Recent Comments

Ah got it. Thanks for the clarification. Though using those numbers, I'd think the football schools are still ahead, though roughly in-line. Say it's 300 in the base, top 75 is the top 25% of the schools. The 40% for the football schools is still ahead, though maybe not significantly.

At some point you're going to see a GM outlast head coaches

I think if/when this happens, it will be uncommon and it will be situational (ie; top 5 recruiting class coming in after a back to back underwhelming seasons, or a scandel).

You're suggesting that at some point the director of player personnel/GM - whatever the title of the person who is responsible for distributing compensation across players - will have equal standing to the head coach. I don't think this will ever happen at scale. Sure, there will always be unique circumstances - perhaps a G5 program that really has the Moneyball will go this route, schools with unique situations like Stanford or possibly a service academy (I know service academies don't provide NIL/Rev share for gov't reasons) - but I think at 90% of FBS programs the head coach will continue to maintain and overshadow the director of player personnel/GM

Look at VT this year, the issue wasn't getting players, its was on field coaching. Why blow up the entire organization because Pry doesn't understand what to do in the 4th quarter.

Because in college football:

• players commit to staff members, and sign contracts with a school and a third party collective
• staff members commit to the head coach (the organization is irrelevant for a lot of them)
• Donors commit to a head coach

In the NFL:

• Players are contracted to an organization
• Staff members agree to work for an organization
• There's not warring factions within a franchise that remotely resembles college boosters

I just can't imagine a world where Brent Pry is fired (not for cause), the GM continues running the program, the majority of the staff and players stick around, and VT essentially swaps in a new HC + some auxiliary parts.

Excluding scandals and internal promotions, this has never happened in the sport. It's going to require a massive culture change across all stakeholders in the sport AND centralized authority to limit player movement to get to a point where your typical FBS college football program runs like an NFL franchise.

I suppose if you reduce the role of head coach to just callin ball, and the 'GM' drives all recruiting and donor shmoozing, maybe this could happen. But again, I don't see that happening at scale.

Enter Sandman. Live in Lane Stadium. Put it in the history books. 🤘 Video courtesy of @Metallica #M72VirginiaTech pic.twitter.com/mVzuySAZZk— Virginia Tech (@virginia_tech) May 8, 2025

And also, Oklahoma State has been a really solid program for many years. One of the more successful outside of the P2. Last year was very much an outlier. Will see if the bounce back or not, but in the last 15 years they have:

Never had a year with less than 7 wins (outside of last year, of course)
10-4 in bowl games
Ranked 9 times
8 seasons with 10 or more wins

What would VT fans give to have that in the last 15 years?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Oklahoma_State_Cowboys_football_se...

Got to my car about 11:20 up above Chicken Hill and was on 460 at 11:30. Shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Luck's title is GM, but I think his role is going to much more closely resemble associate AD. Doesn't sounds like he's very involved in recruiting at all. Also, from what other reporters have said, Stanford intends to distribute House money equally across almost ALL athletes... Assuming that's true, his role isn't going to have much to do with player compensation strategy.

Moving into pure speculation... I think the Luck experiment will fail. Either the AD will blow it up, or Luck will taking over the role of coaching.... which would effectively make the coach/GM chain of command irrelevant.

Nailed it. Time, cost, quality. You can only have 2 of 3. VT usually always picks the cheap route but results are typically not quality and take a long time. So one of three at best.

Maybe after Fuente we should have changed our slogan from Hard Smart Tough to Cheap Bad Slow /s

I keep saying these same things about Bristol Motor Speedway. The Battle at Bristol was an amazing weekend!

yup -- LN invested a LOT of money in this specific show as part of their tour deal w metallica. it would not have happened without LN stepping in to foot costs incurred by the challenging logistics. VT uninterested in paying $$$$$ to host the concert (rightfully so) and the band uninterested in playing for free (rightfully so).

Yeah at the same time, VT also likely made a ton of money on top of their investment, even if you have to factor in the field replacement. Really no reason that Tech can't do a big concert like that every year. There were people there last night from all over the region. You can't tell me this event isn't going to push multiple local businesses solidly in the black that might have had thin margins over the course of the year.

Tech has the venue to host at least one big concert every year. They'd be foolish to not invest to make it happen. Its a money printing machine if you can make it work.

I don't think this will happen. An associate AD? Yes. The person who drives personnel won't hire/fire coaches. This won't get NFL-ized for all the reasons stated in the article.