September 30, 2025 Board of Visitors Agenda
That is an annual operating budget of $212.1M that does not include the one-time expenses that will total an additional $42.6M over 4 years.— Doug Bowman (@DougBowman247) September 22, 2025
The three key slides, including the funding plan breakdown between institutional support, student fee revenue ($100 increase per year), bridge funding (whatever that means), and philanthropy (sweet sweet donors). https://t.co/gbT0P9fIIZ pic.twitter.com/h7sKIB2fJT— Doug Bowman (@DougBowman247) September 22, 2025
Long story short, VT is not playing around anymore.
Oh, and for anyone wondering, the current budget for VT athletics is $158m. This is a SUBSTANTIAL increase to keep the university competitive and completely changes the game in how we are going to be able to position ourselves going forward.
Comments
Worth also remembering this from the presentation last month:
This kind of funding increase would immediately put us on par with Clemson and Florida State for the entire athletics department. Probably safe to assume the only school higher would be SMU, but that's because they're made of oil money to the point where they were comfortable enough to forfeit revenue sharing just to join the ACC. And this would send a message to the SEC and Big Ten that we intend to be a major player on national scene going forward, which hasn't been a sure thing to this point.
Cannot really understate how big a development this would be if we move forward.
I put in the other thread as well but per Doug Bowman, the one time payment isn't technically included in that 190m for next year so we will actually be at 203m for next FY. Quite an increase. With this increase, we now need to nail the AD hire to ensure it's used properly.
I guess my only question is if in July our current budget was $122M and now claiming it's $158M for 2025, where did the $36M shake out of the cushions?
Notre Dame is probably #1 on that list
I was thinking Stanford based on how many Olympic sports they do.
Exciting news. Now it's time to make the right hires to take advantage of this and sustain it.
This is wonderful that the university is realizing we have to pay to compete.
Similar to what happened when we hired Pry though, does this "reset" the market and are other schools going to just pump up their spending significantly again, putting us right back where we are?
Entirely possible that happens, but I think it would need to get to our current level of dire before other schools make that move. Bottoming out made us realize the status quo could not continue.
Some might bump up, but I think at least half won't.
UVa, Pitt, BC, Cal, Stanford, Wake, GT, Syracuse, and Duke likely don't want to football hard enough. Not sure about NC State and Carolina is stuck in Belichick hell.
FSU, SMU, and Clemson will stay near the top in funding (although Clemson may be hobbled by Dabo's buyout). We just want to be breathing the same air they are. Miami will want to play ball, but unclear if their smaller alumni base is up for it. I imagine Louisville plays keep up with us.
That pretty much leaves us in the top 4-6.
As an aside, I was listening to an FSU game on the radio while driving a couple weeks ago. They have corporate sponsors for first down and the red zone. Whenever the announcers say those terms, they mention the sponsors.
This is some of the oldest granular marketing in football. I can recall teams with the Mountain Dew redzone, or Pepsi Blue zone on the radio. In stadium at ODU i've heard sponsored sacks and first downs as well. I feel like there even used to be digital ads on the field in some cases on Raycom, but I could be misremembering this. All before the current physical ad space, NIL and other related money movement.
Putting our money where our mouth is.
Scared money, don't make money!
Money monies the same ....
Maybe now we can afford those new weights.
Thank God. I was worried we would go the other direction.
A big difference that at least positions the school to the top third of the conference. Building the VT Athletics brand hopefully yields better apparel and corporate sponsorship opportunities that should add some ROI.
I was told $50mil not 47, I will never trust facts delivered by sports announcers
Any feel on how the BoV will actually vote on this?
It will pass.
God bless you, VTGM. I really needed to see this
The impact to Blacksburg, New River, Tech's long term plans are all riding on Tech still being a big draw.
This is an underrated comment. Hear, Hear!
We could have survived if Mike's was still there, I bet it was a lot cheaper too.
I can't imagine scheduling the vote if it wasn't already agreed upon in private. Too embarrassing if the vote blows up.
Hell, I wouldn't have even scheduled Whit's public presentation to the BoV if this vote wasn't already locked in. This is all theater to maximize IO value.
I'm just glad we have the basic savvy to orchestrate this show.
Another question- the philanthropy line-does all this money come in through the Hokie Club? How do other NIL collectives factor in to this?
This makes me really excited. I'm sure next year 8 schools will raise their operating budget to $400MM just to crush my hopes and dreams but for now I choose to be excited for the future.
The philanthropy has me interest. Is the 30m for next year already pledged by Mehul and others? Are we sure we can sustain that giving through 2029. Or are we banking on success correlating with philanthropy?
My second question in this is how much of the increase is dedicated to football? What do the football only budgets look like at the other top schools and will ours be on par there?
In answering a bit of my own question, just read an ESPN article that says this:
Hopefully it's more dedicated to football than the $13.5M Babcock was asking for here.
Article Here
Needs to be like:
20mil to student athletes
15mil to football
5 mbb
5 wbb
the rest two should go to soccer or a bat sport to try for title.
In terms of revenue sharing they are capped at $20.5M and have previously stated intent would be 75% Football, 15% MBB, 5% WBB, and 5% other sports. Whether they hold firm to those I doubt we will ever know the truth.
20 mil is for revenue sharing the others are to those sports budgets
Two points: VT is now a player for a lot more coaching options, the new GM position, etc. Just like that.
Whit may have played this just right and given himself some more time. (Not endorsing, just saying.... crafty, if so.)
P.S. I still think/hope contained in this is a significant restructuring of the Dept.
P.P.S. I hope to goodness, the new GM etc fixes our uniform contract, and goes hell-bent on marketing to our eventual next conference. By comparison (2024 numbers) this would put us at top 10 SEC, top 5 Big 10 funding) Its a big deal.
I likes
Outstanding. Let's grab us a football GM, and then we can quit Mullen this over and hop on the Dan Van!
So this money can't be used to pay players? Or do I have that wrong. Just wondering how we address the talent issue.
suspect it includes revenue sharing but not outside NIL. we will need the latter to compete with the top tier in the conference...and obviously, nationally.
