VT News will run this story in the wake of the BOV approving the new plan for funding the Athletics Department:
https://news.vt.edu/articles/2025/09/cm-bov-093025.html
There are five items listed that the money will be put toward:
- A new "front office" for football to manage recruiting, talent development and operations
- Resources to attract and retain talented coaches in a highly competitive market
- Additional operating support for athletics teams
- Investments in Olympic sports
- Infrastructure improvements to several of facilities to improve the athlete and fan experience
I have heard the new "front office" described as being an "NFL-style" operation, which is something I think many of us hoped for. Sounds like more money is going to be put into the coaching salary pool, as well.
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Dude, you've been such a help. Thank you!
And, great post! Uplifting!
LET'S GO HOKIES!
Money is great
People make or break you
We need to hire the right folks or it'll all be for naught
My startup that burned through 200M with nothing to show for it can attest - the wrong hires accept high salaries too
This is true but it's the cost of doing business: the top candidates are not going to accept low compensation, so you just swing for the fences and hope for the best.
something, something, "scared money don't make money", something
Thank you for the information/insight you've shared.
And, yes, the hope for athletics is an efficient and updated restructuring involving splash hires.
You've made me curious over the academic issues. Maybe consider a new topic thread, but why the lag in academic pay? Is VT underfunded? Do we have administrative bloat, off-mission spending? Is this due to general inflationary cost creep? Is this due to investment in infrastructure?
I know in my healthcare world, the amount of waste and administrative bloat deflects needed funds from the ground-soldiers. I'm not sure what are the issues VT faces...
I can dig into this and try to put something together. It's a complex issue and there is what I've heard as "common knowledge" among the rank-and-file faculty and then there's the administrative position, and the truth somewhere as a mix of both. On a high level, I can say that it's a decades-long problem and some of it is related to declining public investment (we receive a solid base funding from the state legislature for salaries but it hasn't kept up with investments in other things at a state level) and the fact that we are trying to transform from "solid state school" to "world leader" and our peers are doing the same, but they're doing it faster. Some of that is related to donations also lagging; our Advancement team has done remarkable work in the last decade but we're working from way behind. And the giving is a bit uneven; Engineering gets a ton of donations and 19% of tenured/tenure-track faculty positions are endowed (prestige, better pay, etc.). Contrast that with my college (Ag & Life Sciences) and only 5% of faculty positions are endowed.
Engineering gets a lot of donations but they also get a lot of grants. I remember one of my engineering processors on causal flow diagrams talking about his annual grant funds could cover the salary of everybody in Burrus back in the 90's.
COE and CALS are usually the two highest ranked colleges in research expenditures/grants awarded. COE outpaces us, but not by this amount. I found the figures as I was investigating a related issue, and it just exposed a fundraising gap that I thought was interesting.
Given the new "front office", how much of this funding will go into actual buildings and infrastructure? With the cost of construction being crushed by inflation in the last half decade, I think we need to pump the breaks on the constant large-scale renovations and new construction if possible. That money just doesn't spread very far and I'd rather see it go into hiring competent operations and administrative personnel.
My understanding at this point is that the "front office" item is not "we're going to build offices" but for personnel. I'm sure there will be some internal renovations that are done to reconfigure space and make appropriate office and work areas, but it's not like it's going to get dumped into an office facility.
Awesome - thanks for the information.
And thank you for your insight throughout this process and for your commitment to making VT a better university. Your effort is very evident and much appreciated.
Apologies if this has been asked before, but of the $212M, what amount (if any) is already secured?
Assuming there's an amount not secured, is the plan just to increase donations or have large scale donors already been engaged to a point that it's likely this money ends up at VT?
What are Chuck Cantor and John Iezzi up to these days
Well Iezzi does financial planning/wealth management now lol
What about Diethorn and Lino Lupinetti
What about Coach Beau, is he looking for a front office gig to reboot tx2vt?
Edit: I guess he joined his dad (also named John) in wealth management...
