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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie 
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie The lobby and cafeteria 2.5 years ago, the back end areas and weight room 3.5 the practice field and Beamer barn 2 years.
ATLIEN
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie Are we not capable of maintaining a mildly nuanced perspective?
We're a top 40 school in revenue with top 25 aspirations and a top 50/60 staff. There is area for improvement.
The 'low ball offers' (aka Nike deal) we accept are marginal differences - a couple million doesn't make a difference.
Coaching hires are a crapshoot; no one does it well. USC is failing with Lincoln Fucking Riley. Texas is succeeding with a recovering alcoholic who underachieved as an HC at two prior schools. LSU won a natty with a failed HC who they never wanted to hire. Everyone thought Fuente to VT was the best hire of the decade, until 2-3 years in.
Cmon Nobody wants VT to go back to the 60s.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie Our facilities are so dated they're being lapped by the ones that have already been lapped by the top dogs.
We complain about how poor we are but do absolutely nothing to significantly increase revenue streams. Every chance we get we accept the low ball offer because its easy. We settle for coaches, we settle for results.
We absolutely deserve to be where we are. We have no real desire to compete. We never have. We say we do, but deep down we wish we could go back to the 60s when we were a small regional military school with no expectations of success. Even when we were at our peak, we pulled back because the lights just got too bright and we didn't like the attention.
PLS
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie when was the last time you were in Merryman?
Yeah, to win you have to be there. That doesn't mean that being there means you have a real chance to win. Which was my point.
Some magic gets us there. We just don't have the horses to win multiple games against top 10 opponents. And horses are only getting more expensive.
So I guess we...
... DIDN'T keep them ???
Oh good! I was worried you were going to pick mad cow.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie It was opened in 2022 and is even now getting renovations done to offices. The football player apartments are brand new for this past semester.
Hmm. I'll probably go with the top scientist
If you were a hot dog and you were starving, would you eat yourself? I know I would....
There is no arguing their success since 1990.
VT went to one national championship. Florida WON three, and more importantly, happens to be in the right conference.
VT needs to stay invested enough to catch lightning in a bottle again.
I detest LIV golf and the fact that terrorists own F1 and major soccer clubs, but if the PIF wanted to invest 3 billion dollars in VT's football and basketball rosters, I wouldn't complain. Private equity is not far off in college football, btw.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie This thread brought to you by 2018
Yes, and both were head coaches. Please stay on topic.
Pry is more chum with HS coaches and parents than Fuente. Fact. He has done well enough to where he doesn't have to panic and offer 2 star recruits on signing day or flip ODU guys- yes. He has NOT improved recruiting results overall in any SIGNIFICANT way. Maybe slightly better- but not much at the end of the day. Keep in mind not being able to beat an OOC P4 team or anyone consistently other than UVA on the field impacts this as well.
It's pointless to complain about "other" donors not showing up.
WE are the donors. We do a lot with little, and always have. We're a program with limited resources, as are MOST college athletic programs.
We had a brief window of national recognition for our program, and should have invested/managed/controlled it more at that time, but we had the wrong administration for that. We're lucky ever to have had it. The management of our program is better now than what it was then, but the times are also different, and we didn't land in the SEC or B1G. And those conferences are in their "circle the wagons" mode, which I don't believe is in their long-term interest, but what matters is what THEY think is in their interest.
We're not gouging students for revenue sharing. We're collecting a fee to support athletics. I prefer transparent fees to other methods of financing college sports. There is a lot of public and private financing to support college football. Most of it's NOT transparent.
It's a "pay to play" world (it always was), and we're just living in it. For those folks who thought "sharing the wealth" was preferable to amateur athletics, well, this is what that looks like. Nobody in power got that power by sharing wealth. They got there by making other people share THEIR wealth.
A famous guy once said that behind every great fortune is a great crime. By the time you realize there was a crime, it's already been covered up and blamed on someone else.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie Whit reached out to Bill Napier and Dave Clawson (Clawson never wanted to leave Wake, he used us as a way to get a raise). Both turned us down.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie The floor has improved since FU. The ceiling has not.
Ceiling wins games though.
That's your opinion now isn't it? He was never a head coach. And how many other guys that checked YOUR boxes were interviewed with no connection to VT? there are dozens of guys that fit your boxes, mysteriously Whit reached out to one of them. I wonder why?
I think Pry has raised the floor of the classes looking strictly at the rankings, but coupled with the holes on the roster (glaring lack of depth at some positions, overrecruiting at WR inflating our rankings) and lack of development we are seeing from our classes, this 2025 roster feels eerily like a late Fu era roster. I just don't see a ton of talent jumping out at me. At least Fu had a strong OL his last couple of years. I worry if we will even be able to field a competent/healthy starting 5 right now.
In order to win a natty, you have to be in the playoff. Boise was 3 wins away. They controlled it on the field- not in the polls, not by herbstreit slander and media bullshit. They were in the dance. They could beat PSU, ND and then play for a natty. That is an actual seat at the table as opposed to playing your fucking scout team against Minnesotas scout team and getting pushed around.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie Whit hired Brent Pry- never a head coach- because he was a GA here in 1995- no other compelling reason
This is bull shit. Pry checked a variety of boxes:
- Understood what a modern recruiting operation looked like, and worked in one
- Knew the area that VT wanted to recruit well
- Proven record as a P5 coordinator
- Personality fit for donors/fans
You can say Whit was looking for the wrong things. You can say that Pry has failed. You can say the initial coordinator hires should have never happened. But to say that Pry was hired ONLY because of his prior connection to VT is bullshit.
Recruiting seems to have gotten better since Fu (really only one way that could have gone), but the rest of this seems right. There's a way to be proud of the past of the program without making it the whole future.
The best coaches are prepared for situations- Bellichick was the best ever at this, and they have attention to detail. Pry has shown neither. He is awful in late half/game situations and his attention to detail is so piss poor duplicate numbers cost him 2 games. Could he learn those things? Jeffrey Lurie hired a time out consultant for Andy Reid. Maybe Whit can do the same. But I'd rather have a bigger coach than Pry at VT.