I am going to guess that our benchmark here is to at least match everything that Clemson or FSU is doing in football. Would suspect our operating model in regards to budgets for coaching, facilities, and NIL is going to mirror what they do.
Definitely good to see VT decide they want to play in the big leagues. It does make me wonder why we haven't hit that magic $30m "Philanthropy" button earlier, though.
Good move.
Now let's get our act together and hire a good coach and whatever staff we need for a competitive program.
May the odds be forever in our favor.
This is the statement VT needed to make. This is a HUGE increase and recurring to boot. I am impressed to say the least. Now, by no means does just saying it or putting it in print fix our problems, but it puts us in a position to start executing on all cylinders.
For now, my Hokie Faith has been restored. A great foundation to build off of.
If VT mirror's its efforts/results in terms of research, student enrollment, academic infrastructure, etc., then VT sports will become a legitimate threat again.
Well, I had to admit I was already debating do I renew the season tickets next year?
Maybe start out watching every remaining game this season and next season on TV and possibly attending one game next season. Thats where I'm at.
I definitely want to take my daughter's to VMI next year because I want to see a win.
I still have this years season tickets. That means I will be there to support the team.
I suppose you'll be able to decide based on your excitement for the new coach and coaching staff.
Now I'm curious... why is this just now happening? Like, if we could raise $50m in a month, why did we wait until now?
I am wondering the same
That's why I assumed that this entire thing was a coordinated media strategy, and the publicization of the initial BoV meeting (the one that explained how far behind we are) was just done so our splash appeared even bigger.
Yeah. It's like, if we always could....why didn't we
It's always darkest before the dawn?
Make no mistake, this happens in industry all the time, too. People know what the problems are, have ideas about fixes, but it takes management a long time to get on board and then they fire the figurehead and infuse the place with new ideas and money. Oftentimes the leader couldn't get the funding to do what they actually wanted to do, but they take the heat.
I'm curious as to how much of the "philanthropy" portion was contingent on getting rid of Pry and trying to get a better coach/football resources in place
Saw this over on 247. Lol the man is getting stuff done like never before.
Ah, good 'ol Lane Lane Stadium. It's on its way back!
Great example of how AI image generation is great for jokes and memes and very little else
I use it for brainstorming and image reference in painting occasionally.
But otherwise, yes.
Its easier to modify than create, so just to get a starting point it works well as long as you dont keep anything but concepts
Shit, do I have to change my name?
Amazon's Lane Stadium
I mean you joke, but the AWS Cloud Sky Suites seems like a great sponsor opportunity in Lane.
I agree. This is where we are at if we want to raise the money to be a winning program again. For me, just about everything is on the table except maybe renaming Lane Stadium to some corporate sponsored name, that might be too far for me.
Your telling me a school that couldn't get enough donors until 2016 to pay the student athletes tuition bill is suddenly going to have tens of millions extra each year coming in from donors?
suddenly? no
been in the works for awhile? probably
Took a look at TSL last night and some of their insiders are saying the philanthropy portion is being paid by a yet to be announced $120m lump sum that Whit has been working on for a while. Someone is stepping up bigly to get this ball rolling.
Let's be honest, talking somebody into a 120 million endowment is a lot of work that can span several years.
Yeah and it must be pretty far along to the point of just finishing up the paperwork if its being included in this BoV proposal. You don't include that in your budget forecast over the next 4 years if you don't already have the assurances its happening.
Agree for any business funding risk assessment. ... Unless your desperate. I agree that all businesses should do what you describe, I'm just saying VT is in desperate times athletically, that might cause your leadership to lean forward on this. I hope they did not do that.
Then what happens next year? Or the next 5,10,15 years?
Hopefully we use some of the $120 million to hire people that will know how to get the Hokie Club rolling.
National Championships.
Well the $120m lump sum is what makes up the 4 x $30m 'Philanthropy' funding source we see on the proposed annual budgets.
I do have the same question about what comes next in 2029, but if I had to guess, they are planning to have that money come from somewhere else starting in 2030, which could be an indication of where they see us ending up should the ACC dissolve by the end of the decade.
I don't know, nor do I have any info, but the (conceptual) basic math has to be that you have to spend money to make money.
Some of the investment is in the Hokie Club itself (I believe TSL said $2M?). Get someone in charge who has a fundraising background, for goodness sake!
That will help, and winning more will also help. I'm sure there's plenty of data out there that more wins = more donations, ticket sales, merch sales, etc etc.
I share your skepticism to a certain extent as it does feel like this came out of no where but hopefully the BOV and other powers that be are smart enough to have irm committments prior to hard launching this plan.
I agree we need more integrated risk management!
( Integrated risk management (IRM) is a set of practices and processes supported by a risk-aware culture and enabling technologies, that improves decision ...)
Do you work in GRC?
Yeah-been in data management/data governance for the last 14 or so years of my 32 years with the large bank I work for. Think I'm technically a 'certified data steward'...(which tracks cause I've often been told I'm 'certifiable' lmao...)
(thanks for flagging :) )
Soooo we still on the fire Whit train lol?
Yes, this is the bare minimum type things, do you trust him to spend it well? Do you trust some one that has a 100+m a year operation going with out a CFO?
I don't think Whit spends irresponsibly
It definitely concerns me.
I do think that Whit probably isn't the person to usher us into the new world of college athletics. Just like Netflix probably didn't need ops/supply chain folks after moving from DVDs to streaming.
But I've never felt strongly that he needs to be fired immediately otherwise we're toast.
Agree with that he doesn't need to go instantly so long that he gets no say in hiring a football coach, while the odds on a good hire at bad, he's 0/2. But you want to hire a new lacrosse coach, sure let him do it.
From what Arians said is they are working GM hire first so hopefully that means GM gets the Athletic Department vote rather than Badpick
Some where it was said that whit isn't part of the search team
He is helping advise them but not a part of it
Aren't we all, in a sense?
Assistant to the General Manager.
First time I've seen this nickname. Bravo.
It really does depend on what is going on behind the scenes.
