Shai McKenzie, the oft-embattled Hokies running back who first exploded on the scene back in 2014, announced Thursday that he intends to transfer from Virginia Tech after receiving his degree this summer.
pic.twitter.com/u7LVxpaQXm— ShaiMcKenzie (@Mckenzie_era) January 13, 2017
McKenzie, a former four-star recruit from Washington, PA, showed early promise during his freshman campaign in Blacksburg. The talented tailback found the end zone three times through the first half of 2014 — most notably in the Hokies' upset win over Ohio State — but had his season derailed by a torn right ACL suffered against Western Michigan.
McKenzie, who suffered a similar injury during his senior year of high school, received a medical hardship waiver in 2015. Off-the-field trouble followed McKenzie during his second year in Blacksburg, as he was arrested and ultimately sentenced to 15 days in jail after being charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
But despite unfortunate off-the-field circumstances and the departure of Frank Beamer following the 2015 season, McKenzie stayed put, seemingly determined to restore a once promising career in Maroon and Orange. That hope never materialized, as a crowded running back room left McKenzie behind both Travon McMillian and Sam Rogers on the Hokies' depth chart in Justin Fuente's first season. The Pennsylvania native played in just six games in the fall of 2016, upping his career touchdown total to four with a two-yard score against Tennessee.
According to his announcement on Twitter, McKenzie intends to graduate from Virginia Tech this summer, which should allow him to play immediately at the school of his choosing.
Comments
Best of luck to him. Hope he stays healthy and shows his stuff. He's a talented kid.
Best of luck to Shai . He will always be a Hokie. Hopefully he can be very successful at his next stop wherever that maybe.
Yeah this is really out of nowhere /s
Always felt he was the most natural runner of the group. If he hadn't had the injury I think he would have been dominating. Tough. Good luck to him though and hope he finds a good place to play.
...hope he finds a good place to play where we won't have to face him. When healthy, he's a heck of a talented player, and I'd much rather root for him than against him.
Good luck and safe travels, Shai.
Too bad the injury had set him back and other things. Nice message on his exit out . Good luck Shai!
That was extremely classy. I really hope Shai regains his form and excels at his next school.
I wish things had worked out so that he could stay, but I understand why he's decided to leave. Best of luck, Shai.
Is Dwayne Lawson leaving too?
It's getting real fucking hard not to downvote Lawson comments.
Guys... if you keep badmouthing him he is definitely going to transfer....
No it's not.
Every time I see a Lawson joke, I'm going hokiefireman on your asses
via GIPHY
Low hanging fruit, bro. Just gotta get more creative with it. I'm guessing my leg will get washed out, but you got one from me
I am just sad about this. He was a VT guy from where I stand. No more Lawson crap please. Its so old.
Can I second this?
I wish I could give a leg for each part of this post.
Shai fucked up (and I'm sure he knows it), but here's hoping he finds success. He's no Joe Mixon.
Wait, is there something specific he fucked up that everyone (but me) knows about?
Hint: it's in the post.
I thought his post implied fucked up something more recently that led to his transfer, not what he did two years ago. I know he was rumored to be in the doghouse with Fuente, but never heard anything solid as to why.
If this is reference to what's happened in the past, why kick him on the way out?
Not sure how any of this is "kicking him on the way" out. I linked to the Richmond Times-Dispatch story in the post because it's relevant to his time at Virginia Tech, and deserves to be mentioned.
It's also OK to acknowledge the general shittyness of that situation, while still being able to hold a competing thought that you wish the kid nothing but the best.
Of course it deserved to be mentioned in the story, but the "he fucked up" comment and then linking Joe Mixon isn't a good look. Justly simply wish him well.
I took that as "Shai may have messed up, but Joe Mixon reeeeally messed up." That's how I was supposed to take it, right? Not such a bad look.
Of course.
And, just for the record, the link is to the Brent Musberger fiasco from the Sugar Bowl, because watching Brent head down the wrong path on live TV is amusing (especially when it involves gambling) and relevant (Shai actually deserves to be wished well).
49% battery life on the announcement. Class move. God bless and go Hokies.
My first thought is he should have waited for 25%
This needs more legs. So many more legs.
