I made a few comments in a previous thread about what I was learning about the current state of VT athletics. As I posted there, I am the Faculty Senate President for this year, which also affords me a seat on the Board of Visitors (non-voting) as the university's faculty representative. My role is to speak to the Board about issues facing faculty as part of their decision-making process. This role also allows me to attend meetings, meals, etc. with BOV members to get to know them and to work some "soft diplomacy" in getting things accomplished. I had good conversations with many of our Board members and appreciate their engagement and desire to serve the university; they are thinking critically about the future of the university and how we meet emerging needs.
On to Athletics. At the BOV retreat, Whit Babcock gave an hour-long presentation on the current state of VT athletics. There have been reports on this presentation already in the media, but I'll condense here what I learned, what I felt in the room and what conversations took place later, when the cameras were off. I'll tell you what I feel comfortable saying; some things are asides from administrators that are clearly off the record and since, well, everyone knows who I am, I'm not going to try to act as some anonymous source. Everyone knows it's me.
On to the fun stuff. I'll try to present these tidbits as short takeaways rather than a long, narrative essay.
1. The Current State of College Athletics
The House vs. NCAA settlement has obviously upended the college athletics funding model. Whit reports that 90% of P4 conference members will compete with the full NIL revenue share ($20.5M). There will be no transparency on this until FY27 as to who spent what amount and how they funded it.
Increases in student fees help cover this cost, but fees are basically a zero-sum game for athletics, just about everything that comes in gets paid back to main campus.
VT Athletics generates 90% of the licensing revenue that the university takes in, but receives only 50% of those proceeds. This model has been revised and will be more proportional going forward.
Athletics generates 100% of the revenue from game day parking but only receives 75% of the proceeds. They have worked with Parking Services to negotiate down the price paid to rent spots from Parking Services from $300k for 6 games last year to $200k for 7 games this year.
Upcoming renegotiations of media rights will trigger realignment discussions.
VT Athletics generates about $94M in economic activity for the New River Valley, if we fade, then the local economy is likely to suffer massively.
2. The New Revenue Sharing Model
TV viewership will be key to revenue sharing, with 60% equally split and the remaining 40% based on viewership. The model weights 75% based on football and 25% based on men's basketball. The conference will update "standings" after every game. VT current sits in 9th-10th place in the revenue sharing model. 6 wins in football would likely keep us at 9th-10th and we get basically nothing out of the revenue share.
We currently make $43M from equal ACC revenue sharing; the viewership-based model will result in that amount being $30-65M. So it's a gamble. Winning will net us profit via better channels and time slots, losing on the field will mean losing money.
3. VT Athletics Budget Analysis
For FY24, we were around 12th-14th in the ACC in athletics funding. UNC has made a huge push to up their budget to $185M. Clemson is around $200M, and VT is around $144M (that's behind even GT at $159M). Some of our challenge stems from legal constraints (VA law says that public institutions in our "tier" - VT and UVA - can only subsidize 20% of the athletics budget with campus funds). Hokie Club is 2nd largest in the ACC in terms of number of donors but middle of the pack in terms of dollars collected.
Our student fees remain fairly low, but our reliance on them is within the top 10 nationally; this is catching the attention of the federal government in a negative way. The feds don't want to see institutions hiking the cost of attendance via fees. We want to be fiscally prudent and avoid unwanted scrutiny.
Our university leadership and BOV will be lobbying lawmakers to change VA law to remove the restrictions on subsidies.
4. The Bottom Line
Whit's ask: $52M more for athletics, so we approach Clemson's budget to become more competitive.
Quotes:
Whit: "I'm frustrated that we haven't changed the funding model, we have talked about it for years, and we had an outline for it in 2020."
Whit: "Our lack of athletic success, no excuses – the buck stops with me"
Whit: "I don't plan on doing this job for many more years, either at my choosing or at y'all's choosing."
Whit: "We cannot keep taking pride with doing more with less."
BOV member: it's remarkable you've gotten to where you are with what you've been given, but we need more investment to compete with Clemson.
BOV member: "we would have a large, empty hole if not for athletics." And "what I don't like to see is what I see right now, Virginia Tech at the bottom, underneath our peers." Surprised by the fact that athletics was the only unit that took a pay cut during COVID. Supportive of Whit "you've been too nice, you need more than this. You're always so respectful when you request it."
Whit: "$20.5M is the minimum ante to stay competitive in big-time athletics. Dr. Sands gave us a bump of $5M and it saved our tails but that was a one-time thing."
Whit also noted that many donors are fed up with the new system, transfer portal, etc. But he remains optimistic that we can send the right message out to our supporters to draw in donations.
