The new era of the Hokies Athletic Dept starts tomorrow:
White's official start date is set for Wednesday, June 24, and will coincide with an introductory press conference in Lane Stadium.
And from last week Hobbs, Hanson agree to serve as initial directors of Hokie Ventures
I know that this is the third thread about the AD, but I wanted a fresh post where we could actually discuss this topic since it is a major change for the department and university as a whole.
Forums:
DISCLAIMER: Forum topics may not have been written or edited by The Key Play staff.
Comments
LGH 🦃
For anyone looking to go immediately off topic, I have provided this helpful resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_White
White hired Scot Loeffler. Uh oh.
TBH Lefty did great at Bowling Green relative to their investment in the program.missed the joke smh
/s
But seriously, bar1990's one of my favorite people on this site.
Actually Strike One was for Brian White for hiring Loeffler.
With regard to bar1990
/s
The guy with the beard and the middle fingers does look quite a bit like me.
At the current time, there are only 4 members that I pay attention to every word they put on this site. Bar, LTRepeter, and GuitarMan. And you.
Well Up Yours too buddy!
Lahokie
Oh yeah. He's a real beauty.
Okay, now tell us 4 members you ignore every word of.
The 4 above might have just made the list haha!
Depending on the day, B-Street. Do I want to give myself a headache trying to figure out his post or not?
The use of Ai to translate B Street was genius and saves the headaches.
I can tell you I ignored a whole bunch of DCwilson's ramblings, especially at the end. And anybody who writes a novel on a subject that I'm not particularly interested in. That's who I ignore.
I feel like you probably mean me on this one lol
I'm not as eloquent as many of the users here so it takes me lots of words to get my thoughts out
I really didn't have anybody in mind.
There are a few of us that are wordy
Yes.
I was thinking "hmm what coaching hire will be his first real test?" but the more I think about it, it's going to be fundraising and NIL. More
money, less problems seems to be the current collegiate landscape haha. Nice to have a fresh set of eyes coming in, even if he isn't a huge name. Welcome, Brian!
First step in putting more resources into football and less focus on non-revenue sports. Franklin's sign off was probably a big part of this hire.
So who's going to be his boss? Imagine it's a little weird accepting a job without knowing who you'll be reporting to long term.
James Franklin
Made an amazing hire at FAU in men's basketball right out of the gate. Took them to a Final Four, and then that coach went oh to win a Natty at Michigan.
And promptly bolt to the NFL when the clouds started gathering over Ann Arbor.
If the basketball coach was talented enough to bolt to the NFL then it really was one hell of a hire!
Don't all sports sport the same? /s
I mean, a ball's a ball's a ball, amirite?
It's like when I was explaining baseball to a postdoc in my old lab who was from Italy. I say to her. There's 2 teams, and there's a ball, and th object is to score more than the other team. It's just like soccer.
One of the lab techs (from the US) countered it was nothing like soccer.
"Balls ball the same" - unknown
"Balls ball the same" - she
Fair point.
I went to Ann Arbor for five days a few years back in October and gotta say, there are always clouds over it.
Ever since they robbed VT at the Sugar Bowl, anyway.
Whether this prediction comes true or not, it feels great to hear an AD talk about winning a national championship openly instead of talking about "competing nationally and at the top of the ACC."
I think this reflects the changing nature of the post season. When it was only 2 or 4 potential participants every year, talking about competing for a national championship was just foolish. The number of actual potential teams was tiny.
The expanded playoff makes it plausible even if still a difficult goal. And for the last few years, us saying anything like that would have been laughable. With the momentum from the Franklin hire, things seem more optimistic
edit: to be clear, I mean in the recent context. When we were winning 10 games a year and consistently at the top of the conference, aiming for one of those 2 spots was realistic. Not so much the Fuente-Pry years. Obviously the Franklin years are TBD.
Removing the empty trophy case was a mistake.
Ok, maybe it wasn't.
But allowing the program to flounder to a point where the empty trophy case was viewed as laughable instead something to aspire to was a problem. The messaging for the past several years should have been about trying to get back to that level. You can acknowledge it's not likely any time soon without just simply setting lower goals.
I'm firmly on record as believing it was a mistake.
Fortunately, it seems we are re-big-doggifying ourselves and a lot of my other laments in that comment no longer apply.
