New article up by David Teel on his favorite person, Whit Babcock. Afraid to read it because retirement is not mentioned in the headline. How does this guy still have a job?
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Teel mentioned on the TechSideline podcast that he asked Babcock directly if Sands had told him he is still the AD moving forward and Babcock said yes but something like "and I realize I have to earn that every day." or something like that. So obviously he knows he is one big slip up away from being toast.
James Franklin is the current Virginia Tech football coach.
You forgot his middle initials, MF.
I'm late on this but great to see you back around
Don't know if anyone remembers, but Teel went way out of his way to defend Bronco's quick and undignified exit from UVA. Obviously in thrall with UVA, doesn't his son play there? Either way, he kissed Bronco's ass enough to pay rent for the month defending the move. I never really liked him or his writing, but after that, I tuned him out.
This is the wildest take on Teel I think I've ever seen. I respect your opinion on him, but dang. He's a legend and I have been listening to him and reading his articles for years. I think he's one of the most knowledgeable, un-biased and due-giving writers I've ever come across.
Bronco is also legitimately a good coach. He was able to win at UVA and has won a lot at a number of different stops. I was really happy he left UVA because that was a program that was actively improving to becoming a real threat to us.
Well, my take was my take as I read his defense of Bronco and I still retain the feeling. Now, was I a bit harsh in my opinion of his writing in general, I will defer to your opinion and thank you for your respect of mine. Should I have kept my take to myself? Probably, but his fawning over Bronco just annoyed me.
I will back down on this one, but I still didn't like his writing and I've read a lot of it over the years. Peace.
Fair!
Teel is a terrific thought piece writer.
But, Babcock earning a check is an insult to every mildly competent AD in P5 sports.
I think you're being a bit dramatic. Babcock has had his share of successes as AD. Unfortunately for us his shortcomings have mainly been around the football program. If you actually take a look around at other P4 programs, Tech has definitely avoided some of the most dysfunctional departments. Hopefully Franklin is as successful as we all think he can be and Whit can retire knowing he got the last one right.
Cut from the same cloth... they, v.Tight.
💯,
b.street
Hot take. B street is Babcock.
Finkel is Einhorn
It all fits
Your gun is digging into my hip...
I am not at all a Whit fan and this is not me defending him but he was pretty instrumental in bringing in Franklin. The ironic thing is that he had already signed his termination papers before Halloween and was set to take another job in the ACC. But he signed a new deal around thanksgiving that I believe will be for a reduced salary. He won't have much involvement in football moving forward but I do believe Franklin wants him in Blacksburg. JF will be running the show for the program and will essentially be reporting directly to the board.
Wow.
Very curious to know which ACC program. I would have to assume its a less football focused school like Wake.
Could've been in the ACC HQ. Not necessarily another school.
Good point!
MUCH more high profile than wake
Consider me intrigued.
Whit has done a pretty good job with Olympic sports. Less so with basketball, and pre-Franklin his stewardship of football has been bad.
I know you have your sources, and by no means am I doubting you, but it would be quite surprising for Whit to get an AD job at a school that holds football in high regard.
I think VT fans underestimate how highly regarded Whit is in the industry. Zero sources here, just heard a lot of non-VT media members speak highly of him randomly over the last decade.
Never said the job was AD either
I have heard rumors of Whit's next job being in the ACC Conf office.
GT 👀
This is super interesting. So he was about to resign but also managed to bring in JF and then decided to stay? That is quite a change of course. Im guessing the board wanted him out. If he wanted to leave on his own then why would he help bring in the news coach?
I didn't say resign
Going for overemployment?? jk jk
He was going to moonlight as Dabo's NIL stunt double...
you are very careful with your words and it is much appreciated haha
"Already signed his termination papers" sounds like the decision was not his at that time.
HO LEE SHIT.
I didnt think Whit would last after Pry and the beginning of the season. No animus, just how it works.
His public statements were very ambivalent at times concerning his status/timelines with the VT.
Yet, if he was signed to another school and dismissed by our board, something must've changed the course.
Im assuming that is JMFF making Whit's retention important; and changing the board's, and Whit's course.
It makes sense for JMFF- negotiate complete power over football, retain/save the AD while getting him out of the way. But what a power move. That would serve as another big reason for JMFF to come to VT.
But, all conjecture b/c I dont know crap....
I think there is something to what you're saying here. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the long run, but it makes sense to me that Franklin and his staff to run the Football athletic department and let Whit handle everything else.
From a budget and revenue generating standpoint, I think football does need to have a certain degree of independence. And it does seem that is the plan going forward. They are changing Merryman to a football-only facility and have already hired and will continue to hire a large staff specific to football (is the football staff now larger than the rest of the AD combined?). They pushing football-centric improvements like heating in the Beamer Barn and getting more office space.
