"As for the jobs at UCLA and Virginia Tech, I've been told they're going to target experienced head coaches," Thamel reported on College GameDay. "Both schools need to market themselves as better jobs and show real financial commitment.
"At Virginia Tech, a source told me that by the end of the month they're expected to add nearly $50 million to the athletic department budget to show they can compete at the highest levels of the ACC."
This definitely isn't bad news, but I am skeptical:
- Is this $50m/year or a one time $50m cash influx?
- How much of that is going to football?
- Where is the money coming from?
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Who we think we kidnapping, Chelsea Clinton??
The bloopers for that scene is one of my favorites. In fact, so many of my favorite bloopers come from those movies
Kelsey Grammer????
Gafilta fish? Gafilka?... Gafilka fish
"You give me hard time cuz I can't say my lines! You can not speak even free word Chinese!"
"Jackie, kick it"
"Okay Chris Tucker!"
No you can't talk to Jackie.
Hello. What you want? We are filming. You waste all our tape.
The Chelsea Clinton reference had me going to a different movie.
Joseph R. Cooper: What is something you really want?
Joey: Chelsea Clinton.
Joseph R. Cooper: That's a tough order, dude.
Douglas "Swish" Reemer: You'd have a better shot at Bill.
Highly underrated movie. GO BEERS!
I won't lie, my jaw dropped when he said that live and on-air. I'm genuinely curious who the new additions to the BoV are who are behind pushing this. It's encouraging, yes, but like you said - is this a one time influx of cash? Or an annual type of deal to attempt to stay competitive? We need to sustain it if there's a hope to play with the big boys.
Laughing, I said they were adding 50 mil a couple weeks ago and nobody believed me. glad my source was right.
What if you were the source.....
Nope. just a lowly engineer in the CRC whose co-worker's husband works in the Athletic Department.
I think we need an NFL type front office so I'm curious if that will happen also.
We don't need an NFL front office. We need the best college front office. The skillset is/will be completely different.
The velocity to which college and professional football have flown toward each other, I think CFB is closer to NFL than to CFB of 6 years ago.
I can kinda see at your Bluest Blooded programs, but for the other 115 FBS programs, I think it's so different.
Here's a really good pod about how to 'money ball' in college football. Basically you pick positions (based on scheme, location, access, NIL, etc) that you are going to spend on, and you pick positions where you try to out-scout people.
I seem to remember Ellway getting drafted by Baltimore and he refused to go there.
Draft is refusable.
But that's too far in the weeds.
The money makes all the difference.
Adjust front office from draft and retention to recruitment and retention. Personnel management. Take the load completely off the coaches and use them as marketing and give them the assistance of a closer.
Combine with subsections for Bball and a couple other major teams at the school.
On the flip side, it is a bit closer. College is now like NFL with 100% free agency.
annual budget increase...should see this and structural changes approved on 9/30
The money (or the vast majority of it) is coming from the non-athletic student population.
This was always going to be the result of "NIL" -- you need to pay more to go to school here so we can buy athletes.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Source plz
The foundation of Whit's Slideshow was using increased student fees to fund athletics.
So either the board is going to approve increasing student fees or we've suddenly found a $50 million angel investor.
I'll leave it for you to decide what's more likely.
If we somehow shake the couch cushions and the Board snaps their fingers and comes up with that much money like that, wow what a horrible look for Babcock and Sands.
Pretty sure the board said that maxing out student fees would get us an extra $34m over multiple years?
I'm sure that will be a part of it, but that's not getting us all of the $50m.
The fees for next year will give VT $9MM in additional revenue ($22MM total).
Sort of reminds me of this for some reason...
This is the price of having a good football team in a pay to play world. We're not going to have a good football team and it not cost the students and fans anything.
The issue isn't the pay for play - it's that every B10 and SEC school is has twice the TV revenue as VT. If that was 'fixed', then VT is a unanimous top 30 job instead of a consensus top 50 job
True, but the ACC doesn't have those SEC and B10 TV contracts, and VT still needs the money to be competitive.
(This is what I mean by pay to play). VT didn't deal the cards. It's doing it's best with the ones they were dealt.
Ahh gotcha
Doesn't VA have legislation specifically preventing both UVA and Tech from this? I thought max of 20% AD budget could be from student fees. That's not vast majority.
It is most probably a combination of student fees, a large donor or 3 and corporate sponsorship.
The law does not specifically cap Athletic fees but says that if you increase Fees to be used for Athletics...you must match that money with contributions to non-Athletic funds.
I.e. if you're going to make general student Bob pay $500 more so you can buy a MLB, you have to somehow prove that you are creating $500 of value for Bob somewhere other in the University.
Which seems reasonable and logical if you are either a student paying for college or a parent paying for their child's education.
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/college-sports/2025/virginia-bill-college-sports-subsidies-student-fees-1234824931/
Now, I think there is a very strong argument to be made that having such a large discrepancy between VT/UVa and JMU for instance is illogical and not in the spirit of the bill---i.e. the finacial burden is just as strong or harmful on a JMU student as anyone else. It also doesn't help that the Legislator who supported this provision was a JMU Grad.
