#Hokies coach Justin Fuente is speaking to reporters on a Zoom call. Raheem Blackshear's NCAA waiver as denied. "We were shocked and saddened by that." VT will appeal.— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) August 14, 2020
Why does the NCAA seem to hate VT transfers so much?!
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Of course it was. He isn't a QB for a blue blood.
EDIT: The only way these guys will get these transfers waivers to go through is to lawyer up immediate and tell the NCAA they will sue if it is denied. They have to stop treating the NCAA as a good faith actor in this process.
Or *checks notes* Maryland
Taulia Tagovailoa didn't even ask for a waiver initially, his whole reason to transfer was opportunity for playing time, and he fully expected to sit this year...then JJ opts out and *checks notes* magic?
NCAA officially states that transferring to VT is an automatic wavier denial.
That's exactly what other coaches say on the recruiting trail in so many words, btw
Mind boggling. Absolutely mind boggling.
Starting to wonder if VT is doing something wrong with their waivers...
We seem to struggle to get kids through admissions as well. We'd already have a transfer corner from Iowa on the roster before Farley opted out if they could have gotten him through.
Correct
Our compliance department is inept
Or just not handing in the bribe money like other schools.
This is unacceptable.
Does the 'compliance department' count as 'support staff'?
Depends on your definition I guess. I haven't heard that we're overwhelmed in that department though
Are we forgetting to sign or date a form or something? Why is this so hard to figure out??? We should have a massive list of lessons learned at this point from previous failures.
This is where I've been going lately too. I wonder if this is a case of us simply following procedure, sending something off by the book, and waiting. Squeaky wheels get the grease. The more you hammer the NCAA and send strongly worded letters from lawyers, the quicker and more positively the respond I would bet.
Do we need better lawyers or something??? There HAS to be something (other than the blu blood thing) that we could do better in this process. This is not just coincidental at this point when SO many other players get approved
If we actually play football this fall we might as well play him anyway. What is the NCAA gonna do? Take away the national title we won't win?
Reduce the number of scholarships we have and I'm sure that would help with recruiting /s
That's right, dude.
NCAA isn't giving out trophies this fall, so that means they can't hand out violations either. Fuck 'em.
Let our planes fill the skies...
I endorse this post!
Arizona State transfer QB Joey Yellen has been granted immediately eligibility at Pitt.
My shocked face
Can anyone actually put into perspective why this happens to us? It's easy to say that the NCAA just hates us and bitch about it, but what is really going on here? Do we just suck at this? A new coach seems pretty clear cut for a waiver.
The only thing it could be is that we get dubious transfers in terms of their cases for eligibility. They are flimsy would be my guess? It is very annoying though. Braxton Key's grandmother? Ill? Meanwhile brock hoffmans mom was undergoing Chemo, etc. Its a crock.
People are going to cry about the NCAA but there simply has to be something our athletic department/football program is doing wrong. And I use "wrong" loosely, it might just be that doing it "by the book" is not the way to actually get a waiver through and every other school in the country has figured out a way to fudge the paperwork to push it through while we sit here being the nice guys and getting stepped on, but somebody within VT needs to figure it out and adapt.
So lie, and get then get caught. I'm sure that would go over well with the fan base.
Lawyer up, get the extremely long list of transfers approved for bullshit reasons, and threaten to sue the daylights out of the NCAA.
Welp NCAA making sure at least one thing stays the same even though it's 2020.
via GIPHY
I would argue we need Jay Bilas to tweet the NCAA.....but that didn't work last time. This is insane.
SVP couldn't help either.
Whit needs to step to the plate, there is no reason why other schools have no issues getting waivers and we can't get 1. Hoffman and Blackshear should have been easy grants!
I agree. Whit needs to address this. Reporters need to question him hard on this, and he needs to issue a statement/explanation.
"shocked and saddened" sums up why VT's waivers get denied. The reason others get approved is because they don't get to the shock and saddened stage...they immediately become aggressive. We legit are the nice kid trying to ask out that one girl "she said she will text so I will wait until then I don't want to be rude or seem desperate". If our reaction is always going to be shocked and saddened after the waiver for Brock.....the hope I hold for this coaching staff and Athletic department is gone.