VT is lucky to be able to hire Franklin, but I think Franklin is relishing at the power-grab opportunity at VT and the monetary support provided by the BoV. This dynamic should get VT football back to being relevant at a national level pretty quickly. Whether Franklin should have this much power is a fair question. I don't think he will ever have to answer to Babcock, and instead he has a direct line to the University President, the BoV, and the VA Governor. It is a little bit crazy to think about, but Franklin is essentially an appointed political figure running a major tax-payer supported agency (but also probably the highest state-run revenue generator other than taxation).
I really hope Babcock is let go in April and administration can use the late spring and summer slow period to find a suitable replacement. The new AD would be stuck with fall and winter sport coaches, but would have time to make changes for the following spring sports. While Babcock has made improvements and enhancements, VT feels like it has lagged its peers during his tenure
My problem here as we have seen the massive influx of funding is this
If that's accurate and Whit really was financially handcuffed, we have no way of knowing how our overall results stack up because of money more than anything Whit did. If I had to guess on our sports results, we have outperformed 14th in ACC Standings in most sports.
I don't think there is any doubt that we out performed our funding level over the last 10+ years.
This issue is that Whit was brought in to improve fund raising, he did that at Cincy as assistant AD.
Coaching hires he whiffed on two big hires,but he nailed a number of the hires. He made 2 really good basketball hires. He made a great WBB hire and we shall see with his 2nd. We have had a lot of the best coaches at VT under him.
But with out the funds to field teams it doesn't matter how good your coaches are.
Yet somehow we had the funds to hire Franklin and fund the NIL payments this year.
So Whit deserves SOME credit for pulling that rabbit out of a hat.
Also, hasn't VT won some basketball accolades under Whit?
Yes, Fuente and Pry turned out to be bad hires, but Whit has also done some solid work under challenging conditions for the athletic department. Buzz Williams was hired with some clever creative negotiation, and Kenny Brooks was a good hire.
100% His presentation was spot on and we did what we needed to get Franklin, however I dont know the inner workings of the school, but that presentation was 5-10 years later. There was nothing in it that most big time fans of college football didnt know (aside from exact numbers).
The whole funding of football has been really confusing from a guy known to make money, im not saying fire him for that, just that its been a faux pas on what otherwise would have been a stellar resume at VT.
Yes, there are a lot of known knowns, and known unknowns...
If Whit made that same presentation 5-10 years earlier it absolutely would have fallen on deaf ears if not led to his firing
I think it's worth mentioning that in a 2.5 year window, VT turned over it's head football coach of 29 years, it's AD of 17 years, and it's president of 14 years. That's not a good recipe for alignment.
I don't disagree and maybe that was the time period it took for Whit to sucessfully manage upwards, or just timing with BoV transition.
I just never like the wait until something is broke to fix it. I want people telling everyone something will break if we dont change course. I will always be that person even if it cost me my job. Bad news doesn't get better with age and it almost alway cost more to fix once broken than in a planned method. And thats bot to say Whit didn't inform his management and they ignored him, but it make it look like Whit is the one who messed up.
I agree with the principle of what you're saying, but you're ignoring the politics of it all. Whit doesn't have that luxury.
Furthermore, there's a difference between telling people the bad news in private and doing it publicly.
Agree with telling them internal vs external, and i thought i had eluded to that might be the case.
However, on the politics side of it, this is where I struggle because you have appointees and the business isn't for profit (sort of) it complicates things that shouldn't have politics involved. For the amount of money he oversees he should have a lot of autonomy to execute, but it hadn't appeared that way if he needed BoV approval to spend or communication with his customer base that it cost more money for a better product. Again I am not in the public sector so don't take this as issues with Whit as much as comparing college sports to private industries it looks odd. And college sports are looking more and more like private industry every day.
The public and private sectors aren't so different in that you have to manage internal politics and external communications, and they are likely to be completely different animals.
Yup, and if you have only worked private like me, you can look at what's happened and wonder WTF is going on. I try to give Whit the benefit because I dont know who the problem is. The hurdles are completely different.
My hot take is that while Babcock is far from the best athletic director in P5, he's also far from the worse. I wouldn't be upset if he was fired/poached tomorrow. Nor am I upset that he is being retained.
I don't fault him for his football hires - I think he made good hires that addressed VT's known weaknesses at the time of the hire. Decent process, bad results. It happens. I do think his mismanagement of Hokie Club has been pretty terrible but I also think Whit has been setup to fail.
While I cannot prove it, I do think he was (at times) hamstrung by the powers that be:
There is no way for me to prove these things to be true, but until I see evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe them.