Edit: Also, to note, this isn't just a Virginia state issue. Louisiana has (or had) similar statutes which is why there are dorm rooms (no longer used) within the facade of Tiger Stadium at LSU. They used money largely to expand the Stadium but built some token student housing to
get around thelegal requirementsCan't find that there was a definite law but money that was meant for dorms was clearly used "very creatively" to expand the football stadium.https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/photos-tiger-stadiums-defunct-dorms/collection_716fcd4e-81ae-11ef-980a-e7a05f03f6d2.html#9
Ok but the law DOES cap student athletic fees being used to subsidize AD budget. From § 23.1-1309:
So my original comment was simply to point out that if we raise our AD budget to $200mm, the student fees could only provide $40mm of that. If we're already at $150mm it's highly unlikely student fees would account for the majority of our $50mm jump.
FCS and below can go to 70%
But if you increase the budget from $122M to $200M that's $15.6M more they can get from fees assuming they were already getting maximum amount from $122M.
Have seen $144M thrown out too so that would be $11.2M more they could get assuming they already were charging $28.8M against the $144M.
Yeah I just take exception to "majority". By very nature of the law we max out at 20% which is well below majority.
Wrong thread.
President Sands is personally leading the current fundraising effort, which is targeting an increase of $25M in donor money. He was on the phone with donors earlier in the day when I spoke with him about this a couple days ago.
An increase in base funding allows us to add institutional revenue since it's 20% of the athletic budget that's our cap (and that is the sum of student fees and VT core funding). VT is increasing its investment by using what little flexible money we have - it means we are mortgaging against future flexibility. VT has traditionally staked out a very conservative financial position with a large rainy day fund (as instructed by many BOVs for decades). The thinking has changed.
Some of the money is going to be an increase to the athletics base funding and some of it will be one-time investment, with the idea that the investment will pay off and athletics will generate that amount of revenue within a few years' time.
That's what I was thinking. THIS certainly feels like the rainy day.
Damn, so Sands is good at fundraising? Or calling in favors?
On a somewhat unrelated note... you can see that this whole escapade was a coordinated media effort:
We gon' play big boi ball???
I won't go along with any conspiracy theory. The slide deck wasn't leaked. It was publicly posted as part of routine business. The BOV wasn't playing dumb. They genuinely wanted and needed Whit's candid assessment of where we stood. One thing I don't think I ever mentioned from that presentation was that every word he said was written. He was reading from a script because (I am assuming) he wanted to parse his words exactly to deliver the message that was needed at that moment.
I have to imagine there was an assumption going into the season that we wouldn't be very good. I doubt the 0-3 collapse was necessarily "predicted" or the timing of Pry getting fired was planned in any way. I think everything converged all at once.
Which is a question that I'm curious over:
Was the BOV presentation Whit's attempt to 'grease the skids' to protect his job?
My thought is that he knew how bad the season would go. So (even though the buck stops at the AD's office), he would spell out the the situation and underfunding at VT to represent that he knows what the deal is and how to fix it but its out of his hands, provide a sacrifice (while deserved) with Coach Pry, and live to see a better day and work towards his departure more on his own terms?
I'd even consider a gracious explanation that it Whit considered it would require something like this to cause the movement required to make VT make changes?
I'm not suggesting this was a conspiracy. Understood that the word 'leaked' is used inaccurately.
But you don't think that it was basically a foregone conclusion that we were going to raise fees and get donations before the presentation was delivered?
You don't think that this was a bit performative to bring attention to the fact that we raised $50m in a dozen(ish) days?
Why share the financials with the media beforehand? Why 'break' the news of the funds raised on live TV?
You really don't think this was a coordinated effort to send a message to candidates that VT wants to compete?
But you don't think that it was basically a foregone conclusion that we were going to raise fees and get donations before the presentation was delivered?
if he's competent it absolutely was
I'm sure a lot of things were orchestrated. I am also not convinced that there is a student fee increase being considered right now. Tuition and fees are a set item for the April BOV meeting agenda since it depends on the state budget process. This month, I expect any new money to be donations and from VT core budget (remember that the subsidy for athletics is the sum of VT funding and student fees, which is a separate revenue stream).
I don't think it was planned out well in advance but they are pivoting very well to using the media to help get the message out now. Leaking information so that Thamel could break the news on GameDay shows someone in Merryman gets it right now.
I'm very skeptical about this process as a whole right now but at least we are getting started well.
"Coordinated effort"
Good! Its about time we got smarter about how to play this game.....
More than $61m increase in 2027-2029...
WellThatEscalatedQuickly.Gif
ApprovingNods.Gif
Per Doug Bowman, the one time payment isn't technically included in that 190m for next year so we will actually be at 203m. Quite an increase.
Well shit. That'll get us Chelsea and her little cat too.