If it comes out that Whit has been banging this drum for years and it has taken this long for influential people at the university and possibly even the board itself to start paying attention, then maybe we let him show what he can do with the reigns off.
I'm still perplexed at that press conference that we had to announce Fuente was coming back. It just never made any sense to me outside of Whit calling it to fire him and being internally overruled.
This is what I've been saying for years. I wouldn't be that upset if Whit got fired, but I have a tough time calling for him to get axed when I know so little about the challenges he is or is not facing.
I can't prove it, but I don't think anything will change my mind: I'm convinced Whit was planning to fire Fuente and got overruled.
Logically it has never made sense on why you would call a press conference to announce you aren't firing someone.
Some of those comments he made during that press conference (at one point I think I recall him saying something like the general public doesn't give enough for their opinions to matter) always kind of felt like he was parroting some bullshit arguments he was hearing from up the chain on why they overruled him.
Correct. That's one where he got everyone riled up because of the not donating enough to have an opinion line.
Bruce Arians on Pat McAfee today and five minutes or so of Tech Talk in the second hour. Bruce stated the next step is to hire the General Manager and then the Head Coach hire afterwards. Bruce is on the search committee and with a smile on his face said he is too old for the job. They even threw up a slide showing the growth in the financial commitment to north of $200m over the next few years.
I just watched this also. Pat and his team said some great things to say about the football experience at VT and Blacksburg. All were nodding in agreement that it has been great and needs to be back to what it has proven to be. I have only thanks to Pat for doing that segment like he did.
Starts at 1:28:30
One positive from this press blitz, no way the BoV doesn't approve it.
It's likely already a done deal. No way a committee led by the chair and two board members is going to put together a proposal and go public with it without the votes. I'm sure Rocovich has even had one on ones with other members informally to ensure they back it. It's just how boards work.
This right here. BOV meetings are "business meetings," so the work is done behind the scenes and the public-facing meetings are required for legal compliance. They'll do their business out in the open but they're not going to put something like this on a public agenda if it isn't already sealed. There will be a presentation from our COO and CFO about the nature of the financial situation, which I expect to be fairly brief, and a vote to approve. I'm not sure how much discussion to even expect.
Has there been any indication to you about how long this might have been in the works, then? Everybody is screaming, "IT'S ABOUT TIME!", but is it possible that Whit has been banging his head against the wall for years trying to get the BoV to understand?
I'll admit, it is a huge ask for a university to just up and increase athletics funding by that much.
That's something I'd like to follow up on after the plan passes; likely folks aren't going to be very forthcoming with specifics until this is a done deal. I will share (and I'm not sure I posted this anywhere else yet) that President Sands made an offhand remark during one of our chats that "we had a pretty solid plan back in 2020" but that it somehow didn't come to fruition. I don't know if that was related to the pandemic impacts, something to do with coaching (awkward "we're not firing him" press conference) or what. It's something I'll dig into because I'm quite curious, myself.
I'd love to know what that 2020 plan would have been and why it never came about. If it was solid, I'd also be curious to know what they're doing to make sure they never miss that boat again.
I know we're not in an ideal state now, but if we take what we've learned and don't make those same mistakes again and strive for continuous incremental improvement, we will be better off for it. I feel like we've been spinning our tires for a while the goal should be to never allow ourselves to fall into that rut again.
The athletic department cut positions, reduced salaries across the board, and reduced benefits to the employees during COVID. Some of the benefits have still NOT been restored to the staff that stayed.
And none of that happened on the academic side.
So the question is how did we go from supposedly having a plan to make sure we were ahead of the curve in 2020 athletically to only slashing pay athletically and allowing us to fall to the bottom of the pack. How in the hell does that happen. How do you go from trying to prioritize one thing to it being the only thing you actively de-prioritize. I understand COVID, but that impact should have been felt across the board and it wasn't.
Part of me says when are you going to restore the benefits and bonuses that were stripped!
Without details, I can't comment specifically, but if there had been cuts to faculty and staff salaries while trying to (1) move all instruction online, (2) adapt to every possible student need, (3) care for families - especially with kids being out of school doing remote instruction you would have had absolute revolt at the university. The state appropriated us sufficient money to pay for the operations at the university. There was no need to make any cuts. We didn't reduce our athletic subsidy, it actually doubled a little after COVID. Athletics wasn't making any money because of the attendance restrictions, hence they had to take a cut because all of that has to be self-funding. It's not like the lack of cuts on the academic side somehow got in the way of the athletic funding plan.
I have no reason to doubt the resolution is going to pass tomorrow, but I'll ask you all to please not shoot the messenger - I have received many very serious faculty concerns and it is my duty to convey them directly to the BOV. There are concerns from students, as well, that you will likely hear. Please remember that although I am personally generally supportive of this effort (with some skepticism and criticism about a few things), the faculty are not very happy about it. I'll articulate why tomorrow, if given the opportunity to speak.
You can all follow the livestream at https://bov.vt.edu/ starting at 9:30 AM tomorrow.
I can't imagine why. /s
Not against any of the faculty at all. I'm just cognizant of the fact that the (for the most part) faculty priorities most likely have academics over athletics, and the optics of injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into athletics over the next four years will probably rub raw the people who have been seeing potential academic funding areas being delayed or denied due to lack of funds.
Nailed it.
Yep. This is it. "We're not cutting any academic programs to make this happen, we are just going to be less flexible in the future." A very true statement I've heard from several administrators. But that doesn't mean there won't be cuts down the line. And if the landscape changes and $200M is no longer competitive, do we have the money to go to $500M? Should we?
The other issue is faculty salaries. VT faculty are not paid particularly well. Credit to President Sands and the BOV over many years, we are now out of the bottom 25% percentile among peers and we now sit squarely in the middle. We've been told there's no money beyond merit increases, no flexibility, etc. For years. Athletics comes asking for hundreds of millions, and tens of millions from the university general fund directly, and within a month there's a plan to approve. It leaves a sour taste in one's mouth. Applications and enrollment have grown while the football team has remained totally uncompetitive. Faculty grant awards and associated research expenditures are at record highs over the same period. But there's no extra money to reward our efforts. But we need to give buckets of cash to Athletics. There's a dissonance there that faculty are extremely unhappy about.