Yea I connected with him on LinkedIn a while back and it came up recently
He was with SANIL for a couple years and does financial planning stuff now. (As it turns out, there is not a ton of money in the NIL business if you are not a player, agent, or a coach...)
Hopefully "Phase 2" is win.
Ok friends. I want to be excited about this. I want to believe this is the beginning of the moment we've all been waiting for, but I've been beaten down into skepticism.
What matters is paying for talent. Yes, good coaches, good facilities, but most importantly talent. I've followed this pretty closely but feels like I'm missing something big here. And I likely did miss it somewhere, but it's definitely not jumping out at me either.
Will this money be used to pay players?
With the House v. NCAA settlement, schools will be able to share up to ~$20M+ annually with athletes starting July 2025, but it's still optional and capped. I've seen Whit mention this in past, but what does it really mean? Scholarships, cost-of-attendance, and NIL are one thing, but the direct revenue-sharing piece is new and separate.
How much will go all in from NIL and rev share to players? Is that competitive with rest of ACC or did we just pay for a bunch more coaches and a GM?
Maybe they want to keep the total number opaque, but it's hard to really distill how much impact this money will have and thus my expectations will remain low until we land a stellar class/portal haul.
Curious what folks who follow the AD/board side more closely think.
Is there any public indication yet on our strategy here?
The revenue sharing is entirely separate, and was decided by the House vs. NCAA collection of lawsuits. The result was that institutions could allocate up to $20.5M in university funds (note: in Virginia, that means core institutional funds, not auxiliary funds from Athletics) to revenue sharing with athletes. The budget increase mentioned here is distinct from that money. VT has already allocated $20.5M for the revenue share, they worked out the details of that last year. It's an attempt to level the playing field in terms of payments to players (on top of their scholarships and cost of living). Starting next year, NIL deals all have to be vetted by Deloitte to be approved, anything over $600 has to be evaluated for fair market value, so that it prevents collectives from dumping millions into a player for doing some trivial task.
So the entire budget increase goes to admin, coaching, efforts to fund raise, etc?
Assuming this is in part to improve fundraising efforts for NIL?
And thank you for responding. I think many people see this increase and think we're rich and will compete with blue bloods overnight. But the missing part is NIL, correct? Everyone is getting the 20.5M but then there's a whole other chunk of money on top of that with NIL.
Put the term NIL to the side - it's confusing/misused a lot.
As of June 2025, there are 3ish compensation streams for players:
The next thing you need to realize is that there's a lot of fudging and accounting magic in numbers that are shared. For example, UNC said that they were funding their football team up over $20m, but then Richard Johnson reported that they are including scholarships and collective money in that number. Then you see Cody Campbell announcing Texas Tech's 'NIL Budget' is over $50m+ - that's a sum of Rev share, Endorsements, and scholarships. In both cases, university mouth pieces are phrasing these headlines to sound as generous as possible
So let's get to VT... My understanding is that:
Your skepticism is warranted:
My feel is that this is a strong first step, but we still have a dozen steps left before we can pretend it's 2005 again.
It's my understanding that this revenue share can come from university funds as well, that it doesn't have to specifically athletic department funds. Is this accurate?
Great post, though.
It's going to depend on the school and the state laws (if it's a public institution) - The NCAA isn't going to regulate how a university funds its athletic department.
Thank you for bringing clarity to the fluff.
Responses like this keep my TKP membership and Joe should pin this for everyone to read.
Back to players getting paid. My interpretation of what you said is "YES" this will help us pay players, but isn't some step level change to the "endorsement" bucket directly.
Maybe I'm just out of the loop here, but I don't think people realize this. They see comments like "our budget is going to be on par with Clemson" and think we're buying a top 10 recruiting class tomorrow.
The analogy is we've just secured budget to hire more sales people and we're hoping they increase our revenue but a lot of things have to go right for that to happen. Much of this, as you call out, will come down to who we hire and how they execute.
