Not sure if anyone has seen the videos of Jon Gruden opening boxes sent to him from different schools. Well the Hokies finally got on board and I will say its the best set of boxes I have ever seen Gruden open. First, its the first one I have seen where Gruden got not one but 3 boxes of stuff. I don't want to steal the thunder of the video but the Hokies did a full blitz.
Gruden impressed with name recognition of a ton of former Hokies greats although he was light on the RBs.
I wasn't able to find it anywhere but Facebook so here is the link.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CQum2ML2d/
It is definitely worth the watch if only to be jealous of what he got.
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Weird choice on the hokie bird statue that they included but some other cool gear and really funny to hear Gruden being his dorky self ranting about VT for 8 minutes. Also funny because the guy at Barstool who's basically Gruden's assistant (films these videos) is a UVA dork
It would be a good opportunity for the Hokie club/athletic department to offer some version of the box for ~200. Probably without including multiple helmets
Alright so I held off on putting this out there last week, but this blew up a bit last week, and after seeing his genuine excitement and reminiscing of history about VT....
I mean for a school that is desperate to get its name back out there and already having discussions with the BoV about funding the program appropriately.... It would certainly make VT a show worth tuning in for every week. And that would drive engagement and viewership which would legitimately get us more tv money.
Are we in Grumors season yet?!? Start up the Grumors!!
Pass. The racism stuff sticks to you.
Nah people just ignoring his awful past personal issues he has never taken ownership of.
Ignoring personal issues... he's just not that great of a coach. Would be an incredibly underwhelming for almost any P4 program.
Lotta re-tread NFL coaching has-beens are closely watching how UNC goes. I'm sure those guys don't *need* money but everyone could use another lake house.
Im in the camp of Bellichick is going to work out at UNC. In the ACC there are so many mid/same teams- his late game coaching and adjustments- the best ever to do it- will be the difference in many games. If Bellichick coached VT last year- Vandy, Cuse and Miami are sure wins. He would not have bungled those critical situations. no chance. He is going to win at UNC- and im 100% here for it when he beats the teams I hate- UVA, Cuse, Miami, GT.
I'm pretty skeptical because the Patriots were flat out bad his last few years. And that's his doing - their drafts were flat out bad. Sure they got Brady in the 6th round but nobody ever thought he'd be what he became.
Also, more than ever being a HC in college football is about building a program and running it like a CEO. Belichick is like the ultimate micromanager COO.
Fair point. Yes he had Brady, but every great NFL/multiple super bowl coach- besides Gibbs- had HOF level QBs. Andy Reid was fired- now he is going to the hall of fame because he has Pat Mahomes. If Bellichick has equal talent in a game, I trust him more than everyone except Dabo in this league. That will win him a few games.
I think you hit on my skepticism: I don't think he will be able to recruit and/or develop talent, which is far more of the game in college than the NFL, where players arrive as grown men.
Put another way, I think he's tactically brilliant and can absolutely game plan against anyone in history, but I don't think he will succeed in getting the talent in the first place.
This is where I'm at. It's easy to game plan when you have guys who (a) understand and (b) can execute on your 250 page playbook.
What is he going to do when his team can only understand the first 25 pages and can only reliably executive the first 5 pages?
C'mon man, he's not coaching West Virginia.
You think UNC's roster is that different from WVU's?
Right!? WVU might actually have academic standards.
It's definitely going to be interesting... On one hand, I agree with everything you said.
On the other hand, what happens when Belichick asks someone to 'just do their job,' but they are physically incapable of that? What happens when his college kids are only good enough/smart enough to properly understand/execute 10-15 plays, not the the 500 plays that tom brady remembers?
It would/will be hilarious when Belichick plays Cristobal
Here's a list of coaches off the top of my head that I'd rather have than Jon Gruden: Jon Sumrall, Dan Mullen, Ken Niumatalolo, Glenn Schumann, Andy Kotelnicki, Charles Kelly, Bob Chesney... I'm sure I could think of way more given 5 more minutes.
Point is, Grudan is washed up and completely ill-equipped to coach college ball. He's not Deion (who - despite being an asshole - might actually be a decent college coach).
Still think Dan Mullen would have been a great hire for us in 2015 and again 2021. The coaching carousel reporting and rumor mill indicated he was extremely interested in the job both times. Really disappointing.
Just think we went with the comfort hire with Pry based on Ballein's lobbying. That dynamic is probably as much a reason we are where we are as a program along with the money. Andy Bitter pointed out in the TSL pod the other day, although our total AD budget is 14th in the ACC and lowest of all public's, we still spend in the top quarter of the conference for football (obviously Clemson and FSU far away from everyone else). But his point was, that $20MM gap between us and the top two wasn't going to solve our coaching blunders and letting Rutgers run the same play over and over to beat us. So many of our issues are self-inflicted IMO.