As a diehard fan, I want to see us compete well and win. As a faculty member, I wonder if we endanger our mission by trying to gamble on the uncertain landscape of athletics. The bubble has to burst soon, and it remains to be seen what happens then.
UNC is an elite public institution and has no issue throwing absurd sums of money at football and sports in general. Ohio State is a large land grant university that throws absurd sums at football. I'm just genuinely curious why big and elite public universities all over the country are investing heavily in sports, but there's such heartburn and opposition at VT?
While I can't speak to the economics of UNC, Ohio State is a much larger Institution than VT.
In terms of Undergraduates, OSU is roughly the size of VT + UNC combined. That creates a much larger potential donor base. Add the B1G TV contract and the fact that it is in a signficantly larger, more Urban area and there is a lot more potential $$$.
As a child of professors that went over a decade with no raise I understand where they are coming from. It increases shady things like requiring a book written by the prof for thr course. But we wouldnt have Newman without athletics, we wouldnt have the increase in applications, which comes with funds without athletics, we wouldnt have a ton of people donating to the university instead of hokie club without the incompetent leadership in athletics.
I agree that the work Sands has helped usher in on the academic side needs rewarded, and Sands needs to figure that out. But I wouldnt have been at VT if the football team didn't player in the Big East, and it sure helped we moved all sports their when I came. I know of more like me, I am not sure how the university will do if we are not P4/P2 when the dust settles, but I dont really think it will be better.
As someone (working in a completely different profession) who lived through a very similar situation---being told "make more with less" year after year and then having the "sexier" division of the company get a massive cash infusion nearly overnight when they "needed it desperately."
Its a bitter pill to swallow and really undermines how you feel about your employer/adminstration.
This is the main point. Faculty are under unprecedented pressure to produce (worse by the year, particularly in the uncertain funding climate) and we're told to "spend conservatively" by our deans in case grants get canceled. There are talks of hiring freezes in the coming year. And yet, magically, we have tens of millions of dollars for athletics. This is the source of the friction right now.
With all due respect, the Athletic Department has been critically underfunded for going on 10-15 years now. I understand faculty being worried there might be tensions for academics going forward, but for athletics we haven't even approached competitive for a decade. This isn't about magically finding money to give to sports, its pulling up a department that was on its deathbed in order to make sure it doesn't flatline, which would cost the school far more money academically than the investment its going to take now.
And quite frankly, after watching the school grow like it has over the past 20 years with a constant flow of new buildings and renovations to pump up the academic side, it rings hollow to hear worries that the money won't be there going forward. Maybe if the root cause is about salaries, then the discussion should be about curtailing the constant influx of new facilities and instead taking care of the staff the school has.
Agree on all points. VT has made unbelievable strides on the academic side in the last 10-15 years while athletics has been dying a slow death. I think it's foolhardy for faculty to assume that the applications in interest in VT has been solely due to academic reputation. I know for many, many VT students, alumni, and family, football has been an enormous part of that interest and bond. If it's just about purely academics, many probably would have gone elsewhere or to a smaller school. Athletics is part of the experience for a large state university. Why on earth when all big peer P4 type public universities are embracing the new model of athletics would we kick and scream and run the other way? Insanity.
Also when student debt is at an all-time high and the job market and future outlook for college-level jobs is what it currently is, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for an education system overall that has been taking more and more for the last 30-40 years (more buildings, more pay, more funding, etc) and much of that coming from student debt. Reinvest something in athletics and give something back to the student experience for once.
Shout out for calling athletics part of the student experience. That's exactly what it is.
all of the direct and indirect contributions I've made to VT since graduating in 1977 are related to academics. But my regular connection to VT is thru athletics. I'd be shocked if I'm the lone ranger on this.
academics are more than intelligent enough to understand the potential value in upping our athletic profile. there is no magic
but mostly, thank you SO much for keeping us informed. being the messenger is no fun. good luck this morning!
and if VT is left out of the power conferences, there will be cuts in positions in athletics.
but I don't think you make a decision to move forward based on "there doesn't mean there won't be"[future cuts in academics]. that would be a bit like not funding research because you might not find out anything new.
the question is do the potential benefits outweigh the risks? not "why them and not us?"
Pretty wild that we've shot up the college rankings over the last 5-10 years, despite paying faculty mid salaries (and presumably attracting less talented individuals as a result).
Says a lot about the state of higher ed that faculty doesn't really matter
Most rankings that are published are meaningless, it's all PR. If you compare us against "elite" institutions in quantitative metrics (which don't tell the whole story), we are a solid but not amazing university. Moving up, but not where we want to be.
The faculty we have are plenty talented. There's a lot to love about Virginia Tech, as we all know. We do have a problem with retention (the upper admin denies this, but the rank-and-file faculty continually see talented colleagues leave). We don't offer competitive counter-offers for salary or other resources. So top talent gets easily poached. We continue to do great things, doing more with less, but the stress lines are revealing themselves by the day.
doing more with less
This seems to be a theme university wide, as it has been with athletics for years. Any clue why? It's like Virginia Tech has some type of inferiority complex.
May just be allocation of resources and priorities from the General Assembly. UVA for instance has I believe the best faculty pay in VA, but they also have a $15 billion endowment which I'm sure produces significant investment income, some of which likely is utilized to support academic operations. I doubt the state wants to pony up more in the budget for faculty salary support. And as mentioned above, VT has been dumping enormous resources into capital projects (like shiny new buildings) for a long time now. I know some comes directly from donor support but there's probably a large portion of general university support for these projects as well. Diverting that to operations for faculty compensation and retention would be the better move to me at this point. Kind of think we should take a pause on the shiny new academic buildings for a while and focus on people.
Diverting that to operations for faculty compensation and retention would be the better move to me at this point. Kind of think we should take a pause on the shiny new academic buildings for a while and focus on people.
Completely agree. If Guitarman says its an issue, it should be rectified before they cram campus full of another tower style parking lot.