I definitely think VT faculty need to get in a better pay bracket. I can only imagine the budgeting goals that VT needs to consider. It's interesting on your data about the lack of correlation between athletics and student "quality". Part of that has to be that standards to get in are too low and I would argue, and have argued with data on here, that athletics is what nationalized VT which dramatically increased the academic quality and budgets. Those days however are far gone IMO.
Personally I think the issue is that academics and athletics, particularly football, are being read on the same budget. College football is a business now, not a amateur sport. It should be wholly separated from the business of the university and pay royalty back to the university. So while I hear you on the admins short turnaround to raise a bucket load of money, it may not be possible for academics especially when I feel facilities largely outweigh faculty needs when it comes to raising money from boosters etc.
I think there should be alternatives available to faculty that help them with overall living costs. I have no idea how it works but I would think faculty and family should have access to university amenties (food halls, gyms, pools, goat yoga, etc), free health care, free child care, free public transport to and from.. like a google/apple campus. Maybe there should be a Faculty Center for all of these things. I would also be all for faculty getting a commission on research grants. I know that grants pay (or partially pay) for the work on the project but I think a straight 10% to your pocket is more than fair and incentives performance that helps VT raise more money with boosters who again are likely less inclined to fund faculty raises and more inclined to put money into facilities and research.
Keep beating that drum. These would be great. It's funny how a lot of people in the local community think that faculty already get all of these things (just spend a few minutes on Facebook and you'll see everyone griping about how every problem the town has is because of students and then how faculty are living high on the hog with all their benefits). We do have a reduced-cost "early bird" gym access plan that we can pay for, but everything else is at full cost, except the BT, which is now free for everyone.
And don't even get me started on child care...that's an absolute war zone around here with how little of it we have. Just cut that check yesterday for the month...ouch.
Tech faculty does have preferred access to Rainbow Riders (theoretically the best child care) as they sold them the land for the second facility.
We do, but it's one priority position per college, two for engineering. I lucked out when my first child was due and we got on the list ahead of the normal hiring cycle, which is when the requests typically come in. Beyond that, I believe there's a bump (because there are two main RR sites) but it's still hard to get in, even for faculty. And we get the priority access because we continue to pay them every year to do so.
Can also confirm that there is even more animosity between townies and gownies than there is between faculty and athletics.
And many of those same townies will turn around and belligerently cheer on the Hokies each Saturday in fall. It was wild to grow up around
The cognitive dissonance is astounding. "Students are the reason everything is wrong in this town! Tech is too important!" But also..."Go Hokies!" and "We need football game revenue for the town to stay economically viable."
things I could get on a soap box about...
and people wonder why our generation isn't having a ton of kids....
there's not enough support in our society and the expectations (particularly on women) to earn paychecks and care for children are unreasonable
Our parents could support a family of 5 on a single, relatively modest, 60k income with a full-time stay-at-home parent
Nowadays, in order to just keep a roof over your heads, you need BOTH parents to work full time jobs making it exponentially more difficult to raise children
Facts. We have 3 kids under 4 and both work. My wife's employer subsidizes at least 60% of daycare costs. Otherwise we'd be paying $60k+/year for childcare.
The model for daycare is so broken. Because most families need two working parents to afford a child, demand has shot up, but supply is limited because (a) it's a brutal fucking job, and (b) it's subject to a lot of (very reasonable) regulation.
I really thought that the politicians who preach about family values and making it easier for families would have at least proposed legislation that allows us to write off all childcare expenses - this is literally the absolute lowest effort thing they could do to help a few people in the middle class - but no, that would ask to much.
And for the people that think daycare is a great business to get into, it isn't. I know the Owner of Rainbow Riders and quite a few of the employees. Her husband makes enough that he told his wife, just don't lose money and I don't care if you ever make a profit. Not many businesses run on that model.
The Owner was heartbroken when helping to set up the Head Start program for Christiansburg that half of her employees would fall into the level of financially being eligible for the government assistance day care.
