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Showing this slide, Sebring asked the BOV, "How much should we be investing?" Also, should Virginia Tech be towards the top in just football or men's basketball too? pic.twitter.com/Oaj5B6alQn— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) August 18, 2025
Now that we are getting to some actual meat and potatoes about actions, I will say this....
If this ends up with meaningful change that brings our budget up to the standards of everyone else and has us actually operating like the school we need to be in order to be attractive to the Big Ten or SEC, its absolutely better late than never. But at the end of day, none of us should be putting any stock into anything they are saying until we see actual changes in the way we do things.
LOL -
Discussion right now from BOV members is about funds going from the university, which subsidizes athletics, to athletics and then back to the university (that $12-13M). There's not a slide that tracks that, so some members were having trouble visualizing how the funds flow back and forth.
Sebring said about $12-13M goes back from athletics to the university, required by law, as Babcock has mentioned.Additionally, someone else in the room said the athletics budget has increased by 63% since FY21, though "that might not be enough." Discussion right now from BOV...— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) August 18, 2025
Join The Key Player's Club to read comments posted in exclusive content and its members only forum.
Like we are going into this with us hoping that this whole presentation was just a formality, that all the discussions had already happened behind closed doors and now was the time for action because, well the real time for action was 10 years ago and better late than never.
It ends with the University COO saying that a properly funded athletics department was an "emerging focus"
How fucking out of touch do these people need to be? Half of them wouldn't be in that role if not for Frank Beamer and the football team from 1995-2010. Making sure our football team is able to survive isn't an "emerging focus", its a crisis that has to be addressed immediately.!
Cassell Renovation was approved almost 4 years ago but got shelved. Could have made back about half the renovation cost if we brought in what UNC does. 4 years at $12M more per would be $48M versus expected reno cost of $75M.
Same reno now probably costs $125-145M.
"emerging focus". That is a brutal quote LOL. All I can do is laugh at this
Fun Belt here we come!
I split my YTTV between 3 people and it's the best $30 cable package I've ever had.
Oh don't worry, the BoV is now considering funding Athletics as an "emerging focus"
Amy Sebring, Virginia Tech's COO, is speaking to the BOV now. "Funding athletics as an emerging focus" is one of the key discussion areas.— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) August 18, 2025
even if something comes of this, I get the impression that it won't happen anytime soon.
Babcock: "I don't plan on doing this job for many more years, either of my choosing or y'all's choosing." Said he badly wants to get things moving in the right direction, however. #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) August 18, 2025
In direct response from a BOV member, Babcock says if you want to compete in the ACC, your budget needs to be around $200 million. #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) August 18, 2025
Whit really seems like he's letting it fly. I guess he figures he's either going to get things going in the right direction or get fired anyway, so might as well try. Just so many mixed feelings about it, but it's really a collective failure. Leadership/the BOV looks pretty bad and out of touch in all of this, yet what would a $200MM budget have really done for us even 3-4 years ago? This is the Athletics Department that decided to place their trust in a 51 year old career coordinator with no HC experience, who then in turned hired coordinators with zero experience, to turn this thing around after the Fuente era? More money is desperately needed, but honestly how can you have any confidence it would have helped in the hands of this leadership?
15% would be $3.075M so that goes a long way if focused on top 7-8 guys but 15 total. If its broken up equally every guy getting $200K. Football would be $15.375M to cover 44 to cover 2 deep at minimum but 105 total. Split evenly would be $146K.
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11 months 1 week
# | Nike releases 2025 collegiate line of running shoes - get em before they are gone! white trim along the bottoms (PITA to keep clean)
Especially with black rubber bottoms that rub off on the white.
yep- the one time where we pretended that college football was like any other aspect of society. lol. Fuente is not like a fucking thing compared to any furloughed worker, but he is when convenient I guess.
Whit has been beating this message since 2016 when he did a presentation to Hokie club members before the spring game. They were celebrating having enough donations to cover tuition finally and being able to move money from that to other expenses.
It just reinforces everything we've thought for a while.
We rested on our laurels when we got into the ACC because we thought we had 'made it' and there was no need to continue striving for better. We were where we wanted to be, our goal was reached, we were at the end game. We were now peers with academic insitutions like UNC, GT, and UVa. We don't need athletics anymore, academics now had everything it needed to be a world class institution, the rankings would come in and everyone would swoon over us. We had success cheaply in football before, no reason to think it couldn't last forever, afterall we unlocked the cheat code, right?
Yeah, the BoV needs to fry over this.
Yeah I never bought the line of thinking that secretly Sands was all along a huge advocate for athletics. Quite the contrary. I think some tough conversations with donors and others of influence have likely prodded him a little in recent years.
The BOV is certainly plenty to blame too. You need the administration to bring the initiatives and recommendations to the table to act on, but BOV members can certainly exert their influence in policy and initiatives as well. It's honestly a complete embarrassing failure of VT leadership in its entirety that we are here now. I think many of us saw it playing out in slow motion for years.
The BOV is also complicit in our downfall. They have done nothing to assist, rather downplay athletics. Can't wait for them to pass a budget increase just to feel as if they have contributed something.
The optics were that they would spend money to buy out Fuente at a time when others were getting furloughed.
In reality, even after being forced to eat the shit sandwich of keeping a failed coach on for another year, Whit is now revealing that athletics was the only department within the university to see wages cut.
And if that doesn't show where Athletics has been prioritized by Sands and the BoV, I don't know what does.
What optics? firing someone during a pandemic? He was going to get a buy out- of 7 figures- nobody would cry for him having to wear a mask while he was getting paid to not work.
I mean Whit is barely hiding his disdain for the BoV and other leaders
Babcock: "I feel like I've been crying wolf and the wolf is really coming." #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) August 18, 2025
Yeah, that's a pretty out of touch comment. We have been consistently behind our ACC peers in fundraising, revenue, athletics budget and getting worse for a long time. Still, this is the first time a presentation on athletics of this magnitude has likely ever been on the BoV agenda. So I place a ton of blame on the administration for never making this an issue to begin with.
The other lost opportunity is Whit bending over for Nike. Did he cover that revenue loss in his slides?