Books book the same
As a faculty member, I wonder if we endanger our mission by trying to gamble on the uncertain landscape of athletics.
Yep - this right here. How good is your crystal ball?
Agreed. This is a key point to consider.
Just because we are planning on dumping $50+ million more dollars into Athletics doesn't mean its going to pay off in any meaningful way. It doesn't necessarily get us an invite to the SEC or B1G (I think they have no real plans on expansion until the next round of TV contract negotiations anyways) nor does it guarantee any long-term success.
A huge part of the reason VT Athletics is in the position it is in is due to mismanagement. At best, the AD has been run complacently, but more so it has been run by a select few who have been repeatedly resistant to change and totally unprepared for a changing landscape. Yes, the house needs to be cleaned out, but just because we are going to (presumably) bring in lots of new people, doesn't in itself mean they will be better. Is VT Athletics an attractive destination to come work for at all at this point? Can we attract talented people after years of bad press? Do we simply overpay to get them in the door?
Its far from a sure thing. And if you look at it from a whole-University standpoint, there are lots of reasonable questions to ask.
Yes, Athletics is an important part of the whole University structure. But it is not the end-all, be-all that some are making it out to be.
In the '50's - VT sucked at football --- University grew
In the '70's - VT sucked at football --- University grew
Since about 2010 - VT has been mediocre to irrelevant in Football - University continued to thrive.
On the other hand:
In the early 2000's and since, VT's academic reputation has grown alongside the recognition created by sports success in football and both men's and women's basketball. (national championship game, final four appearance, etc)
Stumbling with the academic side logo notwithstanding. I mean, they started out with the sharp VT and the pylons, and somehow came out with the VT that looked like it had been tumbled in the dryer... But I digress.
The point is that the university has been the beneficiary from VT's success in sports. You invest in your strengths. I'm hoping to see more investment in both athletics AND academics.
well, who the hell do we shoot then?!
The Swofford family (or all ACC directors if you prefer) for ruining the ACC!
its why we keep Skipper in such good shape
The same way the Scots ruined Scotland?!
Are you saying we should bring back Prima Nocta for any new members that want to join the ACC?
When is the vote? I require this knowledge.
Meeting will start at 9:30 AM, I expect it will probably wrap by 10:00 AM. Follow the livestream at https://bov.vt.edu/
Meeting starts at 9:30 today. I imagine the meeting will be 30-60 minutes.
https://bov.vt.edu/livestream
All time egg on face moment if this doesn't pass, just sayin....
How often do you see athletics send out a link to watch a BoV meeting, at any school?
I'll admit to never having been interested enough to look for one.
That said, if they livestreamed it, seems like there would be an online video available after the fact.
Amy does not seem happy about this.
just sounds like every other meeting/presentation i've ever sat in. I wouldn't read too much into it
How long til the first person starts talking on mute?
(and please, for the LOLz let it be VTGM 😁)
I need someone's dog/cat to come into frame
And there it is, Rocovich was the one to do it.
All I see when I see Sands sitting there....
Is he turtley enough for the Turtle Club?
A little disingenuous to say "definitely" limiting our flexibility for academic investment in future years. What if this investment causes significant football success and brings in a number of large investments over the next 10 years?
eh, all choice limits future choices. But not choosing can lead to limits as well.
Exactly. Not choosing is a choice. And it will be very limiting.
Appreciate Sands qualifying and saying limiting flexibility in the "near future." Which is accurate. But invest today for tomorrow.
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." ~Neil Peart
"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." - Rush, Freewill
Edit: Shit.
Haha, great minds drink alike
Indeed.
I'd say 'drinks drink the same' but we all know THAT ain't true! (at least by taste)
VTGM change your zoom background to the 0-0 tie against WF with Beams celebrating!
Like how the motion and second comes from 2 of the 3 athletics committee members.
👀 The amendment specifically removes mentions of keeping competitive with the ACC and inserts keeping competitive within the NCAA
It's no secret I think the goal is to use this investment to launch us to a P2 conference. So I like that.
I also liked Rocovich's comment that we don't ultimately know what the future governing body of this new landscape will be.
Is it bad that my brain went to being competitive with Conference USA?
Yes! Stop that!
You spoke well VTGM despite being in a tough spot. They should have let you speak before the vote.
yes, purely procedurally, any/all discussion about the measure should have happened before any vote
As someone who tries to adhere to Robert's Rules of Order in chairing Faculty Senate meetings, I agree fully!
I really like when a moderator takes a moment before to lay out the process in a meeting because unless you are on a board, or a committee or whatever, nobody remembers. And even if you are, unless you are having formal meetings every week, it is easy to forget steps.
That's very true. Sometimes, the chair can get focused on the list of to-do items and forget the details. We have a lot of newly elected faculty senators this year, so I've been intentional in meetings thus far to remind folks of the little things. We need a motion, a second, then discussion, etc. Processes for passing resolutions. All the stuff that makes most people's brains leak out their ears, I'm here for it haha
I appreciate the support, it's always a little nerve-wracking to speak in front of the Board (they're all genuinely nice folks in casual conversation so I don't know why it seems different when in front of everyone!) and I hate to be the wet blanket on what is otherwise a rather monumental decision that's been made. The other reps and I had a conversation yesterday and I offered to go first, to deflect any negativity that might be directed at others. I don't mind being the "bad guy" in the conversation, as long as what I'm saying is honest.
Well done VTGM. Echoing Mitchell, they def should've let you speak before the vote. While being in between a rock and a hard place, you had great delivery.
Seconded. Great job to our resident TKP ambassador!
I appreciate everyone's commentary and support. It's not easy to do the job I do sometimes. And I genuinely enjoy the position I have in terms of gaining insight from all of you as fans, alums, etc. and directly from my colleagues. I'm not sure anyone else quite has the same advantage I do in terms of collecting sentiment about things. The measure passed, I hope it was a wise move, and I will stand by the position my colleagues implored me to bring up. I wish I had been allowed to speak before the vote (I tried!) but I knew the vote was basically a foregone conclusion, as most are in the business meetings.