My parents also had their parents to help out with childcare. My grandparents helped my parents out a ton as did most of my friends' growing up. These days grandparents want no part of helping raise their grandchildren. It went from "It take a village" to "fuck you I got mine" in a single generation.
part of it too is that people don't live in the same town as their parents anymore so its harder for new parents to get help from family that is out of town
That's a pretty broad brush.
Can we stick to the conversation of athletic budgets?
It's a two way street. You have to build your village. That means you have to be an active member in your community/neighborhood/whatever. It's more challenging to do that than ever before, for a variety of reasons, but IMO a lot of parents aren't able or aren't willing to do that like past generations did.
As far as grandparents go, I'm super fortunate to have parents and in laws who live nearby and are willing to help us out a lot. But neither of them want to watch my children 40 hrs/week, 50 weeks/year (I don't blame them). I would never ask that of them. They want to be grandparents; they want to take the kids on the weekend, have fun, and give the kids back lol. I don't blame them, and I want them to enjoy their retirement.
Ah boomers, gotta love them. Lol
But more seriously, it is a generational problem and a modern economy problem. Retirees are living longer and a lot of boomers want to travel and relax and not take care of the grandkids like their parents did for them. And for millennials it's tough finding work so they end up having to move far away from their parents, usually to more urban areas, where childcare costs are extremely expensive.
I texted about a dozen of my friends (mid 30s, all college educated, 2 first gen college students) and none of them had their grandparents around much when they were growing up. Idk where this notion that boomers had help raising kids from their parents, but I haven't seen it.
yeah, I don't buy it either. I do think parenting "as a village" has largely died in the US but I don't think it was something that happened quickly over a single generation. I think we've lost the art of raising children over the course of a few generations. I only met one of my grandparents one time that I remember. I had no relationship with my grandparents and my parents had no help. My dad worked and my mom stayed at home. That's just how it was.
Looking at your profile, we're about the same age (I would've been class of 2014 if not for doing a 5th year). I had both sets of grandparents who lived about 30 min away so I saw them a lot. Fairly regular Sunday dinners, birthdays, holidays, baseball games, etc. My mom was able to take a year off when I was born while my dad worked 2 jobs. When my mom had to go back to work, her mom watched me for a while because they lived on the way to where my mom worked. After a while my aunt who was a stay at home mom watched me until I started pre-school. I'm just one example, though, and my wife was the opposite. Her grandparents lived in Oregon and Washington state while her family moved all over the country so they saw their grandparents once a year, at most.
The difference that I have noticed for my son is that both sets of grandparents are more than willing to watch him, but they could never do full time (and our daycare doesn't offer part time). My in-laws (who are retired) live an hour and a half away and my parents live closer but still work full time because it's taking them longer to feel financially secure enough to retire. The situation like I had with my aunt could never happen these days. Both my brother and my wife's sister and their spouses all work full time jobs.
My kids' situation sounds a lot like what you grew up with... except I can't imagine a world where any of my BILs/SILs are stay at home parents... My BIL's wife is a teacher, so maybe she stays at home when they have kids, but unlikely for the rest. I think that's a big factor.
My upbringing was more like your aunts. Parents' families both lived in Boston, but they moved to MD for work a year or two before I was born. Saw my extended family every 6-24 months. But we had other people who were part of our village.
Yeah both sides of my family have been in DC and then Maryland since my great grandparents and we all just kind of stayed in the area. I want my kids to have the same relationship with their grandparents but the cost of living in Maryland is expensive in exchange for a reasonable commute into DC 5 days a week. Moving out to the Frederick area would be a pretty significant trade off for (slightly) cheaper cost of living but much longer commutes
Maybe I'm weird lol. My grandparents on both sides kept me as a kid growing up, and was the same for pretty much all the kids on the block. I guess it's geographic and cultural maybe.