5. Looking Ahead
I will update in the comments as I am able; I have a meeting with Provost Clarke next week. He and EVP/COO Amy Sebring chair the Budget & Planning Committee so they have major control over the budget. They've been tasked with trying to figure out how to better finance Athletics. As noted above, some of the things I speak to them about are confidential and I will not betray that trust. But I'll share what I can. I had an aside with a BOV member who is supportive of providing more funding to athletics (at present, that means a max of about $10M under state law) but it will mean cutting Olympic sports. "Hard choices will have to be made." A creative budgeting strategy was proposed in one of my asides with a BOV member, but as that is not something the full Board is considering, I'll wait until the details are fleshed out. But the BOV members are interested in finding solutions for this situation.
We will see what other options come up. If cutting academic programs is on the table, I can tell you that the faculty will revolt and you will see my name in the news at some point for having to confront any such proposition.
Comments
Fantastic insight! Thank you for sharing! I have some questions:
Can you explain this? What's the point of collecting athletics fees if it doesn't go to athletics?
Can you explain this one as well? Is parking services 'owned' by the university or is it some sort of third party contract? Why is there a negotiation/why can't VT just say 'these are the rules'?
Are you able to get more specific about what renegotiations and who's discussing realignment? I assume the 2027 B10/SEC rengotiations for the 2029/2030 season? And who's discussing realignment? How much of a discussion is there vs just waiting to be called up?
OOOF, that hurts. Any informed takes on why this is? Are our donors not rich enough? Do we not have a culture of giving? Is our fundraising strategy weak?
Do you see this state law changing/being lobbied or not likely?
In what scenario could this happen?
Honestly, no idea. This was just something Whit said. But the expenses paid by the fees must have something to do with expenses that campus takes on (utilities, upkeep, etc?) that Athletics has to pay back to them.
Parking Services is its own entity, an "auxiliary service" (like housing, dining, athletics) that under VA law, has to be budgetarily separate from the university and must fund its own operations. Parking Services owns and maintains the lots, Athletics (a separate entity) has to rent the spaces from them on game days. If it sounds absurd to you, it certainly did to me.
It's a generic observation from Whit that whenever there's new money being discussed, people get antsy and want to make a change.
One thing I didn't mention in the main post - VT is positioning itself for AAU membership. That aligns us with the Big Ten, which was founded from only AAU member schools. Academically, they are a better fit for us. Basically, if shit hits the fan, we want to be attractive to the Big Ten. If somehow our football team is really good at that point, it positions us for the SEC. But our intermediate goal is to be a Big Ten target.
No clue, but per-donor giving is painfully low. See below for some commentary that's relevant.
Can't predict that necessarily but all I can tell you is our administration is going to directly try to get the law changed.
If the law capping the university's subsidy is changed and VT can push more of its general budget into athletics, there will be pressure from some influential people to cut academic programs that are funded from Foundation dollars to be cut so the money can be re-routed to athletics. Note that 95% of our endowment is restricted, meaning it can only be used for the purpose defined by the donor. But there's 5% that's flexible, plus the interest we get from our investments that we can allocate as we see fit. Some of that interest is currently supporting academic programs. If the cap lifts, the pressure is on. Do we trade programs that define us as a comprehensive university for possible athletic outcomes? Will donors support that? Charlie Phlegar, outgoing VP of Advancement, was responsible for getting us hundreds of millions in donations each year to VT. The man is a legend and we all owe him a debt of gratitude. He pointedly said to the BOV (in open session) that "I love football and our athletics programs, but clearly our alumni are donating to the academic causes in record numbers instead of athletics. That tells you where their priorities are."
This is fascinating to me, on so many levels.
My reaction to this came in waves, each wave with a new head explosion:
Sorry, massively consequential typo on my part. Hundreds of millions, not billions.
Oh lawwwddd I was questioning everything I knew about society, college sports, Virginia Tech... god damn lmaooo
We've been doing that for what, 15, 20 years now? How long are we going to be knocking on that door before we realize that they're not going to let us in?
Adding a medical school a decade or so ago was a necessary first step. The other aspects have only been a real focus in the past 5 years or so. Rumor has it we have their attention. I'll leave it there...the first rule of AAU is you don't talk about AAU.
If this perhaps actually fees paid by the students that directly go to athletic activities for the students such as the gyms, pools, athletic fields and courts open to all the students and not exclusively for "student athletes"?
I have a hard time swallowing fees for students to pay for facilities they don't bother to use, much more so for facilities they aren't allowed to use.
I know its more complicated than that.
I liken the athletic fee to the "resort fee" that some places charge...that covers the pool, walking trails, kayaks, etc whether you use them or not. Like cable, some people pay for minimal use and others get well more than their money's worth.
My daughter uses the volleyball courts and runs the trails mostly.
Tried to get her to use the gym in the winter but, it's not her thing.