Don't know if you can answer this or not, but were they expecting a "no" from Nancy? Was just curious on the innerworkings of the BoV and if she gave Rocovich a heads up.
Given that Mr. Rocovich knew she wanted to make a comment, I suspect she had informed him. It was a surprise to me. I can't say with certainty, but I imagine it was known at least to him how she would be voting. I appreciate her principled stance, which is certainly unpopular with many.
You said what was needed to be said. As much as people sometimes don't want to admit it, VT athletics and especially the football program are thoroughly intertwined within the fabric of the VT culture. Anyone who has graduated within the last 30 years will inevitably have some kind of football story to tell about their time there.
But we can't leave the faculty out to dry. Personally, I would say that there's a lot of other areas we can look to make that money back, such as the continued push to keep building new. If we are struggling to retain our best faculty, then I don't care about the big flashy new buildings. The people matter more than the rooms.
100% with you. And underlying this whole academic/athletic thing, I don't view it as either-or. I see it as both-and. We just have to balance it properly. That's why I made the concluding remark I did. I'm not trying to chide the Board for the decision they're making. I'm asking them to recognize a competing concern and to be as willing to consider it in the future, given that they have clearly shown that they can quickly adapt to a critical need as they did here.
I will state for the record that folks like Amy and Simon are absolutely incredible at what they do and VT is lucky to have them. Look what happens when you get really good financial experts in the conversation - stuff gets done.
Couldn't watch the livestream. What did you say?
With some slight off-the-cuff revisions (because I was speaking after passage of the resolution), here was my prepared statement:
Very well written.
Thank you.
I don't see a problem with that statement.
And although I wholeheartedly support the increased expenditure for VT athletics right now, the ultimate goal needs to be making VT a better academic institution. I think it's correct to point that out. It's fair to expect a dividend on our sports investment in the form of investment on the academic side.
Are we playing international teams? ;^)
I'm glad you said all this, because it needed to be said. I was a bit uncomfortable with the rapidity that this amount of money was shoehorned into athletics, and if I were faculty, I might be raging.
Little shout-out to our soccer team ;)
Let's just say I sanitized a lot of the comments I got from faculty. I am nothing if not diplomatic.
Would be interesting to hear some of the more extreme comments. Over a beer of course. I doubt that the faculty with the extreme comments subscribe here, but you never know just what will make it's way around. /shrug
I have many interesting stories I can tell over a beer in anonymized form. There is never a dull moment when you're in the position I am.
And Rugby as well.
Yeah I thought your remarks were excellent. Brought up your concerns but still stated that it's effectively a fools errand right now to think the VT Experience isn't fundamentally intertwined with VT athletics and especially the football team now.
And then called them out publicly for not showing this same urgency to retain professors and faculty. Which, without saying it, will lead everyone to question why we keep paying for all these fancy new buildings.
Hopefully those remarks eventually kick off a whole other discussion that helps in that area. Personally, as high as VTs tuition is, it's ridiculous to hear that we struggle to pay our professors a competitive salary.
The fancy new buildings and insane administrative bloat
I appreciate the kind words. It's a tough landscape to navigate, but I do hope that what I said spurred some of the thoughts you're mentioning. It's a long road, and most of my impact comes behind the scenes.
Also - IMO telling that Whit didn't speak.
Didn't need to. His presentation last time did all the talking.
When I was in school I made it to the final round of the process to be the student rep on BOV (final 3 and all of us interviewed with the BOV). Even back then the sentiment from students was that we were spending tons of money on things that increase the cost of attendance for every-day students but do not increase the value of the education. This was at the beginning of spending hundreds of millions on buildings and dorms. There is a balance to modernizing the campus but not spending extra cash on the luxury dorms and buildings. The in state cost of attendance was 17k when I started in 2009 (and that included an unrealistic nearly 2k on "travel"). Now the in state cost is nearly 40k. The university has certainly found a way of spending a shitton of money and pricing the average student into substantial debt. The investment into sports is probably necessary for the longevity of the region, but I certainly hope the university finds a way to be more responsible with the money coming in from the students.
Thanks again for everyone here for the kind words and great dialogue. I'm getting absolutely ripped on Twitter/X because people say I'm bitching about my salary. Some of it looks like bots and such, but it's a bit annoying for people who understand absolutely nothing to make all of what I said personally about me.
[edit to remove incorrect (albeit lighthearted) needling of Andy, not his fault at all]
You definitely were NOT bitching. Everything you said was very valid.
It's really amazing how people will hear whatever they want. I didn't even speak out against the resolution. I asked the Board to consider that the haste with which they moved on this priority should cause them to reflect when other priorities are brought forward. And all these nitwits heard was "faculty don't like football and say they're poor." No good deed goes unpunished! It doesn't bother me; such is the price of leadership.
I've seen some of it. Can only assume it's a rather uneducated group of folks. You were speaking on behalf of a large group of people, rather than just yourself. Then again, to understand that, they would have to understand your role. Something I don't think they can do, or would ever hold a similar position.
I'd argue that >95% of the people/trolls on twitter are rather uneducated folks
Definitely think there's more than a few who arent but would absolutely backtrack if they knew "Prof Lemkul" has been a mod on TKP for a decade lol
You simply reminded them that faculty are part of the budget, too, and not to forget you all. That's the very least you should do in your position. VT is a SCHOOL after all. Guaranteed everyone bitching only cares about football, and possibly basketball.
Speaking in public is generally a thankless job.
I saw that. To be fair, it wasn't bitter who tagged you, but he did name drop you.
For the record, the dickhole who did is Thomas Shelby -- @shelbythomaspb
Ah, my bad. I saw my name mentioned and then a tag in the next post. Not Andy's fault at all. I'll edit.
The worst people in our society make twitter their home. Take their insults as a badge of honor.
"Your boos mean nothing. I've seen what makes you cheer."
Twitter is dominantly a cesspool.
That's a shame man but for a Musk led social media platform not unexpected at all.
Is there a video somewhere? would love to hear you deliver your comments. I did read them from your post in the other chat.
I believe VT keeps an internal archive of recordings in anticipation of upcoming legal requirements to publish such recordings. But at the moment, no, there's no recording available to the public.
