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The much better Urban Meyer recruiting story is that he had a person on staff at Ohio State whose ONLY job was to identify coaches on the hot seat that year and which players they could poach from those schools. He was an assassin in recruiting. He also paid players huge amounts of cash to go to florida and OSU before it was legal, but hey.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie Florida was among the "haves" in college football long before VT showed up.
UF was the most recent team to win their first natty - in 1996. Three years before Vick's debut.
But to your point - they were well positioned for each big financial bump. Maybe luck, maybe not. Theyve ridden a few big waves to success.
I agree. I like Pry - cool guy and I think he's like the ultimate Hokies fan - but unfortunately not a very good coach. Especially someone with a defensive pedigree, the defense and LB in particular (his area of expertise allegedly) has been abysmal. Barring a miracle from our new coordinators in 2025, I don't think the Pry train goes much further.
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1 year 3 months
# | An Incredible Weekend in the Swamp... and Some Honest Reflection as a Hokie Every inch of the place was purpose-built for recruiting
There's an urban Meyer story where the first day as coach at either UF or OSU, he saw a trashcan he thought was too ugly for recruits to see. The next day all the trash cans in the facility were replaced with new, branded trash cans.
The story has nothing to do with trash cans. It's about the sheer devotion to winning at all times.
"Either the coaching and recruiting is horrific"- it is. Especially HS recruiting. Now while I think Napier is not a good coach and florida could have done MUCH better, at least he can recruit and had been a head coach before. In a critical point in our program Whit hired Brent Pry- never a head coach- because he was a GA here in 1995- no other compelling reason. When your philosophy is to cling onto ANY desperate tie to the Beamer years instead of hiring a legit P4 coach, well that isn't going "all in", is it?
Correct - as I have said a hundred times- its hard to do anything in life worse than NFL scouts QB's. They are laughably terrible at it.
We tried going "all-in" on football last year by paying to retain a ton of players and bringing in some high profile transfers, and ended up .500 yet again. Either the coaching and recruiting is horrific, our definition of going "all-in" isn't the same as other schools ($$$ wise), or some combination of the two.
Yes, Steve Spurrier introduced the forward pass to the modern SEC. They were a huge deal. They gave birth to the modern SEC championship game by playing a great game with Bama in the first one. Until Billy Donovan came along they were 100% a football school and still are.
Our path to a Natty was Boise's and Indiana's last year. They both had a path. Indiana was football siberia and took JMU's team to the playoffs in the B1G. Boise is not in a P4 conference. Both had a seat at the table. SMU had a seat at the table too- and didn't win the ACC. VT certainly has a path.
Not that I needed one of these, but now there are only 833 left...
It's a shame none of that has value though. Players were being asked to play for nothing of value until recently. Apartments, training facilities, nutrition- worthless.
I think I'm at this point too. VT football is never going to have the resources or desire to compete with the top tier of programs. We had a window of opportunity to vault ourselves into the elite category, and we even had an opportunity for the SEC back in 2010/2011 and poppycocked our way into football purgatory where we stand now. Complacency, incompetence, and lack of true commitment from our donors have plagued this program, and you reap what you sow.
At this point, rather than gouging students with athletics fees to pay the NIL/revenue sharing arms race where we are never going to have enough, just deemphasize athletics and be a lower division school. There doesn't appear to be the appetite or even a realistic path forward to being a P2 school at this point, so just end the charade and be done with it.
If we're being honest, Florida was among the "haves" in college football long before VT showed up. They were well-positioned when the really big money started showing up.
"The fix was in", as they say.
Tickets arrived last night. Now I am just waiting on the parking pass.
Sounds like a cool experience for both you and your kids though!
I don't know that I agree. Given the choice between investing millions in the football arms race and just improving campus, making it as great a place for everyone who goes there, at this point, I'd take the second. Do we really have a path, as things currently sit, to a natty? Unless the realignment gods smile on us in a way that I'm not sure I see happening right now, we're already in a hole and its getting deeper every year. Some of that is the fault of administrators over the years, some of it is just bad luck. If we'd ended up in the SEC instead of the ACC, we'd be in a different situation probably. We'd have resources to keep up. But we're committed (basically) to 20m a year to athletes, we just don't have the resources to also sink 50m into a VR space for practice. Come a point, you're throwing good money after bad.
Also, what a dumbass for trying to take a 53' trailer through there.
Especially when you drive right past a sign that says "no tractor trailers...."
Why is Easter a dangerous time for invertors?
Assume this was meant to be 'inventor, but then thought well..it could be inverters.
In all sports it means "not a starter"
The fans that drive the machine are going to tire of this shit really fast. Not fast enough, but fast.
We'll keep his dance moves, though.
(If I could've found the gif, I'd've posted it.)
The funny thing is that with the transfer data added I think it would show VT being much more successful with #TX2VT in the Pry era. Kelden Ryan is the only one represented on the map, but Drones, Ben Bell, Tyson Flowers, and Isaiah Cash are all from Texas.
Chicks dig the long ball.
Got mine yesterday. Glad it worked for you.
Does a path to playoffs really equate to a path to a natty? I guess. Both those teams lost convincingly in the first round of the playoffs. Maybe you squeak out one win, but multiple wins against top 5-10 teams? Seems unlikely. Our chances were better when an undefeated season (maybe) gets you into a four team playoff.
Like anything, a QB and a bit of magic, I guess anything is possible. The path is narrow though, and only getting narrower as the resource imbalance stacks year over year.