Edit: too much drinking on the course before noon.
THIS is how to TKP well.
Drinking before noon...
I don't understand. What exactly is denied? Isn't it an automatic approval because the team he left had a coaching change?
Or am I not understanding the rules correctly?
You forgot the small print: If the team has a coaching change and the player is transferring to not Virginia Tech. This exception is included on every possible waiver reason ie if the player is transferring to be closer to home because of a family medical hardship and the player is transferring to not Virginia Tech
Ok. I'm now of the belief that our compliance office or whoever is responsible for handling this is staffed with complacent people that just don't bother to do the proper work to fill out the requests (ie looking up all the codes and conditions to maximize the chance its granted. The people in the office just see it as a cushy job and just do the bare minimum to get by. It's just paper work, they can halfass a form after 3 coffees to start the day and then take an early lunch that lasts all afternoon.
I'm starting to think the issue is incompetence on our end - fool me once, shame on you. fool me (Hoffman x 2, Burmeister, Blackshear, Nolley) 5 times, shame on us.
Nolley was not a transfer, and there was a very valid reason for him to be designated an AR. So leave him out of this one.. plenty of other head scratching examples to illustrate the point.
Valid reason?? NCAA didn't believe he was smart enough to get high test scores? What am I missing?
All signs point to him cheating on his ACT initially.
If you don't have the grades to get in and cheat, try to hire a guy who can barely get you over the limit, not some brainiac.
It didn't match his high school GPA, but considering while he was ineligible he made the ACC Academic Honor Roll I don't think he cheated. I know a lot of people who didn't give a shit about academics in high school, but did when they realized they were being recruited.
The ACT is easy as balls and what he got wasn't that good. It's pretty believable to me that he got the what he did
The gap obviously doesn't happen often enough to be a problem. It may have been quirky, but it was the same rules everybody else gets admitted by.
some things to consider...
end result: Nolley missed the NCAA run, but Buzz was still successful at getting him into VT's program as a practice player and he ended up being a major contributor the following year.
It is
I don't even know how you could butcher the application on this one. It doesn't make sense.
Any chance you could expand on this?
Would love to understand what percentage of transfer waivers are declined each year.
Our number divided by the total.
lol
Well, if there was ever a year to get denied in.
Can someone summarize Blackshear's situation and waiver request for me? I haven't followed too closely.
Chris Ash, his former HC at Rutgers, was fired mid-season. Normally a coaching change is an automatic waiver
And VT's compliance department is *that* inept?
Didn't he also sit for the remainder of the year/play less than 4 games for the intent to transfer?
Just looked it up - he played the first 4 games, but sat for the remainder of the year after the coach was fired.
That's the issue I have. It's obvious that the coaching change was the reason for his transfer. Just impossible to understand the NCAA's ruling here
Is the rationale (according to the NCAA) that he should have transferred immediately upon the coach leaving, which, you know, might be tough with academics. Or should he have played the whole year and then transferred, which seems like it would invalidate the whole not wanting to play for a new coach. Oh, I forgot the small print - he could have transferred somewhere other than VA Tech to get his immediate eligibility.
You're a student athlete, emphasis on student. That's why you should've transferred in the middle of the semester when your football coach got fired.
Of course he was denied. Did any of us really expect it to be granted?
I need more information on this one. It doesn't make sense to blame anything on the technical application considering the hardship could be summarized in one sentence AND he immediately benched himself after the coaching change.
Yo what the fuck, man
This seems like beyond normal, like maybe VA Tech slept with the NCAA Compliance department's little sister or something. Maybe Tech was supposed to be the safety school for their director of compliance and rejected them or something. There has to be SOMETHING, because I hear about transfers being granted immediate eligibility all over the place, but we seem to always get them denied.
It is about ridiculous.
It's almost as if they have to deny some waivers (ours) to "prove" the system works.
I'm in favor of having a system where the rules are consistent and followed, or we need to hire whoever these other schools are hiring to grease the wheels. Why not have a system where you're allowed one transfer in your college career, period? Second transfer, you sit out a year?
Because the current process isn't working out for us.
F*ing fire them all. Incompetent at their jobs
First and foremost, you must mean the NCAA.