In my years (back in the ancient 1980s),I used the intramural fields a lot for football, and softball, and War Memorial Gym(only one existing then besides Cassell itself) for basketball(multiple times a day) and racquetball periodically. So definitely got moneys worth for me (plus back then all sporting events were free for student tickets-just had to wait in the line on ticket distribution day; never had any issues -the only difficult time-consuming waits were UVA and WVU games for football and Memphis State and Louisville for basketball) (plus at that time the student section at Cassell was 4500 of the ten thousand-basically the entire east stands-had multiple games at first row )
The head(s) of the Hokie Club haven't had fundraising backgrounds and VT Athletics went without a CFO for an extended period of time (per TSL podcasts I've heard).
Whit has failed, again and again, as an AD.
Thanks for this. I really enjoy a nice "behind the curtain" piece.
As Bar said - awesome insight, thanks for the update! Also a question:
supportive of providing more funding to athletics ... but it will mean cutting Olympic sports.
Why are these things mutually exclusive? It would seem like more funding would be better for Olympic sports, not worse...
Football generates profit, all other programs (aside from a few other one-off years from men's and women's basketball) use up that profit, and operate at a loss every year. If we use any new money to fund those sports, football doesn't get the investment they need to stay competitive. The easiest thing to do under the current law that caps the university's subsidy is to chop off programs that are continually losing money and reinvest it in football. The question is, who do you cut? And it also has to be done consistent with Title IX - cut one women's sport (and a certain number of scholarships) and you have to do the same to a men's sport...
well a BIG swing would to be cut everything now except for handful of sports. Maximize budget in those sports to be competitive and hopefully establish championship traditions in some, if not all.
football, bball, base/softball, soccer, wrestling, women's volleyball and ... maybe tennis? not sure. up for debate, and obvious needs to be balanced with Title IX.
Anyway, point is, the dynamic of collegiate sports has changed from being an extension of amateur sports to being a business model that must grow to stay competitive. In any business, you dont try to be good at everything. you try to be great at a few things. Great drives expansion. Good stagnates.
It's shitty. Lots of sports get cut but winning championships drives revenue which can then spur adding additional sports one by one down the road. It would be a monumental game changer though for the sports that are focused on.
It's definitely a shitty conversation to have. I would add track & field to the keep list. Haven't we had olympians?
Seems we are rarely competitive in swimming/diving, golf, or tennis. Those could be candidates for first cut. Keep either women's lacrosse or volleyball if needed for Title 9 and drop the other.
As a big tennis fan. It really sucks to see how mid our tennis team has been. That said the biggest expense for Tennis is facilities, but VT has some of the best Tennis facilities in the NRV. I don't know if they host USTA Jr tournaments, but they absolutely should.
My uninformed guess is that the men's team gets cut and the women's team sticks around for title IX purposes/so the facilities aren't a sunk cost
Personally, I think cutting dive/swim could happen; we don't have facilities on campus if I recall correctly.
The interesting thing about all the sports you mentioned is that they tend to be played by pretty affluent families who may not need a college scholarship. Obviously there are other cost associated with running a team, so I'm not sure how that factor is in, especially in a post House settlement era.
Swimming/Diving use the Christiansburg Aquatic Center but its more because it was designed for competition with seating. War Memorial technically has the required pool and dive pool but its older and not conducive to viewing as the one in Cburg.
https://recsports.vt.edu/aquatics.html
Volleyball would be the first to go, they'd probably attach men's tennis to it but I don't know if scholarship numbers even out.
Some of the other sports like golf are so inexpensive I don't even know what you'd gain by cutting them. Men's Golf spent $689K in FY2023.
Swimming is pretty expensive so I could see that on the chopping block, even though we've been fairly competitive there.
Swimming has been getting a lot better under the current coaching staff. We have had the best finishes ever in the NCAA championships under Sergio, our men's team has been top 10 for the last 3 years. Every VT record has been broken in the last 7 years. Now is swimming very much a sport dominated by certain teams, Texas and Cal have won over 60% of the championships this decade. However, there have been teams like ASU where they are training differently that sneak in and won a title last year, but they are cutting edge training regime. They are rewriting the book on sprinting (for swimming)
Why doesn't athletics own parking services and let the university pay for the use. Is no onwnthinking about how to funnel money to sports!
There was an idea floated to combine all auxiliaries together so that they could satisfy the "self-funding" aspect in aggregate. But that also may require a change in VA law.
Then we should go buy some Zima's and sit down with UVA and their lawyers and get laws changed. Im sure they want more money, maybe not for football, but for some sport.
Do It!
I can say with the utmost confidence, on behalf of our fellow TKP'ers, thank you for allowing us this "degree of access". Very much appreciated.
Upon reading, IMO, the one item that stuck out tue most which will drive the most action, change, influence, etc., is the NRV economic impact.