What I'm surprised to find out about (CAVEAT: I know nothing, this is all Twitter conjecture) is the apparent infighting between the academic and athletic sides of the university. Hence why there is a separate academic logo. There's a thread with Dwight Vick talking about it.
GuitarMan is it as bad as people make it out to be?
I've never understood us having a separate logo. The M at Michigan is iconic, the O at Ohio State, the SC at Southern Cal, the A at Bama, the U at Miami. On and on. Now I can understand having a word mark used for official university documents and correspondence that isn't just the logo. But why have two versions of the same logo, and one just looks way worse and has a curvy V?
Seriously. This is something I never understood.
Particularly as the entire point of the athletics program should be to enhance the profile of the school.
Always made me shake my head that the recent rebrand and the shelving of the old school VT logo was to create a stronger brand.... Only for the academic side of the university to completely undermine it with a cheap dollar store knockoff of the athletics logo.
Just consolidate the two and be done with it. We don't need a university logo and an athletics logo. Stick with the athletics logo, it's what everyone already associates with the school anyway.
The separation of the logos has never made sense to me. If they were drastically different (i.e. pylons vs VT) you might have some differentiation by the public. But especially with how similar they are, I'd expect if you asked a regular fan, they would have no idea that there is any separation organizationally.
In my last company, there were very different divisions in the business (mining, cranes, construction, refrigerators, etc) and minor divisions within those (excavators, haul trucks, dozers, etc.) Our customers who spent millions of dollars on these machines had no idea those divisions existed and didn't care. If it had our logo, even one with a variant, it was all the same to them.
I mean seriously, how many people would even notice if VT did this? And how many would be surprised that this wasn't it all along
All of TKP. Because we care.
Is it just me or is the ideal combo the athletic logo, but the academic font?
Nope
I'd be OK with it, mostly because I like the athletic department VT.
As someone whose dad and stepdad were both faculty and whose mom also worked at Tech for years...there is definitely a nonzero amount of animosity there, yes
That is extremely disheartening. What's the phrase? A house divided cannot stand?
How are you at all surprised about the animosity between academics and athletics? For those of us who were students, just remember how completely resentful the professors of your Thurs and Friday classes were the week of a Thursday Night home game that there was something going on that day. Academically they openly resent that athletics is a part of the college experience and look to get back at those who embrace it.
I hope that coming out of this Sands makes an initiative to break down that animosity to find a balance where academia isn't looking to kneecap athletics at a moments notice. Students shouldn't be punished for going to a football game that ends at 11pm by having a surprise exam at 8am the next day. That kind of crap needed to stop years ago.
I had to have been lucky or just didn't pay attention because somehow I never saw that. Seemed like all of my classes were pretty flexible with the football schedule (but I was also a business major so maybe that has something to do with it 🤷♂️)
I cannot agree with this more. At this point it sounds like it's a cultural cycle that needs to be broken. I sincerely believe successful sports programs is the tide that raises all ships.
When it comes to the university as a whole, academics and athletics should be synergistic with each other. Athletics is the facade that advertises the school. It gets the name of the school out there to the masses and puts it on the radar of potential students and professors.
Academia is the primary beneficiary of athletics doing well. They get better students, they end up getting more engaged alumni willing to donate, and the overall campus culture ends up doing well. With the school having a higher profile, you're going to be able to attract better talking conferences and concerts that will put money into academia. And part of that needs to be allowing students across the board to partake in large scale campus events, like football and basketball games, without worry their academic schedule will be impacted. Personally, I think the Thursday and Friday of a Thursday Night game should be campus holidays. During home basketball games, classes should be blacked out from a half hour before a game starts to a half hour after.
There just needs to be a better solution here that works for everyone. Stop fighting each other and figure out something where everyone can end up happy.
Interestingly enough, admissions tracks this and has been studying it. There is no correlation between applicant quality or quality of admitted student in terms of high school credentials, time to degree completion, or GPA while enrolled at VT as a function of successful vs. unsuccessful periods in athletics. We get *more* applicants but not necessarily *better* applicants.
Most of the revenues from these events go right into auxiliaries, not the campus itself.
Never going to happen because of SCHEV requirements for number of contact hours for classes, and presidential policy memoranda regarding instructional days (those could be changed, admittedly). It's a surprisingly big ask to do something like this. Although, fun fact, there is a resolution in process that proposes making a two-day fall break in some form, which could include a Thursday "off" that coincides with a football game. That will require some larger policy changes, though. But it's moving through governance, so stay tuned.
Even if you get the same distribution of applicants, a higher volume of applicants means you are filling out your admissions and enrollments with a higher quality of student, on average, because the number of available slots does not change. You just have a higher volume of overall better/good students to choose from and you're able to pack in more of them before going to the 'average' applicant.
I can say this: in 1997 my 2.0 high school gpa was good enough to be accepted into the forestry and wildlife conservation program; fast forward to 2023 and my sons 4.16 high school gpa was not good enough for mechanical engineering (not necessarily all related to gpa but moreso that it is way more competitive with fewer spots). The overall point i'm trying to make is that; in that timeframe the standards, the competition and the quality of student has definitely changed and improved.
My sense is that the quality of student at VT has improved, but the gpa inflation is very real. Higher than a 4.0 shouldn't be possible or necessary, as someone should be able to see what courses one takes.
I doubt if one year of success necessarily affects the following year of applications all that much.
But I would absolutely bet that the trajectory since 1999 was an improvement.
Not sure how you'd measure it accurately, so the resulting footnote explaining that correlation may rely on the intent of the entity doing the study. Also, Alum makes a good point - increased number of applications should improve the yield. Note that during this time, more admission slots were opened up as well.
I admit it's a multifaceted issue, and the points raised are very valid. The single biggest increase to VT's enrollment was joining the common application a few years ago. Our offer rate is obviously way down as a result, but yield (offered students who accept) is pretty flat. And among the 55-60k applicants per year, we're turning down students that would have been absolute locks in years past. Now everybody has a 4.0+ GPA, multiple extracurriculars, compelling personal essays, etc. So it's not easy to track. But what I'll say is that from those administrative offices, they don't see athletics generating any difference in the quality of the applicant pool. Overall number, yes, to an extent.