And secondly, anyone at VT who can't seem to figure this out when so many others have. I can only assume it's because they're dumb enough to be honest.
Reminds me of Greece, where nobody is dumb enough to tell the truth on their tax form.
I'm not sure who is to blame here and try to avoid the we must suck at our process here argument.
The issue to me is that this is an obvious transfer due to the coaching change which is an automatic waiver in many other cases.
Isn't it time for some lawyers to take on the NCAA here to justify how these rulings are equitable when they affect so many others, but most especially the student-athlete who is forced to put their faith in the process?
I must be missing something, as some of these cases seem like slam dunks, and the NCAA is splitting hairs.
Whoever is approving these at the NCAA is a wahoo. Seriously it feels these denials are personal...
More likely a UNCheat grad.
Add this to the blunder for VT. Between the C- issue, the "extra math class" issue and now the compliance issues it's all on VT.
Not shocked considering they presented the wrong waiver for Hoffman then when his parents & lawyer got involved and figured it out it was too late.
Now if the NCAA's job is to get it right, how can it EVER be too late to do the right thing by the student?
Also, the NCAA's compliance department should be trying to do what's right for the student, not blocking them out over a technicality. If Hoffman should have qualified under a different criterion, how could that not be sorted out?
Even if what you say is true, the NCAA is implicated for being form over function. I'm just not buying it.
If it looks like grift and smells like grift...
Still, if we're paying people to handle this on VT's end, it seems like a waste as they are utterly incapable of successfully navigating the process. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Because there has to be standards and rules. It's our people's job to figure it out. That's literally what they are paid to do. And they aren't delivering. I thought it was unfair before to blame them. But this is a pattern of incompetence. We are not a charity. This is a business and people need to perform or be held accountable
Actually donations to the university are tax-deductible unless you're getting season tickets in return so...
Just because you can charitably give to the school or athletic department doesn't mean they are a charity.
They are a charity, in that they give scholarships to athletes.
Most sports aren't profitable.
They're a state owned entity anyway so the point is moot
I donate every year to fund scholarships.
I consider it a charitable contribution. I don't get season tickets.
I'm not saying it isn't a charitable donation, it is. But their primary purpose is not to be a charity
It's a non-profit that supports sports and scholarships for student athletes.
Because they net waaaaaaay more money from running the sports. Not to mention that I believe you fall on the "pay the players" side of the fence which would make the players more like employees in a business
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, and I don't think they should pay the players.
I think it should remain amateur athletics, and that there should be a different avenue for players who want to get paid and not attend school.
I'm A-OK with superstar players who can get paid to bypass college football being allowed to do that.
I'm a little late to this, but I agree with your comment. In my mind, giving money to VT is a 'gift' whereas giving money to the American Cancer Association is 'charity.' It's a personal distinction, not a legal one.
When I donate money to the Hokie Fund, it's for student-athlete scholarships. Meets every definition of charitable contribution I'm aware of.
Not sure how you can claim that's not a charitable contribution. Someone gets their education paid for. Something I didn't get, by the way, which gives me an appreciation for it.
That's fair. I guess when I give to VT, my intentions are more self serving than yours. When I give, I'm thinking more 'I want my football team to be good' than 'I want to pay for someone's education.' Then again, I think my recent gifts have gone to VT football, not the Hokie Scholarship fund.
That's just it. There are rules. Rules that other schools seem to get waivers for on a regular basis, and that we don't seem to get even when the circumstance is reasonably compelling.
In several cases, however, it looks like our player just barely missed the place where they draw the line. They seem to be looking for a reason NOT to grant it. To the point where we have to eye them suspiciously now.
Not at all sure how some of the top QBs in the league are getting waivers for no apparent reason other than getting passed on the depth chart.
If they're going to have rules, EVERYONE should have to follow them.
You're kidding yourself if you think it's just top schools with high profile qbs. That simply isn't true
I didn't say it was JUST that situation, only that you hear about that all the time because they're high profile.
I'll grant you that I don't have a deep understanding of the process - only what I read in sports coverage, but what am I kidding myself about?
Between the C- issue, the "extra math class" issue and now the compliance issues it's all on VT.
