Recent Comments
Ah yes, the foghorn leghorn helmet. Got to be the worst.
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Thanks for posting, homie. The graphic design nerd in me loves stuff like this.
Hot take: I loved the White helmets with hokie stone logo and the Fighting Gobbler helmets
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" I think the difference in timing is subtle, but important. As our football program began to languish in mediocrity, the folks on this site began discussing how the budget was keeping us from competing with the big dogs, and how, even if we could be competitive in the ACC, we needed to have way more money to be competitive nationally.
With unequal revenue sharing coming to the ACC soon, it has become apparent to the administration that being anything less than upper echelon in the ACC will directly impact our bottom line, making it difficult to be even mediocre in the ACC. Note that Whit has asked for $200M to be competitive in the ACC.
He hasn't asked for (and was not asked by the board) how much money it would take to be competitive on a national scale.
I still don't think the administration is discussing it the way that we are discussing it. Whit is just letting them know that without $200M, it's going to be difficult to even maintain 6-6 with hope for 8-4 in the ACC. And the board is like "oh wow, ok funding athletics is an emerging focus now." You know, now that if we don't fund it, we might become a flat out embarrassment within our conference. I still don't know that they're targeting being nationally relevant
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" Whit would have invested it in Bitcoin
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" I think you also have to take into account the generational effect of us as die-hard Hokies that went to VT around the MV era...we now have college-age children who having been hearing about how great VT is and that they should expect to go there for college. So once it flourishes the first time, it becomes a bit of a self-sustaining economy thanks to the brand power of previous customers.
I can blame one person: Whit Babcock. He, like it or not, is the mouthpiece of athletics. It is his job to understand the landscape, the economics, the perceptions, etc....or, at least, he should hire the right people to help him understand that. And if you want to parrot that we are going to be a top-tier athletics program in the conference, or even the nation, you need to be honest and vocal about the fact that our reality is nowhere near our expectations.
But Whit's messaging has never been anywhere close to as dire as his BoV message. In many cases, he would champion that VT athletics was on solid footing, that the programs are competitive and would remain being competitive. That was his Achilles heel. Whit was never in charge during the "glory years" of VT football, save for maybe that ACCCG appearance year. In a way, I feel like successes in other sports like men & (eventually) women's basketball provided enough distraction that all those in power positions didn't really have reason to be upset with him. He was in a position where he could set the cruise control (a bit of hyperbole, I know) and ride out the trip.
If Whit was truly busting his ass, begging for donors to give more so that we could keep up with, or get ahead of the facilities race, begging the university/state for more support, or whatever else he could have done, then he failed, IMO, because there was little to no public perception of that. There was always a perception "more would be nice so that our student-athletes can have a world-class action while they compete on the field." Nothing that was ever remotely close to "if we don't do everything in our power, now, ahead of time, we are 100% going to fall behind and fail." Also, if he was doing all that work behind closed doors, and he was told no, then he really should have explored options to give up his job at VT, because we weren't giving him the resources to succeed. But based on the BoV comments, it really doesn't sound like this was the case at all. It feels more Fuente-esque: use the "this is fine" GIF for years, until you're in a near unescapable situation, and then sort of throw up your hands and say "well, it's either this way with me or your way without me".
I know that Whit has done a lot of good/great things for VT athletics, but when you look back on the body of work compared against who we think our peers are, it is obvious those were a lot of lipstick on a pig. Sure, it looked sexy at the time, but in the end we're still a pig.
That would require trusting that the people who buried their heads in the sand suddenly got competent enough to fix it, and I just don't.
ATLIEN
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" All the universities in countries with free/affordable college are not spending hundreds of millions every year on things that dont teach students
All those other universities believe college is purely an educational endeavor. Other countries don't call it "the college experience" - that phrase (in my experience) is uniquely American.
BEER ME
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" I thought the same thing. We've been talking about it one way or another on this site for as long as I've been here at the very least.
BEER
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" There's more to the athletic dept than Football.
Also, it's never immediate impact, the kids applying now are familiar with VT through athletics from their childhood.
See little Egbert #1 for a specific example. We have pictures of her and her sister dressed as the Hokie bird giving him a hug when there were 5 and 7 yrs old.
Perhaps or, perhaps we can decide not to be cooked. Not 100% sure.
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My father in law is at Lake Norman and we just juggle logging in there as me, or vice versa when he visits Roanoke. The other is local though.
This is quality work. Well done
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" If we were to continue wallowing in football and that causes 10k seats to go empty per game, per our own calculations it would result in a $15m per year economic loss to the region.
OK, I'm gonna say it. Everything related to the $$ side of things is spot on. We are waaay behind and need to do something quickly. However, Pry and Co. were set up for success perfectly last year. And by success I'm talking aouout 8 to 9 wins. And what happened? Our defense absolutely caved at the end of a few game... Pry was still lost on more than one occasion at the end of the half and at the end of the game - costing us a couple games.
We made some staff changes. Good. But one of those wasn't actually a decision he made (Bowen was hired away). We simply need to see the coaching staff perform better. Period. I know we didn't have an elite staff by any stretch of the imagination, but we had the pieces to perform much better than we did. I'm telling you, if we come out of the gate 0-2, that two game home stretch with ODU and Wofford will see 10K less fans easily.
🥃🎸🎲⛳️
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" And yet VT has had record applications in 2024 even though we have pretty much sucked in most sports that matter (WBB aside a few years ago). Correlation does not equal causation and I suspect that there are other reasons that application were up at Clemson just like at VT.
Edit - not sure what time period Whit cited, but VT applications went from 22,500 in 2015 to 58,000 in 2025 (according to Google AI). That's a 157% increase while our athletic programs basically treaded water or crashed and burned. That is also the same timeframe that Clemson rose and maintained their powerhouse in college football.
When we became a football power that also coincided with the significant influx of funding available for student loans which meant many more people were able to apply (and attend) VT. How does applications and enrollment at other universities compare during that time?
As much as we want to tie Athletic identity to Academic identity, they're not as connected as people want them to be.
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" It isnt political issues when the universities choose to spend themselves into the sun with luxury facilities and enormous amounts of non-educational staff. VT (and most universities today) spend insane amounts of money that do not make kids learn any better. All the universities in countries with free/affordable college are not spending hundreds of millions every year on things that dont teach students. Of my friends from college, all engineers making good money, 1 of them donates to the school because they see the insane waste. Even when you donate directly to an academic recipient you are just freeing up that money to be spent on nonsense.
Hard to see all this and not think we're cooked
BIG WIFE GUY
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" Right there with you. I was looking for the combo of good engineering school with the big state school/football culture. I wouldn't trade my time at VT for anything, but without athletics, I don't know if I would have gotten in the door in the first place.
ATLIEN
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11 months 1 week
# | Whit: "If VT doesn't radically leap forward now, our fate is likely sealed for generations to come" Also, remember - this was a pony show. A charade. Whatever you want to call it. There's no way that this is the first time Sands and the BoV are hearing about this. There's no way that Whit is INVITING the media to a meeting where he bashes his supervisors, stakeholders, and himself.
This was a coordinated effort. The audience was not the BoV. My guess is the audience was state legislators or donors or something like that.
For the basic "cartoon" depiction of the helmets, here's a link. This can be crossed with the actual photos to see how they looked in the real world.
http://www.nationalchamps.net/Helmet_Project/acc1.htm#vt