It's a shame that Shai and Williams both got injuried. That was a brutal year for us for injured RBs. I think we lost 4 of them to injury. Best of luck to Shai! I wouldn't be surprised to have more attrition from our RB room but not who you may think.
What are you saying ?!
Friends of a friend etc.....
#sauces say that Sam Rogers has decided to turn 22 years old and become ineligible to play college sports.
Interesting because who the average person "might not think" is McMillian. But I saw a post suggesting that could happen and realized it's not that crazy. The person I'd be most surprised would be Marshawn Williams (technically Peoples would be the most shocking to me but I can't imagine that frankly). So in summary... I'm basically expecting the unexpected.
Completely unexpected - all of them leave.
But now that there's speculation, nothing is unexpected.
The two I think are least likely to transfer are Marshawn and McClease, so I'll keep an ear open.
No way on McClease. If he's right, he's a major weapon in this offense. Frankly, he's the best-suited back for FuCorn on the roster.
Heh. "Frankly". That just came out.
Per VoiceOfReason:
So ya McClease is not who I may think.
Just feel like he's been pretty vocal about getting back to work, all of his tweeting has been very Hokielicious - and he is Per. Fect. for this offense.
So I guess, yeah. He absolutely "is not who I may think" as well. That would be hugely shocking and disappointing.
FTFY
He probably saw the writing on the wall with Drew Harris set to enroll soon
Drew Harris jokes getting downvoted too? Is nothing sacred around here?
Shits old and tiring. Creates too much unwanted noise. I throw it in there with the whole TE and QB thing too. I didn't down vote, but still.
Humor's all about timing. As someone who loves a good inside joke, it really does get a bit tiring that every single mention of "transfer" brings up Lawson as a knee-jerk reaction. If the joke were actually used to better effect, it could still be funny.
You know what else is tiring? Seeing 100 damn new comments on a recruiting thread and they are all just jokes about how messed up the thread is getting... I doubt that changes much, and I doubt these jokes are gonna change much.
If y'all still find all that nonsense funny, then I'm a bit puzzled as to how a couple dead horse jokes gets people all riled up all of a sudden.
So how does this impact the chances of you transferring threads?
I'll stick around until it's not funny anymore, but the Lawson/Harris thing is past it's prime.
Harris? Past his prime? Nah I'm pretty sure he still plans to transfer in.
We'll have to start giving out "dead horse" legs instead of turkey legs.
And yet y'all are losing your shit over Lawson jokes...lmao
Yeah would be a little different if the joke were creative or something original and new. It's almost like those "first" comments.
I know there is the collapse option, but it sucks to read a thread for the first time and go through 50% or more Posts that are rehashed or non relevant jokes.
I ain't got time for that.
Oh don't worry. I'm sure I'm not the only one keeping Lawson jokes in the back pocket for that day when they are finally comedy gold again.
I mean, I'm not going to lie, I see the reaction like I do in this thread to the Lawson joke, and all it makes me want to do is go to it more.
Kind of like how talking about Lawson transferring has caused him to transfer not once, but twice.
Who is this Lawson person? I don't see his name on the roster.
What? Did he leave the program?
Somebody needs to start a new thread - pronto - if he did.
Nah, we can just recycle the jokes in all the other threads.
Humor's all about using all the jokes in one post-
Seth Dooley likes to fuck, so he's been denying Dwayne Lawson his pussy touchdowns. That's why Lawson is transferring. He'll make a great tight end. In other news, Drew Harris, which is actually pronounced "Kevin", has been playing for the Hokies for the last three years. No one noticed because he's fully dipped in dork magic. Oh, and Bucky Hodge s is tall.
You forgot to include a joke about TimeCop - who, I kid you not, also graduated from Bethel High in Hampton, VA. Which if you weren't aware, is the same school that Ricky Walker came from.
Also: Pinto!
pretty sure I already made that post:
2016 TKP GLOSSARY/QUICK REFERENCE
Hokie that was awesome! It should come up on the home page every time you log on. At least put a link there!
Joe stickied it on the top of the OT forum page but I don't think people even navigate to forum posts that way anymore.
This needs to be said more often. We need expiration dates on jokes or else they become noise.