I'm in the dark here. Would you, or anyone else for that matter, be able to explain those issues?
Help. Somebody? Anybody?
VT Admissions makes it tough on the sports programs sometimes. The below is just me connecting the dots, I don't have direct knowledge or even direct 'I heard this from a friend's cousin's buddy'
That Iowa transfer CB who was going VT until he all of the sudden picked Indiana or Purdue or something.. The coaching staff had him lined up to take over for Farley... well it seems like that player had gotten a C- in a core class at Iowa and VT Admissions denied him admission to the university over it.
The "extra math class" is a VT admissions requirement for HS kids, and has been for decades. VT requires one more HS math class than most universities. Something like pre-calc. NCAA minimum is Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry. We lost out on a very prominent RB (Moreno maybe?) who was sold on VT until it became clear he didn't have enough HS math classes. He went to Georgia instead and ended up with a fantastic career in college & a pretty good NFL career.
I'm pretty sure Herman Moore has a similar story to Moreno if you rewind to Beamer's early years and ironically UvA let him in.
Jugs, do you have any first hand experience to how complicated the waiver exception application is? It seems like it would be pretty straight forward.
It's pretty simple honestly. There's a few different applications. You simply state why you're applying for the waiver state a story and likely the player gives his own statement.
This should've been a slam dunk. Ash got fired and Blackshear wanted to leave after his HC was let go.
I'm really interested to see why it got denied and what VT applied for.
Is there anyway you or we the public would be able to access that information? Would help out a lot to know what's going on with all these denials.
Clean house with VTs compliance department. Fire them all and get some people in there that know what they are doing because at this point they are actively hurting the players we are trying to get here.
And then lawyer up and sue the NCAA to force the issue with the transfer.
I think calling for people to be fired, particularly when their performance isn't immediately obvious to outsiders, is kind of gross.
How is it not immediately obvious? Scoreboard is like 0-3
Unless you have insider info that can say exactly what preventable mistakes were made by the compliance office related to each case that definitely caused the NCAA to deny the waiver I'd say it's not immediately obvious. It's not as cut and dry as you want to pretend it is.
I can't imagine what it's like to have a job the comes into close proximity to the anonymous opinions of a sports message board. That's got to suck.
Great I was already mad at the new VT football video that is fucking grayscale again, and now I come here and see this
Every time I see our flat videos I think of you haha, I would think having such talented graphics guys they would be able to color correct a video.
Unfortunately the graphics guy doesn't work as much with video. He's amazing, but the film department seems to be very anti-aspirational.
Yeah I was just more thinking along the lines of him giving them like a 15 minute rundown since they work in the same building. I understand this is a more involved edit, but it just looks so much better top to bottom
Yup that's actually one of the videos that he made. Clearly sharper looking and more cohesive than the other bland crap.
So let's assume we play this season. The NCAA isn't really involved because everything is fubar.
Stick up every middle finger we have and play him. What are they going to do? Ban us from the post season?
Loss of scholarships? You know VT would get hammered for it while schools like UNC are good to go
Our compliance office would probably roll out the red carpet for a NCAA investigation.
At what point do quality transfers stop looking at VT with all the issues surrounding eligibility?
The more we blame our own compliance office (without any firsthand evidence), the more likely the word gets out not to come here.
Unbelievable. Absolutely, unequivocally unbelievable.
There has to be either gross incompetence on our end or overt corruption and bias against us from the NCAA. There can be no other explanation at this point.
But I'll add that the NCAA should be there to do what's right for the players so that even if we are incompetent, the NCAA should help us through the process. This shouldn't require a huge legal process.
100% agree - they are there to serve the student-athlete, but that seems lost now.
The NCAA isn't smart enough to conspire against a single school like this
Where are the actual NCAA offices? I have a Molotov Cocktail handy.
I'd leg this, but being served isn't too terribly high on my list of things I need right now...but I'm not against it, but not legally for it. Idk...I'm a few beers in.
Indianapolis
I wish I could find the actual form but the best I can find is this flier from the NCAA on the transfer waiver process.
It says the average decision time is 21 days, which seems to jive with how quickly other schools are able to get decisions. Why does it seem like Blackshear, Hoffman, and Burmeister's waiver requests haven't been decided on until August? Are we not filing the requests much earlier?