This brings the "powers that be" together - Politics, Commerce, Economic Development, etc., all that will impact the greater good within the NRV.
yes, definitely a smart play by Whit to highlight the negative impact to the NRV should athletics be left to fester and die.
To me, though, the biggest hurdle seems to be archaic VA laws that need to be changed. I'm not sure what it'll take to get them changed in our favor but I imagine it will be neither quick nor easy to do. Whit, for all the great presenting he's done here, needs to figure out how to hire winning coaches. Fuente flopped hopelessly. Pry hasn't been any better, to be honest. I don't know if he will (or should) get another opportunity but the best thing VT can do in the short term is win on the football field to maximize our ACC revenues - this league isn't that hard to win in - a decent coach should be able to get us there.
If the rumors are indeed true, then a lot of the blame for Fuente needs to be laid upon the dinosaurs in athletics that refused to change & innovate, thus causing major roadblocks for Fuente to succeed. But, in the end, that blame rises to the top, i.e. Whit, for letting that happen.
yeah, regardless of whether the rumors were true or not, Fuente was hired to bring offense to Blacksburg and he (Cornelsen) mostly failed in that regard - the offense looked good with elite talent but once they lost their QB and top WRs it was a complete trainwreck. Ultimately, you're right, the buck stops with Whit. IF the rumors are true and Whit's athletic department was actively undermining Fuente under his nose that's a pretty huge indictment on him. At the end of the day, Whit's hire failed (either due to his own shortcomings, or Whit's failing to adequately support his hire). Pry's story hasn't been any better - if anything, it's been worse. Whether or not that's Pry's fault or the fault of Whit is immaterial. Whit hasn't been able to hire/retain/adequately support a winning football coach in Blacksburg - I can't know for sure what the root causes are but that's the reality. We've sucked at football for the better part of a decade and I don't see anything changing for the better any time soon.
Whit needs to figure out how to get a winning football team on the field. And quickly. He's running out of time and neither of his hires has shown much promise as of yet. I hope that Pry turns things around and that these new coaches he hired in the off-season will help right the ship. But forgive me for not having much faith. I need to see it on the field. Show me.
To be clear - that's not the 'rumor' that anyone reliable has shared. You think Whit didn't want Fuente to be wildly successful? You think John Ballein was rooting for Fuente's demise? No. Everyone in the building was doing the best they could with the knowledge and resources they had.
I think the more accurate synopsis would be that everyone was working hard to do what they thought was the best thing for the program, but often that work wasn't in the same direction.
I mean the Ballein family has a lot of incentive to keep things at the Status Quo in Merryman. Just today I learned his wife has a very similar role in basketball that he does in football
Seems like a bad idea to let one family be that ingrained into the workings of what should be our 2 biggest revenue drivers.
Fucking fungus at this point.
Unless that family is donating millions upon millions every year
I think we can all agree that, while Fuente faced plenty of adversity from within, he did himself very few favors in his last 4 years here. He ran off players, he let established recruiting relationships die, he didn't embrace the fanbase...
I'm with you. I'm sure the athletic department could have been more helpful to JF, but he demonstrated a number of times that he wasn't some top coach (icing the kicker vs liberty, starting ryan willis over hooker in 2019, started burmeister over hooker in 2020, making almost no offensive staff changes as the offense was unimpressive after the 2016 season, etc)
Don't forget designating 10 of our 85 scholarships to RBs. That is unforgivable.
Agreed. Fuente wasn't THE problem, but he was A problem, and certainly wasn't a part of the solution. Net negative for the program.
There's plenty of blame to go around everywhere. I think what we're realizing is that it wasn't entirely Fuente, and the more we discover the more that blame goes from "all", to "most", to "maybe a small majority", to "some" of the blame.
Fuente will always have been the majority of the blame. Refusal to move on from Cornelson; lack of interaction with alumni (that 99 team has college age kids!), recruiting schools, fans, etc; and general attitude are never going to get him less than majority of the fault.
That and it helps I have/had a source inside the athletics department.
We need a comparison of key VA laws affecting this situation vs BIG10 and SEC states ASAP!!!
It's not just in those states - this summer, FSU lobbied to get a Florida law changed:
I remember something from a few years ago about Calipari's salary at Kentucky. While it's reported he would earn something like over $7mil, only $400k of that came from actual state funds. The rest was covered by the K Fund, the school's athletic supporter fund, not the university; thus not tied to state funding. (Some came from Nike as well, but that's still not state funded.)
This differs greatly from how Virginia and other states have been set up to function and how the public universities have paid their coaches.
Case in point, Maryland wanted to get rid of Fridgeon several years ago. The governor told the AD they wouldn't pay for a coach that wasn't coaches (talking about the buyout clause...) Thus, he stayed on.
It's pretty common that boosters pay for coaching buyouts on an as-needed basis.