I upvoted your post then and I upvoted this one too.
you a real one for that
Putting the trophy case there in the first place without the ability to back up the aspiration was also a mistake.
Didn't the trophy case get installed after the loss to FSU? I know we didn't get back to the big game after that, but I don't think it was crazy to suggest that we could at the time.
You memory is correct, and at the time it seemed reasonable. The problem is that we did nothing more to back it. Frank continued to win for the most part, but we didn't continue to make the investments in the program. Maybe you can point to merrymen as the big investment, but the real need was in the recruiting and the assistants. We didn't figure any of that out until about 8 months ago.
Not sure I agree with this take. Kevin Jones commitment was after the 99 season. After the UNC flirtation, Beamer became one of the highest paid coaches in CFB with the third highest paid staff if I recall correctly. Beamer bent over backwards to keep Marcus Vick on the roster.
I think malaise (for lack of a better term) really started setting after the move to the ACC.
The 3rd highest paid thing lasted a couple weeks, like when we wanted Pry to have the 3rd largest budget in the ACC. Everyone passed us.
Keeping Marcus on the team is nothing when compared to those 90s teams. There is a reason a felony gets you suspended now and Franks teams in the 90s were a big part of that, though baseball added to the excitement. That was just Beamer's M.O. Peter Warrick was Karma.
Paying coaches and looking the other way doesn't mean you're serious. Lane needed upgrades and that took a while and isnt as big as it should be. Athletic dorms were subpar vs competition. Weight room and lockers took a decade to update. How many people did we have scouting highs school players? How many scouting opponents? What did those staffs look like? Beamer had a recruiting coordinator that also coached for the longest time. When the Lemichael James thing came out of oregon VT was was proud it spent like $250 on recruiting services meanwhile Nebraska fans were developing Hudl to help scout more players faster.
Tennessee altered construction schedules so that recruits for Pat Summit wouldn't have the power go out on them in the middle of night while they slept.
I don't think VT ever had the behind the scenes stuff that you could find a lot of schoola at the time.
It was a different era though. Being competitive with top 5 teams was a difference of 6 or 7 figures; not 8 or 9.
Also in those days, money wasn't holding Beamer back. If you gave him an extra million, it just would've been distributed to the coaches already on staff. It didn't occur to Beamer that he could have an army of assistants scouting recruits, another army of assistants scouting future teams, another army self scouting, etc. I think it was 2010 when bud famously went up to Iowa to learn about defending the triple option where he discovered that every position coach had their own assistant?
TLDR; the limiting factor through the meat of the Beamer era wasn't money; it was creativity.
This was before the Saban-ization of college football.
The dollar value wasnt a huge hurdle, but no one forced Beamer to do what others knew needed to be done.
We had done more with less, but tgat is a huge reason why we didnt do more.
If I say I want what so and so had earned, then the first step is to learn what they did to earn it and replicate as much as possible. So If I am the AD and buy off on the goal of a national championship then 1) i need to learn what the ADs at FSU, Nebraska, UF, Michigan, etc were doing as they all just won championships. I need to make sure my coach and their staff is doing the same.
Saban didnt as much overhaul the system as much as legitimize it and organize it. Under Don Nehlen, WVU had a scout in the NRV watching high school kids and VT, but they were a volunteer. Saban made that kind of position part of the team and not just some one giving opinions on what to do. Integrated into the machine.
We didnt spend the money to go find out what successful teams were doing. We didnt align the university with the goal, we just put up an empty trophy case with no investment in learning what we needed to do.
Ballein Malaise
Getting into the ACC and winning it Year 1 put the program on autopilot in many regards. I think the admin and staff felt we had "arrived" as a football brand and that being at the top of the ACC at the time was enough where recruits would just flock to VT. It certainly lasted for a generation, but we never put in the effort to keep up with where the sport was going. Everyone around us was getting better, and we felt if it ain't broke don't fix it. We slowly got stagnant from there as a program and a brand until we had taken on too much water, and it was too little too late for Beamer to turn it around in his later years. Finally shaking up his offensive staff in 2013 and at least attempting modern recruiting approaches was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic by that point.