Also I am extremely curious to know how NCAA staff are assigned to review these waivers. Is it possible they are assigned to a particular school or region and we keep getting denied by the same person? I know Hoffman's dad called out the guy in charge of their case on Twitter, which probably didn't sit too well with him.
The other thing that seems really confusing to me under the review process are the "three key areas" under consideration:
1. Mitigation
2. Academic records
3. Previous school's position
What the hell does that mean? It seems like the criteria should be fairly logical yet it reads like grades and the opinion of the former school are 2/3rds of the formula instead of focusing on the actual circumstances faced by the student-athlete leading to the transfer.
Anyway, maybe someone can find the actual form or an insider can shed some light on these things and help our understandably frustrated community make some sense of it. I don't think it should be acceptable to call for people's jobs without having a grasp on what the issue is.
Please, logic has no place here.
I wonder if Rutgers torpedoed Blackshear's waiver? Apparently they're a little salty over how he left their program
You gotta think that in 99% of cases the school does not contest the player's waiver request, but I could totally see Schiano being a jerk about it and contesting.
Yeah - this is a good point and seems likely as he is one of the bigger jerks in CF.
i guess at this point we are used to these kind of decisions
I have nothing other to say than this a complete horses$&t and I'm sick of seeing is for no damn reason screwed by the NCAA...it's been a long hard week at work, at home, and this just sent me over the edge(not the crazy edge just the anger edge)
There was a 2020 chance of this happening
I would suspect that the denial was probably because he stopped playing the season before Ash was fired and therefore he transferring because of a coaching change didn't apply?
Looks like Ash was fired September 29 and Blackshear immediately stopped playing, as he sat out the very next game against Maryland on October 5.
Regardless what's the logic for Taulia Tagovailoa and JT Daniels and Phil Jurkovec and Joey Yellen to be all granted immediate eligibility without a coaching change? Honestly I have no clue what the issue seems to be. After reading the NCAA flier on transfer waivers I'm left wondering if the denials are somehow academics related.
Wasn't Brock academic all-conference?
Appears he did very well academically at CCU. Honestly I have no freaking clue what the NCAA's reasoning is.
All I can fathom is that 1) our appeals team absolutely sucks at paperwork, 2) we pissed someone off in the NCAA waivers board, or 3) both.
What's weird is Compliance has been damn good about getting players extra years added to the "time to play" Chung, Mclease and I think someone currently on the OL.
Those are two different types of claims so they might not even be handled by the same person. I'm also not sure how strict the NCAA is on extending eligibility compared to transfer eligibility.
Tyrell Smith. He's been on the OL since 1987
OK, I have read the Athletic article and this forum, could we start with some basic information as in I have not seen a REASON why Blackshear's waiver request was denied. Does anyone know what the reason was?
That's a component of the discontent as the NCAA doesn't publish that information. They state it's for the student-athlete's privacy I believe (someone check me on this), but it comes across as disingenuous and inequitable as so many cases seem cut and dry. Yet, the inconsistencies in "rulings" have generated a legal type of setting that shouldn't exist IMO.
"For the student-athlete's privacy"????? If that's correct and I am Raheem, this is the moment where I waive my privacy rights and publish the reason to the WORLD. You know, shovel disingenuous on disingenuous.
edit: moved to a reply under Shakeit's post
Diethorn came from Pitt, right? I wonder if he has contacted old co-workers and asked them "how the hell did yellen get an immediate transfer approved? what did you do that we didn't?" would love to hear that feedback.
Per Dennis dodd, about 6 months ago:
A) does that include grad transfers?
B) have we even had a single non-grad waiver granted?
A) I assume not since grad transfer don't need a waiver
B) not sure, but probably
B) maybe in olympic sports?
...they have different rules than FB and BB.
Assuming he hasn't said anything as no one has posted it but I'd be interested to hear Whit's take on it. At least after a few beers, ha.
Feeling good about this now....Expect good vibes on this topic!
Speak it into existence
Win the appeal!
Edit: he won the appeal
Sauces or just a hunch?
Word on the street is that he is one of the most talented players on the offense.
Captain Karen!
bout DAMN time