Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come"

Started this thread as the other started to slow down a bit for me because of the embedded tweets. Tried to only link them here for us to talk about now that its over.

The literal and figurative money quote from #Hokies AD Whit Babcock to the Board of Visitors: "If we don't radically leap forward now, we are likely sealing our own fate for years and generations to come."— David Teel (@ByDavidTeel) August 18, 2025

It was an eye opening day following what was going on with the Board of Visitors presentation by Whit. And I would be lying if I said that it at all left a good taste in my mouth. There were live updates by David Teel, Andy Bitter and TSL's David Cunningham throughout, and the picture painted was pretty straightforward:

On Tech's budget, Babcock said, "Our resources don't match our expectations."— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) August 18, 2025

Many topics throughout were covered, and I'll let VTGuitarMan give a full rundown when he returns, but from what the listed 3 have put out, the facts of the matter are as follows:

VT finished the 2024-25 academic year with an athletics budget of $122m. This was good for 14th in the conference. And while we are planning to up that to $144m in the 2025-26 academic year, per our own internal calculations we still need to up that to about $200m to compete at the top of the conference.

A lot of time was spent on the athletic impact of VT to the region. Right now, VT athletics brings in about $93m in revenue to the surrounding region annually. If we were to continue wallowing in football and that causes 10k seats to go empty per game, per our own calculations it would result in a $15m per year economic loss to the region. Per Whit, based on their numbers, it would cost the university more money in the long term to NOT invest into a competitive athletic department than it would to invest.

And the worrisome part. We expect the next round of shakeups to occur as soon as 2027.

There are ways we can get out of this. If we were to set our Athletic Fees charged to each student to be the same rate as UVa, we would bring in an additional $35m per year. I would expect that to be done immediately. There are also discussions about cutting other university projects to divert that money over to athletics and they think they can get an additional $10m from that. There are also ongoing discussions about having a multi-use facility around Lane and Cassell that would bring in year-round revenue to the school and AD.

But make no mistake, the resounding message today appears to be solid. Doing nothing is not an option, and the only way we are going to make money in the long term is by spending a lot more money now. The long term fate of the university and region depends upon it.