I don't know how it is today but years ago there was a break down if frank beamers salary and only like 10% came directly from the school. There were things in our nike contract that paid the coach X dollars for being the head coach. There was a line for media appearances. He got a leased car and could get a 2nd one for like $100 a month. He had membership to the country club and other odds and ends. I dont know how that works for Pry but in the past it worked like you described for Calipari.
That's correct. All of our coaches are formally some type of A/P faculty or instructor, and they get something like $50k in university-supported salary. The rest is from Athletics, bonuses, incentives, etc.
If the BOV wants to see what happens to the town economically, when interest and attendance in the driving force of the economy wanes, go look at Bristol, TN. Two weekends a year used to keep that city running and doing great things. Now, not so much.
This is a real bleak outlook. We have a town based around a university that receives a MASSIVE financial injection because of athletics... and we're circling the drain with waning fan interest that could be a death spiral for the town, all because of the inability to field a competitive product which is being caused by financial handcuffs at the state level (?)
Seems to me like there's a few laws in Virginia that are completely handcuffing VT and UVa's ability to compete at a high level. When you realize the two large public universities are the 2 absolutely shitting the bed in the biggest revenue driving sport only to find out the state is tying one hand behind both of their backs while schools like Liberty, JMU, and ODU are able to operate unrestricted, that's a big fucking problem.
Also, regarding academic vs athletic giving, I wouldn't necessarily think that's a big mic drop moment in regards to what everyone's priorities are. I used to work within University Giving and as a part of local Alumni chapters. Simply put, so, so many in our community don't realize that giving to the school doesn't fund athletics, and giving to the Hokie Club doesn't fund the school. The vast majority thinks the money goes into a pool that gets distributed as the school sees fit for its overall university prioritization over the years, and we have not done nearly enough to educate people that this exists.
That last part is a really big point.
To add to your last paragraph, I have heard LOTS of times from current employees, who like/love VT football, something along the lines of "VT already doesn't pay me enough for my job...why should I give even more money back to them?" Many others have the opinion that VT football is this huge, evil entity that is sucking resources away from the university, when in fact it is a very symbiotic relationship.
I'd be curious what polls would show for university/athletics sentiments in relation to our peer ACC schools.
VT wouldn't be VT without the football team. We went through accelerated growth over the last 25 or so years stemming from the fact that applications doubled overnight when the 1999 team went to the title game. It put the school on the map nationally and pulled in more interest than we ever had before. The quality of student being admitted increased, fundraising increased, and they were able to increase tuition because of this increased demand that helped pay for the campus essentially being modernized over the last quarter century.
But you are right, the animosity absolutely exists. There's open resentment that the football team was a draw when it was good. Professors would go out of their way to punish students who were fans by having tests or quizzes on Thursday afternoon of a gameday and other punitive issues for students on Fridays. It was always curious to me how the events that should have been treated as a one-off campus celebration ended up allowing the academic side to flaunt its own toxicity.
This is a loaded quote. VT was a top engineering school and option for an engineering/architecture/construction/wildlife degree prior to the bowl streak.
Post 1999 title run, true, the applications increased...but does that also affect the donations? The increase in applications was over the football team; not because they wanted to play for VT. And they applied because the team was in the National Title game. So why should they have to donate when the team IS successful already. Then when the team fall off a little bit and wasn't do as well...do those that applied/attended because of the football team become apathetic quicker and on a steeper curve? Do they have school pride and donate back OR do they only fly the flag when the team is doing well?
VT was a top engineering school and option for an engineering/architecture/construction/wildlife degree prior to the bowl streak.
amen...decades before the bowl streak
my wildlife degree served me extremely well. iirc, we traded 1/2 back and forth with Cornell for many years.
There will always been part of the university that hates athletics, it exists everywhere, no matter how big or small the athletics department.
I agree. And my point was never to say that 100% of the constituency of VT should embrace athletics and donate. The very strong fact of the matter is that VT is one university/region that needs athletics as a built in advertising vehicle for the academics. But, as many of us know, academia is often extremely opinionated, hard-headed, and set in their ways. I just wish they could be less pessimistic and more compassionate that one side's success helps bolster the other's.
Yeah, it is very symbiotic as you put it and told not see that is really just an ostrich position on the matter.
I feel like I'm a decently smart person and I still get way confused on the donations. I'd love for someone to make a donations for dummies chart that splits: Academic Donation channels and Athletic Donation channels...then further explains all of the different HC donations, the NIL collective donations their benefits to the donor and athletic department and their relation or lack of relation to each other.
IMO there's no 'easy button' for donations other than when they do the "donate $x for this kinda fun item" which seems like a big miss.
Go to https://giving.adv.vt.edu/gift - I think it's pretty self explanatory what departments you are/can donate to. I think it's less clear how that money is used.