My sister and I were latch key kids in the late 70's and early 80's. Mom stayed at home with us while Dad worked until I was old enough to go back to school. When I started in first grade, Mom went back to part time substitute work (probably 3 days a week). By second grade, she was full time teaching again. My sister and I navigated buses or walked to and from school every day and let ourselves into the house. (I understand that today that would have DCF screaming). Both sets of grandparents were both 4-5 hours away, we had moved for Dad's job.
That said, when I had a serious accident just before starting 6th grade, Dad's Mom packed up and babysat me in my bed rest for 2.5 months because Mom had to go back to work. I learned more card tricks, rummy wars, and we read the entire trivia pursuit box of questions.
our in-laws moved from Minneapolis (their life-long home) to Houston just to do child care for our/their granddaughter for 3 years
My parents met in the USAF and got married then once Mom started having kids, she got out(and legally had to at that tine in the mid 50s). Being a military family, we moved every 18-24 months around the country and the world. Obviously no family nearby in most cases. I never even knew 3 of my 4 grandparents as they died before I was born or while I was an infant(I was the 6th of 7 kids(she also had 5 miscarriages) - mom was 36 when she had me, 43 when she had my baby sister). The oldest 6 of us plus 4 of the 5 miscarriages were within a 9 year span and she had 5 kids under the age of 5 including twin infants. Needless to say, she did not work outside the home as raising us was her primary focus-particularly since my dad had frequent 30-90 day TDY (temporary duty) stints as well as a year in Vietnam in 1967/8, Zero outside help with the kids.
My ex she had a previous child, and she and I had 2 kids together just 11 months apart and likely would have followed in my parent's footsteps if she hadn't had her tubes tied (TWICE cause they grew back together). Both my parents were local but couldn't take care of the kids full time. Childcare was cost prohibitive even then back in the early 90s (we figured out that if my wife had worked she would've had to make $20k(current amount would be $40k) AFTER taxes just to BREAK EVEN after the costs of clothing/transportation and daycare, so we struggled with just me working.(plus she had chronic medical issues and disability on top of that).
My daughter -now 33-has 4 kids under the age of 5 (born March 2020, May 2021, May 2022, and August 2023). She works full time job from home and her husband is professional firefighter. They don't use daycare either.
So that's multiple generations - none of whom had other family members as full time caregivers for their kids. Not saying it wasn't more common in the previous generations for extended family to watch the kids but certainly not universal by any means.
we were never closer than 500 miles to the grandparents and they operated small farms when my sister and I were pre-elementary school age. they weren't going anywhere.
I think this is being overlooked and is almost always thought of as new stadiums. Really Tech needs to be thinking about how to make attending events on campus as smooth and enjoyable as possible. Tech needs fans telling people "it's good on TV but you just have to be there to feel it". Getting alumni back to campus more frequently will rekindle fond memories and help bolster that VT is part of their identify which is the ultimate way to build a brand.
This means getting people into the stadium seamlessly, easy access to concessions to avoid shorter lines (vendors walking the stands with tap to pay from phone or card), transportation and parking solutions to avoid long car lines, etc. Work on eliminating reasons not to come or watch the seats on the couch continue to be more enticing than seats in the stands.
As for what's next, there are some rumors floating on other sites (TSL) right now that Whit is going to announce his departure from VT tomorrow or Monday.
Who knows how credible, it probably isn't at all, but worth keeping an eye on just in case. The same person said the replacement is coming in as a "CEO of Athletics" and the candidates are all heavily NFL based, with some notables from the Bucs and Colts front office.
Tkp, come for the socioeconomics of college football and stay for the socioeconomics of raising small children
Relevant topic for me with 3rd kid on the way in a few weeks
If Marcus Vick is involved in this in any way, I may just riot. We really need to distance the fuck away from him.
But what if we are releasing energy drinks and his flavor is called stomp?
Why did someone downvote you for this? Was that an accident?
Click on the handle. I'm pretty sure that's not Marcus Vick's profile.
Also, shout out to @comitttaxfraud being CC'd on the tweet.