To me, some of these jokes already violate the community guidelines. I dunno.
Looks like Harris is happy at IUP:
IUP Drew Harris Profile
Ugh.
Poor kid ends up at IUP.
Wearing number 38?
When you can't get a good uniform number at IUP, sumpin' gone real bad.
Maybe he chose 38 in honor of the number of college football programs he's been associated with.
His age when he gets to VT?
Lighten up....Seems like the joke police are patrolling the board...That's how it works here....Beat a dead horse....Then beat it some more.
Did you guys know that Lawson and Harris are entering the draft?....As Tight ends....Kiper has them going as a package deal in the 7th round.
Best of luck Shai. I hope you go somewhere and beast out and VT doesn't have to play against you, because when you were on, you were a hell of a runner.
As an Andrew Motu fan, and being at that WMU game, That WMU game was one of the best VT games I've ever been at
Good luck. Hope our running backs can stay healthy
Sucks he did not want to stay around and compete for playing time. Best of luck wherever you end up kid.
i get the feeling he didn't feel like he was going to be given a fair chance to compete for playing time and that's why he decided to transfer. I fully believe if it was up to him he would stay a hokie. but he had to do whats best for him and that's go somewhere and get on the field.
I don't know him at all, but it seems to me he belongs in the Lawson and Oldest Edmunds brother category of someone not willing to compete for playing time.
Accusing a player of not wanting to compete is crap. Players transfer for playing time because they lost the competition and are looking to go somewhere they can win it.
The problem I have with this mindset is that we had a discussion in a thread on this very site about Shai supposedly threatening to transfer if he got redshirted. Now as to whether or not that actually happened, it's firmly in the realm of #sauces. But we had the conversation, and people on here were vocally critical of Shai for it. I don't think the license to criticize someone expires upon transfer.
Admittedly, Shai handled this the classiest way possible. But don't act like he hasn't had a fair share of drama and criticism throughout his tenure in the program.
i wouldn't put Lawson and trey in the same breathe EVER. Lawson had all kinds of off the field issues which were keeping him from playing. Trey had injuries that put him behind the 8ball if not for the injuries he would have been a 4 year starter more than likely. he wasn't afraid to compete for a job he was passed up by a fresh who played pretty dang well (McMillian) and as a coach why would I play a guy that's a sr and has one year left coming off a bunch of injuries over a sophomore coming off a really good season. trey was never a world better as RB so his talent didn't surpass travons trey simply did what was best for him but he had options. Lawson did not.
I really wish Trey had played LB for us. He would have been a boss linebacker.
This is pretty solid analysis. Much better than making unfounded assumptions. But I will say that for most of us, so much of this is still speculative. What's in the public record is barely enough to make any real judgements. In this case though, I think your right, the public record on Lawson supports a very different conclusion than it does for Edmunds. And for Shai, it may be a little mixed but the guy deserves the benefit of the doubt after all he is graduating. So I say let's give it to him.
Calling out competitiveness of kids you don't know? That's a downvote.
You're better than that Jander.
No. Just no.
And that's where you should have stopped.
So when is the promised tell-all coming out about why this went down? I could have sworn he promised us as much a little while ago.
in his departure tweet he was complimentary of the program, which leans in the classy direction. Maybe he has decided to just shake hands and move on.
Yeah, I was 100% ready to add him to my short list of Hated-Hokies. Nothing to hate on here though. I wish him well
If true, a good decision on his part. Looks like he's taking the high road to his new destination.
He's competitive and wants to play. But Shai is also a good kid at heart, and sometimes all we have to do is take a step back and get some perspective.
He's in great position to be a grad transfer with 2 years to play. He can get a grad degree and if he's healthy enough, might get a look in the NFL. There is nothing to be gained by pouting on the internet; everything to be gained by being gracious.
Reminds me of a favorite song lyric..."There is grace within forgiveness, but it's so hard for me to find".
Thanks Shai! You will be missed. Hopefully things workout. GrindHARD!
I guess we also need a Todd Nolen joke? Will he have space to enroll?
Who is Todd Nolan? Oh the singer for Todd the Wet Sprocket?That joke was not worth offering. Really.