Donating to Triumph (NIL Collective) is (intentionally) separate from the university (for NCAA reasons). Their website is a bit less intuitive IMO.
Okay but if I go to that link and select Athletics -> Scholarship Fund is it the same as this scholarship fund
Edit: In doing these searches I finally found the "pledge per" link again which I've been looking for.
Wow, incredible insight here. THANK YOU for this!
I really appreciate the insight, thanks for putting this together.
This is one of the most impactful threads recently. Really great discussion.
"TV viewership will be key to revenue sharing, with 60% equally split and the remaining 40% based on viewership. The model weights 75% based on football and 25% based on men's basketball." The ACC's tombstone. IT was a good run, but your conference is officially dead when you do this.
This was the settlement to keep Clemson and FSU in the fold. Otherwise, they were gone and the ACC would have folded, leaving everyone else out in the cold. I agree it's going to ultimately divide (and probably dissolve) the conference, but I guess the thinking was it buys a couple of years to work things out. BOV members came to the same conclusion in discussion. It's going to exacerbate the divide between haves and have-nots, and crush competitive balance.
JUST like the desperate, no value to the ACC ND deal, this is the same. Let them leave...what's going to happen? The B1G and SEC make more money? oh wow.
Didn't Whit also outright predict that the same revenue sharing structure where the bigger brands get a bigger piece of the pie will shortly be coming to the SEC and Big Ten as well
Yeah. I highly doubt that. You think Auburn is going to agree to Bama getting more money than them? lol. no.
Can you imagine how quickly state politics (both within states and between states) will get involved if the SEC tries this?
Some states may even try to secede and form a new conference.
Whit: "We cannot keep taking pride with doing more with less."
So glad he said this. It's time to realize that college athletics is big business and if your want to keep up, VT will need to be more business minded in its approach.
Hokie Club is 2nd largest in the ACC in terms of number of donors but middle of the pack in terms of dollars collected.
I have been staying this for awhile that the Hokie Club benefits are too tied to attending events. They need to develop some enticing benefits for those outside the 6 hr radius. Ticket priority is not going to get it done when people get a great game experience in their living room.
The Hokie Club is also completely disjointed. If there are any events down here in Raleigh for the Hokie Club, I haven't seen or heard about them in a long while. Last one I attended was maybe 10 years ago, but its like the Raleigh branch of the Hokie Club went belly-up. Which, as an aside, how the hell is that allowed to happen for what is either the largest or 2nd largest alumni base outside of the Commonwealth? You'd think the school would make it a point to keep their large bases engaged, but its like the school completely abandoned everyone who is out of state.
Hell, when I search Google to see if there is a Hokie Club around here, it gives me information for the Triangle Hokies Alumni Chapter, which explicitly is not the Hokie Club. Any fundraising that chapter does has the money go straight to the Alumni Association, which funnels money to Academics, and not Athletics.
Yup – last Hokie club event I can remember in Atlanta (and "in" Atlanta is generous – it was OTP in the suburbs) was when Fuente came down to talk to us in the off-season between 2017 and 2018.
I remember asking one of the higher-ups at Hokie Club who was there (I forgot his name) how young alumni like myself could help the cause, and he told me to give money and to tell my friends to give money lol. While meeting Fuente was cool, this interaction really stood out to me and left a bad taste in my mouth. He just made it seem so transactional. I kinda assumed there would be some community to piece to it. Or "let me introduce you to so and so" or 'we have event X here in 6 months, they're always looking for volunteers'... was not the case lol.
Hokie Club at least initially put too many advantages to the ambassadors or whatever they were called. It was like a pyramid scheme.
These days too many of the Hokie Club events are campus focused which is unrealistic for the majority of the alumni base. They rarely offer ways to connect from a distance and they do a piss poor job communicating. I end up doing most of my "donations" when they offer swag but most of those dont appear to be strong returns funding wise.
I receive emails from the Loudoun Chapter sporadically but again its infrequent and the message is usually a cut and paste job from the school. Very little local interaction or opportunities to grow the membership.
Seems like we should prioritize membership engagement over membership growth, given that the Hokie Club is the 2nd largest in the ACC, yet middle of the pack in dollars.
Overhaul the Hokie Club, and get people engaged!
Stepping back from the current specifics, my primary issue is that VT (and most universities) still think in terms of donations vs providing a product to customers. The same should be said on the academic side, coupled with their current 65% overhead.
There is no business, customer service or product view to drive revenue (even cross sell/upsell, meaningful differentiated experiences, etc), just the same old asks and similar offering on a declining product. Younger generations will donate far less, have less school loyalty, and only put their money where they get real value and enjoyment. This problem is going to crash like a wave as older donors pass away.
Realize you're a business and operate like one. There is a Chief Revenue Officer for athletics - How are we driving revenue? Begging for cash?