The more this goes the more I am inclined to agree on the root of the problems at VT over the past 20 years being more in the board than anything to do with Whit. I don't think we know enough about him to determine if he's a good or bad AD because I genuinely don't think he's been giving a legitimate fighting chance to position ourselves as a peer to the schools we are trying to compete with. I think it's a bunch of crap that we just happened to find this pile of money to fund our football team with after spending years patting ourselves on the back for our ability to do more with less, and a rapidly growing alumni base and a student body that on average is the most affluent in the conference (before SMU was admitted).
Our claims of poverty never really aligned with the profile of school we had become. And now we suddenly have all this money? Uh huh
Yeap... What we've seen is basically:
Either Whit was really bad at fundraising or there were other blockers elsewhere in the org/fundraising pipeline. I have to believe it's the latter.
I have (am) first hand knowledge it was the later.
I was skeptical of the funding when I first heard about it. The university has, by design, staked out a conservative financial position. The money used for the athletics investment largely came from interest earnings on VT Foundation dollars that normally would have simply been reinvested to grow the endowment and continue to demonstrate a robust financial situation. To invest those funds in Athletics required BOV approval, which we finally got when the rector tasked the working committee with the job.
So that money is not taking away from academic programs, as is often charged?
I suppose one could still gripe about the opportunity cost of what the academic programs might have gotten if that money had been reinvested. But that's true of any expenditure ever. (Including academic expenditures.)
I can certainly see an argument that (in the current era) a successful football program that climbs into the P2 may produce higher returns than other investments the university might make.
Reinvested with what purpose though? I'd rather VT become amazing at football (and academics, obviously) than become another university owned hedge fund
Correct. I have continually countered this view in the Faculty Senate. No academic programs are being impacted by this expenditure. And I have it on good authority (trust me, this comes from the top) that the normal operation would have simply been to reinvest the money by default, something we had done year over year. While any money can be viewed as hypothetically used for some future effort, that's too abstract to hold much meaning.
Like, say, for a future Cassell Colosseum modernization effort?
I don't know about that. Young and Duffy asked that those dollars be redirected to NIL to remain competitive. Whit agreed because that was the more pressing need and both coaches were united in wanting NIL money.
I fault Whit for not following thru on the initial staffing promises to Fu and roadblocking/hamstringing the hires, especially Odom, that Fu wanted to make.
Fu didn't do himself any favors on the recruiting front but at no point did Whit lay down the law on recruiting the state or running Corny out the door. Whit should have found the money for Odom and Fu definitely should have taken the Baylor job.
I think you're confusing two different rumors/internet stories:
No real sources here, but this is just my recollection of the situations.
That's said, I do think one other very fair criticism of Whit is not being instructive enough about coordinator hires with previous coaches. Convincing foster to stay on staff with Fuente was an absolute coup. But allowing Pry to hire two first time coordinators as a first time head coach was absolutely nuts.
When Fu was hired, there were promises of staff increases for recruiting that never happened. That was the basis of Fu's threat to leave.
With hindsight it's kind of hilarious that there were threats of him leaving. Anyone who would have hired Fuente away from us would have actually been doing us a solid, even if it wouldn't have felt like it at the time. Instead we paid him 8.75 million to go away in 2021. And he hasn't gotten near coaching since, so no one has been able to make us feel like it was a mistake
and he should have taken the job
i feel like it would have worked out better for us. As it stands things didn't go great: 5-6 in 2020, fuente fired in 2021. Then hired Pry to go 3-8, 7-6, 6-7, 0-3, fired.
Who the hell knows who we hire if Fuente leaves for Baylor in early 2020, but I doubt our results would have been worse than that
I agree with this.
Fu was a home run hire at the time. Everyone thought it was a great get. Fu's inability to separate his friendship from Corn is what eventually sunk him....that and some recruiting but I digress.
I agree that he was ready to fire Fu in 2020 and when he wasn't able to was put into a predicament. I think Fu saw we needed more money and that's why the flirting with Baylor thing occured.
After a lame duck year with Fu and no real momentum for the team or in fundraising we were stuck and Pry was our best option. That obviously didn't work out but I don't know who we thought we were bringing in.
Fast forward 4 years and James Franklin is the head coach. I think regardless Babcock is done after a few years wether Franklin is successful or not. He mentioned in his pitch for more money something about 5 years left. I think he was hinting at him retiring in 5 if he's not fired in 5.
If franklin is successful he can retire on a high note. If not, he's probably fired and can still go into retirement with a nice nest egg I'm sure.
What's that Rascal Flatt's song: "God bless the broken road, that lead me straight to you..."?
We had two coaching hires that didn't pan out, BUT, without them we don't land on Franklin.