When my stepdaughter applied 10 years ago, she wrote an essay about how her stepdad (me) bled O&M and tied that to what a special place VT must be.
She was accepted. Also to UVa and took great delight in choosing the Hokies over the Hoos! In part because her older sister is a Hoo.
Now everybody has a 4.0+ GPA...
kind of explains why they don't see athletics generating any difference in the quality of the applicant pool
The Mike Vick Bump was an outlier that has not been seen at any other school and not replicated at VT. There are likely other factors that played into the bump that were amplified by Vick as he put VT on another level nationally
Yeah I think the post 1999 bump happened because several things aligned at the right time. Nowadays it is so much easier to find out about schools and schools market themselves much better. It just happened VT was somewhat nationally unknown but at the same time I think we were positioned well academically to grow into the spotlight. VT already had good programs and this was the perfect marketing tool at the time. I think the majority of it was VT probably should have already been larger than it was in 1999.
Mike 100% played a roll, but we also moved up in sports a couple years earlier and then were accepted to the big east for all sports at that point, so we were moving in positive directions prior to Mike.
Matt brown at extra points has a piece about this (multiple in fact), and his takeaway is that:
I concur completely. I actually discussed this with Provost Clarke not too long ago, and this was his exact conclusion from VT-specific data. Football success definitely does boost applicant numbers but there is no clear impact on yield, quality, or performance once enrolled.
Case in point:
The college I graduated from just didn't do Friday classes at all. They found that the imbalance of 2 day classes vs 3 day classes was just frustrating for professors and students so Fridays were for office hours, studio space, labs, etc. All classes met twice a week, either MW or TuTh.
We didn't even have a football team.
Ah I see the college consulted with local bar owners and liquor stores to enable another drinking night.
It was art school. Someone had to make sure the muses were easily accessible
Don't forget about staff. If you want to see pure rage, ask the staff and faculty how much they love having to give up their parking spots for tailgating and getting forced to park in Timbuktu.
I was a ME. Had multiple teachers moving tests and labs for football games. Never heard any complaints.
I had profs make sone snide comments while moving things around like you described. Some times just defeated that we'd rather go to a game. Of course Nunnally would tell us about how he beat VPI 3 times as the VMI quarterback so full spectrum there.
ah, welcome to higher education!
The perspective I can share is this - in the current environment, everyone expects funding to suck and for there to be layoffs at the university over the coming years. Discontinuation of programs, reduction in force, and hitting the enrollment cliff (the administration has more favorable projections about enrollment for us, but this is a national problem, not just VT).
What I said at the BOV yesterday was a microcosm of this - time and time again, athletics gets whatever they want and we're told to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going. There won't be raises, there won't be increases in support for most academic programs, etc. It's not dire, and we do get good support for really important initiatives, but the undercurrent is there. Are we a university or a semi-pro football team that provides education? What is our identity? I don't think this is unique to VT, per se, but I think it's probably magnified because we aren't a program with a storied football history like Notre Dame, Michigan, Alabama, anOSU, etc. We had flash-in-the-pan success in the late 90's/early 00's and played with the big dogs for a while. Now we're struggling to find an identity, but that identity is only in terms of athletics; the academic side has always had an identity that we're trying to build upon. But we see the building is being done where there is less certainty.
That's kind of rambling, but it's where most faculty minds are, as best I can tell.
Is there a good place to get public information on what the buckets of funding in the budget truly are? I know there is some info out there but haven't had the time to dig through it and make it into something meaningful. I would be really curious to see how the various budget items have looked over time and what are tangible areas to be more efficient while maintaining a top tier education level for the students.
Funny you word it that way, because every time I visit campus, the only thing I can notice is how much actual physical building is being done on the academic side. How many hundreds of millions if not into the billions of infrastructure investment has happened on the academic side over the last 20 years?
But now that the athletic side needs to be picked up off the mat, now is the time the faculty is worried about where the money is going?
I'm sorry, but as an outsider this very much sounds like a bunch of people who were content with out of control spending when it benefited them, but the second that money might be diverted elsewhere, now they're all clutching their new pearl necklaces wondering how they're ever going to make ends meet again.
For the record, we hate the constant construction, too. But the physical construction (pun not intended in my previous message) is because of state allocations and private donations. Those are dedicated capital projects, and they don't compete for resources in the same way as we're discussing.
It's not a new thing at all.
I'm just saying, when academia is arguing optics to try and sway the public (and lets be realistic for a second, that is what is going on when you have to make those remarks on their behalf in an open to the public BoV meeting that you all know is extremely high profile for the university and will be reported on by the media) you kind of forfeit the ability to argue nuance when that same attention gets redirected back to academia.
You said what you needed to say, and I don't blame you all for having the opinions that you do. But you have to realize that the optics right now is that you're complaining that the university doesn't care about academia when all the public has seen is basically a complete modernization and infrastructure overhaul of the academic side of the university including the building out of a new state of the art campus in DC while the athletic department has been allowed to wither and die on the vine. We can't see the inner workings, and to a certain point the general public doesn't care. We've seen tuition skyrocket to pay for academic ventures, so hearing these kind of complaints will largely fall on deaf ears, if not have the opposite effect in the public that you would have liked.
Like Nancy Dye grandstanding about something like a $300 raise in tuition for athletic fees (which will still be the lowest in the commonwealth) when tuition is already $17k in state and $38k out of state. Like, really, that's where you draw the line on keeping things affordable?
This is simple, we want to be a premier American Land Grant University. This means a great education and a great experience (i. e. athletics, clubs, Greek life etc), at a great price. States and govt seemed to forget their role in funding their land grants and the price part is slipping faster than expectations. Does Virginia want to run with the big boys? Then it's about striving to be in top 25% of big public U in ALL facets.
I doubt you'd find a single D1 college that does not have some level of infighting between academic and athletic sides.
I bet you'd find it and DII and DIII too