The problem with VT is that the fan donations haven't turned into any meaningful improvement to the fan experience in a very long time. I mean we still deal with absolute dogshit WiFi and cell signals during games. While everyone else is rolling out fancy food and drink options, coming out with suite experiences that you have to pay a premium for, fan party decks, embracing the tailgating and bar scene with districts around the venue to make every game an all-day affair regardless of kickoff time, making the gameday experience feel more premium with better ways to get involved, with mobile apps with up to date information and other ways to stay engaged, as well as upgraded video boards and speakers and adding LED lights to enhance the night game atmosphere....
We have really done none of that. None of the investment is coming back to benefit the fans. And even what we were told, that we give to make the teams better, football and men's basketball have been crap more often than not the past decade+. At a certain point you have to question what the money is going to, and if it is being used appropriately. Not even as a 'providing a product', but just making sure its not being funneled into the pockets of someone instead of being spent on improvements.
I mean hell, just a few years ago the school came out and started a fundraising campaign to renovate Cassell to bring it up to modern standards, as it is widely regarded as one of the most out of date facilities in the sport. We raised money for it, and mothballed the project without an explanation. If you gave to that, why the hell would you give to the school again?
I almost wonder if the Hokie Club should be run more like a "Club" - in the sense that there should be club tiers with an upfront capital buy in and then annual "dues" that cover a portion of ongoing capital outlays/depreciation expense on facilities, debt service, and O&M for the athletics dept. That could result in more tangible facilities improvements that club members could see and utilize, while also funding athletics. Shifting away from a donor/fund model and more to a private club set up seems logical given the direction of this whole thing. If I buy into club seating at a pro venue or a resort or anything like that, I'm not a "donor."
Yeah I mean they need to do something
If you want to attract the top tier investors, then you need to provide the top tier experiences to make them feel like their asses are being appropriately kissed. Our suites were built in 2002 and 2005 and haven't been updated since. The experience has remained unchanged for 20+ years, and we wonder why we can't attract legitimate wealth to help bankroll the team. Cassell is stuck in the 1960s, with absolutely no premium experiences to be had, and we wonder why we can't attract any actual wealth to help pull it up.
As Whit said, we have long taken far too much pride in being cheap. And that couldn't be more glaring than when you go to a game in Lane or Cassell. The quality of experience we have is that of an extremely large high school. The lines throughout the concourses for both concessions and restrooms are an absolute joke, and the quality of items being sold are just as bad. The only reason that so many with the fanbase aren't completely fed up with that situation is because they just don't know any better. For a school with such a strong engineering and architectural program, the amount of choke points you experience when trying to walk around in either facility should be flat out unacceptable. And don't get me started on the joke that is stadium entry for Lane. We should be trying to make that process as streamlined and effortless as possible. You WANT people coming in early and spending on food, drink, and merchandise. And yet it always seems like they are going out of their way to make it as painful as possible just to piss you off.
That's is the root problem - We (both sides) still think of it in terms of donations and charity, not customers and expectations for customer experience.
Imagine any other for profit business asking for donations without clear expectations?
Lots to unpack here. Much appreciated for collating it all in a digestible format, Justin, especially when you didn't have to. Thank you.
I plan on winning the $950M powerball. All of VT athletics funding woes will be resolved.
If you take the lump sum (idk probably 450 mill) that'll be good for about 6 years...
6 years?!?! Ohio state has a budget that is $160m more than ours. That isnt even 3 years of trying to compete with the big boys. We aren't even talking Texas numbers.
$160m/year. And we're seeing annual inflation.
If you fund the program, you get to name something. What would it be (this could be fun)?
"OBX boxes"
The 757Hokie83 Virginia Tech Head Football Coach Brent Pry
I wonder if the VT culture - Ut Prosim, may be partially to blame for lack of donations. Financially serving charitable causes may be a higher priority that sending money to Athletics.
Also regarding Hokie Club membership - did people who bought the Men's BB ACC champioship banner or the WBB Final 4 banner "join" the Hokie Club? If they did and they are like me, they aren't donating. And the reason they (I) aren't donating is there is zero benefit. I am 10 hours from campus, probably won't ever go to a football game at Lane in the future, so attendance and events in Blacksburg provide zero incentive.
And a buy-in model with annual dues would reduce the probability of me "joining/maintaining" a Hokie Club membership to zero.
I think it's more of Frank Beamer that Ut Prosim. Beamer took a home town discount. Beamer leaving Chapel Hill with an offer and changing his mind. Assistants sticking around forever. The party line was that Blacksburg is such an amazing place, that you should take a discount to work here.
Guitarman can probably correct me, but my understanding is that this was a university wide issue where our professors were being noticeably underpaid relative to peer institutions (aka Charles Steger was drinking the Beamer Kool Aid), and that one of the first things Sands fixed after arriving was paying faculty 'market' rates.