If Franklin does what we all hope/think/want him to do with our football program, will it have been worth a decade of mediocrity. IMO, yes.
All I am hoping for is that now that my girls are old enough to ask/want to watch Hokie sports and start going to games, that they get a good product on the field so they become engrained with how football felt when I was in school. They will never know about our 10 years of misery and will hopefully be hooked when they see me getting more and more invested. Selfishly, being bad for those 10 years allowed me to do so much more with them on the weekends and invest my time in them doing fun fall activities since I had checked out most Saturdays. But with that season of life have passing and they being a bit older, it's time to teach them tailgating for big games with a reinvigorated Blacksburg.
I eagerly await the day we can get a 30 for 30 or something about that press conference in December 2020. Who calls in the national press just to say you're not firing the coach that everyone has expected to get fired for most of the season?
Oh I don't think it takes much to figure out the board kneecapped his plans to fire Fuente and forced him to eat the shit sandwich in the presser. That whole "those people don't give enough for their opinions to matter" absolutely looks like him taking something someone who forced his hand said to him while forcing him to still have the presser.
i am sure a lot of us have worked some insane hours, and had some difficult times at work...but i am not sure i have ever seen someone so beaten down from their job as whit was in that presser
Not to intrude on throwing shade at Whit but did we just bypass the CGs of not posting paywall articles by not providing the link but making a thread to discuss it or not discuss it?
There's also this:
Provide a clear, sensible and descriptive title for your post. "Tyrod Taylor..." is not a clear descriptive title. "Tyrod Taylor to Play Entire Preseason Game" is.
and this:
Don't post threads with the sole purpose of riling people up. For instance, "ESPN just said ______ about us - they suck!", "Bleacher Report sucks!", etc. are not worthy of topics \ threads.
I was pretty down on Babcock until I listened to the SOS interview with J. Pearson after the Franklin hire. Probably the single most insightful interview on the VT athletic department I have ever heard. He might not have played everything perfectly, but I really think Babcock was hamstrung by the BOV and funding challenges. If you haven't listened, do yourself a favor and do so now!
J. Pearson interview
In the past, I've heard multiple reporters (Godfrey, Feldman, Staples) describe Babcock as a "company man"
Since the Franklin hire, I've listened to interviews on different podcasts with I listen to interviews from Pearson, Bud, or Racovich. After each one, I kept thinking back to how those reporter say Whit is a company man.
Those guys could've thrown them under the bus. They could've made him scapegoat. But everyone shows to portray him - whether truly or falsely - as an integral part of the coach hiring process... that tells me that Witt is not the imbecile that the fan base has thought he was for the last half decade
He's not an innovator or an outside-the-box thinker or a creative; he's gonna work within the existing apparatus to get stuff done. But he's always going to be limited by the apparatus.
Funny enough this kind of supports why Whit isn't a good fit for VT in 2026. It's going to take creativity and innovation to keep us afloat in the constant arms race, at least if and until we can get a reliable stream of money coming in. It was a major coup getting JMFF here and I think he will help out immeasurably with the money part,
butI'm not sure anyone's giving Whit the lion's share of credit for the hire, nor should they.edit: welp. just read LA's comment.
If anything I think the last 15 years have shown that anyone who comes in wish that innovative mindset would have been completely bulldozed and shut down by an executive management and board who didn't care to do what was necessary to remain relevant. I think Whit's consistent behind the scenes messaging while things cratered is a big reason why we are now operating like the school we should have been. I get the feeling the presser in 2020 was to fire Fuente, and behind the scenes whoever forced that to not happen lost all leverage when Pry's years turned into the dumpster fire it was.
I genuinely think those above Whit thought we were a unicorn that could always win on a shoestring budget allowing the school to hoard insane amounts of money over the last 20 years.
Reasonable conclusions.
It does kind of suck that the only people who will ever really know what went down there are the ones in the room when it happened.
I'm hopeful we had to walk the desert to get to the promised land if Franklin works out. White biggest hamstring was budget. I credit him for being the squeaky wheel once the right folks got appointed to the board of visitors
Like I've said before, it feels good to be out of the rain.
There's a lot of lamenting regarding how bad Whit has been. And there are a number of things that are concerning, to put it nicely.
As stated above, I wonder if he has been handcuffed for all these years. He has made some really good hires. His biggest failure has been what has happened to the football program.
My biggest issue with him as an AD is communication and messaging. It has been downright awful no matter what angle from which you choose to look.
Lets not forget that hiring coaches is only a portion of the job... Running the ad (woth proper staffing and organizational effectiveness) is the foubdational reaponsibility that then puts you in position to make effective hires and support the programs to actually capitalize on said coaching and spending.