Excited about the hire. Nothing guaranteed but comes from a great athletics family and network. Father was AD for ND and Duke, brother Danny is currently AD at Tennessee and probably one of the best run ADs in the nation, and his other brother is head MBB coach at Georgia. Franklin I believe had a huge hand in this as well. Let these guys cook together. Based upon Franklin and White's stated ambitions today (winning a natty at VT), I'm stoked. Also great network if we were looking to hop over to the SEC one day.
I know you've all been anxiously waiting for me to weigh in. Here goes.
He brings back Stick it In, he can do whatever else he wants.
I saw a sauce today on a personal facebook page that the drumline is ready with Stick It In. So ready that they were prepared for it last year, but there wasn't much to stick in.
I'm pretty sure it got played last year
Edit: https://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2025/november/23/stick-it-back-real-time
Yes, but it wasn't consistently played in the red zone. I think with a new AD and the old guard and the pearl clutchers not having much say in this new era of college football, we'll be hearing it consistently.
I was in the drumline during an era where stick it was banned and all members of the era where it was allowed had all graduated.
We were absolutely prepared for it and each subsequent group has been too.
His entire press conference was about raising money. Not evaluating coaches, hiring people... money.
This leads me to believe that while Hokie Ventures will take some stuff off his plate, he is still going to very involved in raising revenue
I've heard he'll be involved with that.
Fix Hokie Club so it actually connects with Alumni. There are only a couple chapters thst really appear to be active. Offer things/opportunities to the majority that cant routinely get back to Blacksburg.
Also do a better job connecting it to students while they are there much like IGTAY at Clemson.
My daughter will be a junior at VT and each year has purchased a season football ticket.
She has never been contacted by the Hokie Club.
I've lived in Atlanta for 13 years now. Last time any head coach came to visit alumni/donors/fundraising event was Fuente ahead of the 2018 season. And the event was OTP 😑
I did talk to the head of Hokie club at the time. I can't remember his name, but that wasn't a great interaction.
Anyways, I'd love for coach franklin or coach pry to come through for an event. I'd also love for HC to have some benefits beyond season tickets.
Bad call that it was OTP. I lived there from 2016-2020, and I don't even remember him coming into town. The local Atlanta chapter had a Facebook group, but they weren't great at getting in touch with local alums...
OTP? Over The Phone?
Over The Pants
Outside the perimeter.
If you leave the city and go into the burbs, you risk bursting into flames. I only went OTP once to go see Justin Fuente. I was wise and took the marta, which cast a protective spell over me, saving me from the evils of suburban Georgia.
Is that going into or out of the city?
Going out. I actually got a ride back to midtown with some 70 year old Hokie who lived in VAHi that I befriended.
Half the cities I have been to, it seemed like the demilitarized zone was inside the city limits rather than outside.
Funny, those of us who grew up in the Atlanta suburbs (Sandy Springs) always thought the moat was further out.
This would be great. Between life commitments and logistical pains of Blacksburg, I'd reckon season tickets aren't even remotely on the table for more than 95% of even the active, sports-crazed subset of the alumni base.
Triumph has done this a little bit with exclusive content and I think you get the equivalent of a Cameo shoutout with certain tiers of membership. But I think it's pretty limited and there's opportunities to do a lot more.
We tried that over here and Alumni office said that they can't share private information about students because they are government funded. Neither to us or to other organizations. Meanwhile other universities have alumni apps connecting them with links for donantions.
Alumni office has ALWAYS been a barrier when trying to connect to other alumni. Doing the exact opposite of what it should be doing.
Just listened to the David Teel podcast on TSL. One of the things that he pointed out was that Brian White talked about metrics associated with fundraising. Weekly meetings and monthly catchups with metrics to meet. That tells me that there's going to be some action and accountability on the fundraising side.
The other thing I liked is that somebody in the field said that he knows how to relationship. And while the speaker was pondering on that word being used as a verb, somebody else used that word in the same context. I like that.
We have an AD that (a) knows how to fundraise and (b) knows how to relationship. That's a great fucking start.
nah... we all know all relationships relationship the same :-)
Really think its a leg up with his family being in the business. He has people he can call for advice or thoughts no matter what.
His dad was an AD at some premier schools to include ND and his brother is currently AD at Tennessee. His other brother is HC for basketball at UGA.