For a long time, this was definitely true. When President Sands took over in 2015, we were in the lower 25-33% of peer institutions in faculty compensation. People bolted quickly, as soon as something better came along. President Sands made it a priority to move us up in that ranking, and with help from the VA General Assembly providing funding, we are now middle of the pack (somewhere in the upper 50%, not great but a heck of a move in 10 years relative to the decades prior).
Anecdotally, I had a high-ranking administrator once lament to me, "I loved Dr. Steger, great guy, but his thought was 'why should the faculty be making more than the guy shoveling snow, they're both important.'"
That's rich from the guy making over 800k
Is there a COL element to compensation? I wouldn't expect a VT professor to make the same as a NYU professor (assuming they're at the same level) due to COL.
Private/public factors in too (nyu is private)
Our assessments do factor in institution type and location. We're lagging behind peers in terms of institutional type and geography.
FWIW, back in the 20th century, when I was at Tech, my best friend knew someone on staff that owned a house in Blacksburg and was doing just fine. The guy took a job in New York (I think it was NYU, but not 100% sure). It paid a few thousand dollars more a year. He ended up moving back to the Blacksburg area because he could not afford an apartment in NYC.
Postdoc at Yale that I played volleyball with got an instructor position at Coastal Carolina. It paid $1,000 more. She figured that her ~3-4% increase in salary was an ~50% increase in purchasing power. As long as you lived inland from campus. If you tried to live between campus and the shore, yeah, prices would go up a lot.
Ridiculous if even slightly true. Faculty bring in grants and research funds. They are one of the primary reasons that alumni decide to donate. Being the an elite school requires hiring elite faculty. Hiring and retaining elite faculty requires appropriate compensation.
The people that shovel snow do have an important job. I'm pretty sure I have fallen or seen others fall dozens of times on the icy/snowy campus sidewalks. They should also be compensated appropriately, but doubt they have much impact on grant acquisition and funding.
Exactly. I have personally brought in millions of dollars of grant funding and taught students that have attracted hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition. Every employee of the university - faculty, A/P faculty, and staff - have an important role to play. But it doesn't mean we should all be compensated on the same scale. Steger was a good guy, well liked, but he took the concept of "everyone contributes to the mission" a little bit too far.
I've seen this attitude a lot of places and its always by some one making 5-10x everyone else and contributes the least. Not saying Steger contributed the least, as I personally liked Steger, but Sands has done a lot more to move VT further academically.
THIS is the culture that I think is baked into VT football, alumni, etc. IDK if Beamer was catalyst or the a symptom, but the fanbase seems to take pride in doing more with less. Texas A&M prides themselves on their frivolous spending. VT takes pride in shaming that.
Beamer never really gave us the home town discount though. He was always around the top after '99 until around 2011 where it was just everyone seeing how much he had left on the team. He made similar to Paterno and Bowden.
I can relate to this - If I am donating money to something, sports would be really low on that list. There are so many real causes to support before this would make sense.
I tend to agree with this, though I do give some to sports as I'm guilty of enjoying "entertainment" or whatever I convince myself I'm doing these days.
The amount of money being pumped into a game is getting ridiculous. We have a lot of issues in this world that could use our collective efforts, in lieu of a collective for NIL to watch young men run around with a leather ball for 60 minutes. I can't see this sustaining and frankly it's gotten preposterous.
I get his. But I also think there is an argument that donating to VT sports could have just as significant impact when considering the effect of sports on improving visibility, name recognition, and interest. The data showing increases in enrollment and funding is pretty compelling. I wonder what the data for looks like for grant scores and grant acquisition in relation to sports success. Maybe the data would show no correlation, but maybe it would. I bet the name recognition does have at least a slight subliminal effect when grant reviewers look at an application
To clarify, supporting local youth sports would be different from this, as there are societal benefits to that (YMCA, rec soccer, etc)
To make this thread more tangible, especially given the game this afternoon: I live in downtown Blacksburg, and have been in town for over 20 years. Normally, for a good away game, you'd expect some buzz downtown, students at the bars, and some excitement for the game (even when we were mediocre).
Walking downtown at the end of the game, it was a ghost town. Mostly freshman just headed out to the bars.
If we think the donation problem is bad now, the wave of apathetic fans saddled with tons of debt and no disposable income is on the way. We better have a plan beyond panhandling for money and hoping for a big check.
Being bad at football for over a decade will do that for you. Most of the students currently on campus were barely out of diapers last time we were good. We're in a death spiral right now and I'm not confident there is a way out of it, realistically
This program is effectively dead. Today wasn't just about losing on the field. We are never going to get out of the shadow of the Beamers. That symbolic loss today I think is the worst thing.
The Beamer family moved on from us and we are unable to move on from them