With VAs recruiting landscape changing, the Hokies have found themselves on the losing end of several recruiting battles. The Buckeyes have been the benefactors of VTs misfortune. That led many recruiting analysts to ask the $ million questions:
If Vick was in high school now? Where would he go?
http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2014/09/what_happened_to_virginia...
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I saw this earlier. Interesting thought. But hasn't it been said Vick wanted to go to Syracuse but his mother wanted him to stay in state?
Oregon.... end of discussion
He liked Syracuse but didntt want to be compared with McNabb so he looked elsewhere. His coach pushed hard for VT. Thanks, Tommy Reamon!
In this scenario, does he play for the Thoroughbreds?
Too far away, totally different circles, IMO.
These kinds of articles are frankly stunning to me. "What happened to Va Tech?!" A couple of recruiting years spotted with attrition & misses is basically the answer. Of course there's other contributing factors, but it's not like we bottomed out at 1-11 or anything, geez.
Stuff happens, we're on the way back and I'm starting to get a sneaking suspicion that tomorrow night will be when the rest of the country notices.
It's just how people think of us. We were so good for so long it was just expected that we'd be a 10 win team, now that we aren't we've kinda disappeared from the national stage. But I agree, all great teams have rough stretches. But when you're worst rough stretch is still making bowl games and competing for a division title I'd say you're doing just fine.
It's funny, Texas has been "down" for 4 years now (including 5-7 and missing a bowl in 2010), but ESPN and the national media were all over them last weekend. We've had 2 "down" seasons, and the national media forgets we exist.
Espn wants to push their agenda which includes the sec network and longhorn network. That's their reason for being all over Texas's nuts and why they always compare every team to the sec. Nothing new
One team has a history of national titles, the other has won 1 BCS bowl game and has a 1-25 record against top 5 teams all time. Do you really blame the national media for not respecting VT? What is our premier win in the last 10 years?
In their mind, we are more on par with TCU than Texas. Nice program, well run, well respected, but not a national program. And until we win games like the one tomorrow, that will be our perception.
I agree. Unfortunately.
when you win the ACC four times in the last 10 years, you should get more respect from the media. UNC hasn't even won once and they are getting more respect. bullocks!
Couldn't agree more, makes me angry.
Unfortunately that is the new world we live in, everything in sensational. One down year (two for us meow) and suddenly everything is the sky is falling mentality. Everything is cyclical, we have been down hopefuly in a few years we will be back to contending if our good recruiting and we keep hiring quality young coaches to replace the old guard.
Just how things are these days. You can't hem and haw about how people perceive you, just have to go out there and change it by your actions on the field.
So when we win, will they write a "What happened to OSU?" article?
He would go to Virginia Tech and fulfill his destiny.
I'm guessing he would still go to Warwick High.
Remember Mike Vick wasnt even rated the best qb in the state, everyone wanted dell curry. So i'm fairly certain that if the situation played out again the results would be the same
Edit thx for correction Ronald Curry
Actually it was Ronald Curry.....we managed to get Dell Curry, in another sport.
he turned out to have a steller career at UNC. im sure it was academics that was the deciding factor for him leaving VA.
on the other hand if we could have landed steph curry to play football im pretty sure he would have been tyrod taylor 2.0
He didn't exactly have a stellar career, and academics was not the factor. The ability to play in a high visibility program in two sports and to also play in both sports was a factor for him. He wanted the academic prestige, to be sure. But it really came down to UVa vs. UNC for him. He thought both sports programs at UNC were superior to UVa, so he went there.Injuries kept him from achieving his expectations in either sport, especially basketball.
From what I understand, his real dream was following Iverson into basketball, who had a similar pedigree. He went to UNC because of their basketball program, but he washed out there and fell back on football, where he was a pretty good receiver. I think he'd have been just as good as Vick if he'd concentrated on playing QB instead of basketball.
He was a receiver after he went to the NFL, where he was projected as 'an athlete', eventually landing as a WR & ST player. He was a QB at UNC, where the favorite excuse for his failure to live up to expectations was - 'He had 3 different OC's in four seasons'.
He was all set to be their starting PG his senior year before giving up hoops to focus on football.
After he decommitted to UVA, he was all set to commit back to them and called UVA. UVA's football program put the letter of intent in the mail. The next morning he changed his mind and called UNC, who had someone drive up from Chapel Hill immediately. As always, LOLUVA.
Also, I was visiting friends at LOLUVA one weekend in the fall of 98. They literally burned Curry in effigy Friday night. It was ridiculous. Also very uncomfortable to see a bunch of angry young white dudes burn a black dude in effigy, but I was uncomfortable that whole weekend.
(please don't judge me harshly for having LOLUVA friends. I was young. I've since grown as a person).
Yup. He wouldn't have been a 5 star guy. He'd have been a 3-4 star recruit who gets overlooked by the big programs and finally "settles" for the home state school. Then he would go on to never redshirt because, quite frankly, HCFB knows you put your stars in early now. We win 1, maybe two national titles
Still would have redshirted. Frank promised Reamon he would, so that is what he would do again.
