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They're not. They were asked to fund $52M but that's not possible under the law. They WANT to, but simply can't.
If they're a megadonor, they can be influential with new leadership.
I can't believe they are enjoying the current experience.
I'm wondering if we should switch to actively supporting the breakoff of the P2 from the rest of college football.
The P2 has done everything in their power to separate the P2 in terms of resources, but they want the rest of college football to provide patsy teams for them to beat. They're willing to let those teams stick around and have just enough money to look like they're in the club.
What if we supported the idea of separating the ACC and anyone else who doesn't want to play that game into what used to be college football, a place where, sure, stipends are paid but not professional level money. Why are the teams in this category spending $5 million per year for a head coach, even ones who can't win?
It stings to do that, but why break college football and make it more expensive for students and fans in order to enrich sports agents and professional players, who took the bag early?
This wouldn't mean players couldn't go pro later if they want. Would just mean they couldn't be professionals in college. They can make the leap to the P2 or the NFL anytime they want. You just can't go the other direction.
Would mean the rest of college football could continue to have competitive football outside the system ESPN is currently developing that has their thumbs on the scale for their chosen teams. Would be much less expensive for fans and students, and would mean lot lower costs in terms of coaching and recruiting salaries. Would mean strick financial limits on team spending. But as I write that, I suppose the problem is that it might be impossible to keep the dark money out. But you could sure limit it.
I wish VT were in the "haves" category, but that is becoming a money sport, not a college sport. When we're talking about having to add $50 million in addition to what we're ALREADY spending, it has become stupid money.
Where the hell is the non-profit version of Jerry McGuire? Where is our "The things we know and do not say"?
The Turing Test is also a surprisingly low bar. I'm sure it'd be easy. Hell a coin flip would likely be better at making decisions.
You could probably hard code one tbh. He's been dumb af
Tremaine Edmunds finished with 7 tackles and a pass deflection in the loss to Minnesota while Darrisaw missed the game still recovering from last season's ACL and MCL tear although he is fully practicing at this point.
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Jerod Mayo is currently unemployed, is a 757 native.
That's... actually an interesting project for a Computer Engineering class project. Could you make an AI coach module that would be at least as effective as Pry at moment to moment CFB decision making, lol.
100% --Rudolph jumped off a sinking ship at Wisconsin and Rope-a-Doped Pry into a nice paycheck for 12 months while his agent was working on finding him a job he actually had any interest in.
We hired Crooks without seemingly doing much due diligence as he was neither effective nor apparently liked by the players. Wonderful combination.
Moore - seems more competent but he will probably be back on a job search in December--taking Rimac, Altuner, ect with him.
Yeah. I keep going back to the original sin being hiring an unproven HC who was allowed to bring in unproven coordinators and the one thing that was really hopeful was Joe Rudolph coming in to "Finally get the O-line right." And when Rudolph bailed after one season the panic should have set in then. He's doing fine at Notre Dame. He didn't do a god damn thing at VT, borderline stealing money in my book.
People keep saying this, but teams around us keep doing it.
Duke did it with Elko and Vandy's OL was literally all transfers.
I think more than a money or difficulty issue, its an issue that VT has had shit OL coaches because Pry's hires have been as bad as his timeout usage.
The problem is that one year isn't going to do it. That's a $50M hole that needs to be filled each year. And oh, it will also grow each year so year over year you're going to be escalating that. By the end of a ten year cycle it's going to be closer to $600M in additional commitment to athletics beyond what we're able to provide now. That's $0.6B. These are absurd values but that's the reality we find ourselves in.
So one thing I think about is what this means to the donors. Virginia Tech has a small number of "whales" who can afford $LARGE gifts but most of the Hokie Club membership is made up of smaller donors. I'll share my numbers. I was a Golden Hokie donor for many years. In our last year of season ticket ownership (2024) our Hokie Club "donation" for the privilege of purchasing tickets was just under $3000 a year. And then on top of that you have your ticket costs and parking pass costs. We held four seats in Section 7, so our total cost was just shy of $5000 a year. If you're looking at club seats, etc that's going to be more but we liked our East Stands seats.
So what happens if we double our global Hokie Club donations? According to the BOV slides the philanthropic portion of the budget was $31.7M a year in FY24. That's *still* $20M a year short of the ~50 that we need. And I personally would not be able to double what we were paying. It's a hard problem.
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That's the one thing that's really difficult to buy in the portal market unfortunately. You need a unit that plays together and understands each other.
Yep, and when they started their string of national championship appearances they had the infrastructure in place to harvest those extra donations. VT, for whatever reason, made it to the peak of the sport and then put it in cruise control.
Oregon is absolutely the comp - I don't think enough people realize just how rare it is for a have-not to have a chance to appear in, much less win, a national championship game. Oregon and Virginia Tech are the only two teams to have gotten close. And Oregon has Knight Bucks. Oregon has spent $40M on their roster to make a run this year and they just vaporized another P4 OOC opponent with that Death Star roster. And even then it is still going to be really hard for them to cash in a natty.
That's the context that makes me take a pause and look at what it would take to for VT to do the same and shake my head. It's just not worth it to spend non-discretionary money on that kind of vanity project.
But hell... we can't even be competent in or second (soon to be third) tier conference. And we are resourced sufficiently to at least do that IMHO.
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I don't think it was a one-time ask. I think it was $50M/year more than currently given.
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TKP plays VT Head Football Coach
Honestly, waiting it out won't take that long. The SEC and B1G want so badly to be their own thing, and there's a few others that would truly commit to go with them. Maybe 32 teams will roll out leaving the rest to go back to what cfb was when games mattered and bowls were a reward for a good year. All told, that could be within 3 years.