I think Dan Mullen really fits well at places that aren't bluebloods, but have to ability to punch up. He thrived at Mississippi St coaching up players, scheming around deficiencies, and preaching "they don't believe in us". He didn't do well at Florida because he had to be a recruiter and program manager first.
I think he could fit at VT really well provided he brings in a good GM/director of player personnel who can shoulder more of the recruiting burden. Let's see how he does at UNLV though. If they bottom out, then maybe the game has passed him by.
UNLV is a tough job- poor on campus facilities, basketball school in a transient town. With each passing day of betting apps on your phone and casino's off of every highway exit the appeal of "vegas" in general is waning, and has never been huge among college students anyway. They want cheap beer and no cover parties, not resort beer and 3 hour waits for 1500 table service. If Mullen wins at UNLV, he is a really good coach. I think he is a good- not great- football coach. much like Rich Rod... they capitalized on a spread offense and coaching kids with a chip on their shoulder and now everyone runs the spread and you know your pecking order in terms of conferences. Rich Rod won't be contending for Nattys this time around at WVU- trust that. I do think Mullen is better than the current Florida coach though.
It's certainly not an easy job, but it's in a significantly better spot than it ever has been. Barry Odom just got them to the Mountain West championship game and the school is more invested in football than ever before. To me, 8-4 shows that he still has it. 3-9 suggests that maybe he has been away too long and can't handle the changing landscape.
And I agree that he is a solid, but not great coach. He wouldn't be in my top 3 for next HC, but I wouldn't be upset if he was the guy.
Agreed- he would be a disaster in college. His super power is not backing down from star players and coaching them hard/challenging them. Yes, he knows what he is doing on offense- great play caller- but college coach? hard no.
I'd rather have Snitker, or even a bed-ridden Bobby Cox, coach our football team than Gruden.
LMAO
That was awesome! Sticking the hokiebird statue back through the door at the end with the extra 'gobble gobble' is priceless.
Having the video sped up had me totally picturing Mrs Howell on Gilligan's Island with the irradiated sugar beets, although half this board might not get the reference...
Begging, of course, the age old question. Ginger, or Mary Ann?
Oh it's Mary Ann, and it's not even close.
Mary Ann had a better contract. She is still getting paid.
I'm sure he did a little research but his knowledge of Blacksburg, former players (than span decades), coaches, and other random VT stuff was low key very impressive.
How much you wanna bet he had some flunky do some research right beforehand so he would look more impressive? Do you think he was pulling some of that out of his noggin on the fly without help?
True story- he uses an AI "heat diagram" for key words. He does a little research and probably knew about VT a bit from scouting here... but for the show he literally uses AI to create a heat map of VT football words... like Beamer man, special teams man, they have this walk out song, man. etc.
I'm guessing his camera man Jake is hoo, based on the comments.
That was a damn ton of stuff, I need to send Coach Gruden my address for when he needs to make room for more boxes. You could tell he had the names somewhere on a screen behind the camera, but still great publicity for the progrum.
Nothing like sending a grand worth of free swag to a dude worth $30M for clicks and likes
Recruits and runners take notice to this nonsense. Baller Industrial Complex. Who sends Gruden the best box shows how good your "resources" are.
I dont care about our resources those gloves looked amazing.
Is this why we asked the BOV for more money, so we can send Gruden some more swag? /s
#Grumors!!
Joe Rogers has some of the worst takes ever on Hokie twitter.
Yeah I've heard some of his "podcasts." Pretty awful.
Yeah this has made the rounds before. I'm 99% certain someone paid him on Cameo to say this.
Probably Joe Rogers lol.
This is so 2025...Irrelevant, disgraced, unemployed coach sent thousands of dollars in gear from schools in a pissing contest. why? because he is not a coach, he is an engagement/click farmer- and that's where society is. You can be a millionare flashing skin as an "influencer" on instagram. You influence low IQ sheep with nothing better to do.
Nailed it. Seems pretty grifty to me - schools send this guy thousands of dollars worth of in-kind goods for...clicks? I mean I guess this comes out of the program's marketing budget, but seems pretty slimy still.
The big kicker to me will be if/when some of this stuff shows up for auction lol.
Auction? Try goodwill.
Watch Coke Head Pat McAfee start something like this or something else stupid and schools try to one-up each other. Its so sad. People out there struggling to find housing and jobs and college football lights money on fire every minute.
I just want to know where this spring of money flowing through college football is coming from. Are advertisers paying these big tv networks (who then pay the conferences and the schools) really lighting this much money on fire?
There's still 66 million cable subscribers in America (about 40% of households) so while the cable bundle is NOT the golden egg it once was, it's still a significant money maker for ESPN/FOX.
On top of that, the playoff is a huge money maker that pulls a lot of revenue from advertisers.
Gambling. It is coming from wringing more and more out of gambling addicts. Its why so many of the ads are just gambling now.
Marketing is marketing, and I'll take this all day, every day. I dont want him as a coach but getting some positive pub like this is money well spent. If we parlay it with a win over SC and Vandy that would be pretty damn awesome.