He was the #3 prospect in the state IIRC behind Ronald Curry and David Terrell. Syracuse was still a huge program at the time and they wanted Vick. He was a huge recruit.
He redshirted because he needed the redshirt year, and Vick's HS coach made a big deal about it. That's a big part of why Vick ended up at VT.
"What happened to Ohio State" - Everyone in football the years immediately before Urban was hired
College football is not static... teams ebb and flow, even the great ones. Just because VT had down years in 2012 and 2013 does not mean we're not good in 2014 and 2015. Its a stupid question for a stupid article.
With that said, I hope anOSU's players have this same mindset going into the game.
Its a stupid question for a stupid article.
This. God knows, I love me some idle speculation in the off season.
But asking what might have happened a decade ago in a hypothetical situation that didn't exist then? Even I wouldn't try to pull water from that black hole of a well.
Good lord -- I expect this kind of mindless space-filling from ESPN, but other sports sites should really expect more from their contributors.
What navel-gazing editor looked at that and said "Yeah - that's hard hitting and insightful journalism/commentary right there. Print it!".
You might just as well ask: "What if VT had won 3 National Titles with MV7? Would anyone have stopped the resulting recruiting juggernaut from SW Va ever again?"
Or: "Suppose Saban, Meyer and Miles chose to coach in the Big 10 rather than the SEC -- would the SEC have won any championships in that period?"
To the author of that piece, and to his editor, I say:
Exactly. How quickly people forget how bad LSU was under Gerry DiNardo, or Alabama under the coaches bridging Gene Stallings and Nick Saban. Take a look at USCw. Dominant in the 60's and 70's. Second tier in the 80's and 90's (some of those years even with the same coach in John Robinson that helped lead them along with John McKay in the 70's), elite, and now back to second tier. Oregon was a nothing program until they played the Kerry Collins Penn State team in 94. Oklahoma was TERRIBLE in the early 90's.
And then other programs that have been powers either traditionally or for shorter periods are way down. Colorado won a National Championship in the early 90s and was a perennial power. Same for the Don James Washington Huskies. Notre Dame and Michigan don't have nearly the impact on the national consciousness, and the U definitely isn't back.
It is a cyclical game. The big factor for VT is resource availability. Even when Alabama was Jefferson Pilot Sports Game of the Week down, they had the resources to build success when they got the right coach in place. For Christ Sakes, MACK BROWN won a title at Texas and LES MYLES at LSU, and I don't think those two could lead a pack of Cub Scouts out of a Wal-Mart.
Just guessing, on the resource availability scale (potential fundraising specifically for athletics) Virginia Tech may be around 40th in the country. The fact that they were a top 10/top 20 program as long as they have is a testament to the staff and to the VERY taxed alumni base.
Great points, but I will say we probably have a futures potential much, much higher than what our spending levels are right now. The fact of the matter is, up until relatively recently, Virginia Tech was a small school. Compared to the peers we have now, our graduating classes were small, which meant our Alumni giving potential was small as well. Fast forward to now, and we're churning out 6k alumni per year (and growing) most of which going into some of the most ludicrous markets available, in Engineering, Finance, and Defensive Contracting. What we have is a major pool of resources that is cultivating and growing, and has the ability to really significantly boost the athletic fundraising in the future. Whereas most of the alumni who are at the prime giving age grew up at Tech when we were a national also-ran just enjoying our po-dunk days of playing Richmond and VMI, the swoon of alumni over the past 20 years has grown up with Virginia Tech being a top team in football, with the expectations that we should be a top team in football, and, if we can carry through to when these alumni reach prime giving age, our annual fundraising potential should absolutely explode.
Even better, we have a guy in charge of the Athletic Department who seems more than up to the task of energizing this portion of the alumni base and getting the fundraising going.
IF. JFK hadn't been shot, would we have still gone to the moon? #realtalk
Now that's an article I would read and enjoy. Probably depends on how much bragging the Soviet Union was doing.
Wherever the fuck he wanted
The real question: How the hell does UVA manage to waste so many good talents from the state of VA?
Because they're focused on making top$$ in the NFL rather than winning and becoming another family member in HokieNation!!!
"Long before recruiting databases kept track of top talents, Virginia Tech plucked most influential players from the Virginia, especially the Tidewater area, otherwise known as "The 757," the region's area code. "
What a terrible sentence.
The only Actual Virginian used for info for this "article" was a recruit's father?
No Andy Bitter, TKP, or even TSL. Hokie Haven? nope. David Teel? Nada.
If they had they would have noticed that while the 757 is talent rich, three of the four prospects mentioned in the article are not even from Tidewater. Two from NOVA and 1 from the 804.
Honestly, who knows. Recruiting has changed so much since then, all you can do is speculate for fun.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.