude at the time, it is pretty obvious what happened there, especially when he lashed out at them exposing that Athletics was the only department that saw a reduction in salaries because of COVID.
The rot begins with the Board of Visitors.
I've been critical of Whit, yes. I think he has bungled the last 2 football hires and he punted when he hired Mike Young- a loud and clear signal that "just don't embarrass the school" was the goal of the hoops program. I also heard he played hardball with Kenny Brooks hoping for the home town discount. So he has made mistakes, yes. Having said that, This was not some surprise to the BOV. You can bet Whit has been working this for years and ensured this could be done without getting himself fired. He's not stupid or new at this.
I never said anything about this being the first time Whit is bringing this up to the board. I was talking about the urgency in his messaging about where VT athletics stands in the conference and nationwide. Sure, he may have been "crying wolf" to the BoV this whole time, but if you tuck tail and run every time they ignore you or tell you "No, things are fine", then that is on you. It's been 11-12 years of relative "We're good, but we can always do better" to it now being "We need to go all in on our future or we're fucked". Probably a ton of bureaucracy going on in terms of the internal talks, I'll definitely cede that, but I think we have seen enough smoke over the years to know there has been a dumpster fire going, and now we are faced with a high probability of burning the building down.
LOL -
Now that we are getting to some actual meat and potatoes about actions, I will say this....
If this ends up with meaningful change that brings our budget up to the standards of everyone else and has us actually operating like the school we need to be in order to be attractive to the Big Ten or SEC, its absolutely better late than never. But at the end of day, none of us should be putting any stock into anything they are saying until we see actual changes in the way we do things.
Raising ticket prices is on the table. There's also a chance that federally the government steps in and reigns athletic fees to students, but those limitations do not currently exist. Reading between the lines: we are only hurting ourselves by thinking we are above playing the same game as everyone else when it comes to from where we fund athletics.
I'm curious what university programs there are that are running on unrestricted budgets! Not that I expect that any are "whatever they ask for, give it to them," but I would think they are so important to the core university mission that they will find the money they need, if the need is justified.
Unrestricted budgets in this case mean no strings tied to their funding, whether that be state, federal or donor requirements.
Now I want VTGuitarman's take on whether Whit was delivering this message behind closed doors for years and decided the only way to get anywhere was to go public or if the Whit just finally woke up? Like others have said, it's like Whit ignored all the warnings lights until the car was dead in l on the side of the highway
"only way to get anywhere was to go public" career suicide if so
I'd also like to hear VTGuitarman's take on what exactly an "Emerging Focus" means. People are joking that up above, but I have a sense that that has a very specific meaning to university leadership, and I'm wondering if that's exactly what the situation needs to be labelled right now.
It sounds to most like "Emerging focus" is another way of saying a new and novel thing to consider. If there is not some University initiative leaving behind it, well then it deserves all the criticism it's taking and we are screwed.
Hard to see all this and not think we're cooked
Perhaps or, perhaps we can decide not to be cooked. Not 100% sure.
That would require trusting that the people who buried their heads in the sand suddenly got competent enough to fix it, and I just don't.
Trusting people with a "emerging focus" who have not seen any problems for several years, this is fine....