Recent Comments
This is the correct answer. The ACC could kick their olympic sports out with no impact. Why won't the ACC do that? I have no idea.
They are 100% going to get a seat. Its inevitable, and they'll be allowed to do it with the concessions they always get.
Why?
Because they print money for the networks. ESPN always negotiates on their behalf to screw others. They will get a seat. They'll get an auto-bid if they are ranked in the top 20. Hell, they might get an auto-bid by having something like 9 wins. It'll be infuriating and there's nothing we'll be able to do about it.
If you have a team of 5 star recruits you can bully a lot of teams, look at the Trent Richardson Bama team, Trent wasn't that good but his line just walked him into the endzone ever time. You could have had a tecmo bowl sized play book and won 10 games. ND's offense this year was to have Riley run behind their line and the mauled a lot of teams doing so.
Those systems work because they can recruit, so I think there are good coordinators that are limited in that they need talent. However, there are schemes that lend themselves to not having the top talent, Lincoln Riley won everywhere will all types of players. Kiffin has too. They benefit from having 5 star players but don't need them because their schemes don't rely on hard to recruit positions. Similarly the triple option made lots of teams struggle because it required sound defensive play, however you didn't need 5* defense to stop it, one good DT with P4 LBs would stop it easily. But lots of teams lack that, just like most teams lacked defenses to stop bama/Richardson or 4 WR sets when the QB can read progressions.
Basically I think there is room for good but not great OCs that rely on schemes that require high level talent vs ones that runs schemes that aren't as reliant on such talent.
People also had to realize that the aces he was calling at Oregon- every play wide open untouched for 30 yards- wouldn't be sustainable. I haven't seen anything like it before or since. Literally every offensive play worked for big yards. Simple handoffs went for TD's etc. That was not going to work forever.
Gonna be something ridiculous like "auto-bid for ranked ND".
And for anyone worried about the game passing him by, I remember people saying the exact same thing about Chip Kelly when he was dismissed from UCLA after he failed in the NFL. Good football minds sometimes need to be humbled a bit before they get back to what they are best at. And I would hope Montgomery fits that mold as well.
Its not like we don't have plenty of weapons in a bad ACC to play with. The guy very well could have us playing at an extremely high level very soon just due to competition alone.
Also how did precious child Notre Dame not get a seat at this table?
Of all people, I would have fully expected you to be the first one to understand why Notre Dame with their old money coffers bursting at the seams had the powers that be pull up a chair for them at the table.
"We definitely need coordinators who can get the most out of whatever talent we have"- This is literally what ALL good coordinators do. You don't think Lane Kiffin maximized the talent at Bama? Of course he did. His boss demanded it. BTW Bama and OSU don't use HS recruiting rankings to map their 2-deep. They play the best players. Clemson has played walk on's on defense during this run. Bud Foster coached D Lo Hall as well as he coached Cody Grimm IMO. I don't think there is any such thing as "hes a good OC for mid talent type teams" That literally doesn't make sense to me. Are there OCs out there that excel at "teaching" I guess- so that could map to "less talent". But good coordinators at this level are good- period. They can coach 5 stars and 2 stars better than bad coordinators.
Not just the slow start in games. It took him a month each season to figure out how to play offense
Also he needs to be able to move the ball in the first Q- Bowen was awful at this.
this is a big point. After last season I talked myself into keeping Bowen around because he was serviceable as an OC and I thought it was too risky to overhaul the entire staff. IMO Marve was the much larger liability for our team and needed to be shown the door. My frustration with Bowen was the slow starts. He started games slowly. He started seasons slowly. In each season as OC we didn't really find our way offensively until about midway through the season. It was really frustrating, especially this past season, since we looked so strong offensively at the end of 2024. The backslide was kind of shocking.
If Montgomery is essentially the same as Bowen in every single way but that one, getting going early in seasons/games then that will be an improvement. I don't think that's a tremendously difficult bar for him to clear.
The only hope is that when 6-6 Missouri is in the playoffs over 11-1 Oklahoma State that beat Missouri by 30, nobody will watch the games and there will be outrage on talk radio. That's all we can hope for.
I am a drummer. Ball plays are like drum fills. They have all been played before. All of them. Montgomery didn't forget how to draw up a route tree or design a zone read. Bet on that. He knows that stuff like the back of his hand. What VT needs him to do- what all good OCs can do- is draw up the play your team can execute successfully in that specific situation. Red zone, 2 pt conversions, 3rd and 4 to milk the clock. The best offenses execute in down and distance situations as opposed to just putting up crazy passing numbers. If your QB has a great deep ball and WRs can win 50/50 battles, find the right time to call the 9 route or post corner. If it works on first and 10 in the first quarter, cool. Can you execute it and call it when you have to? That is what Montgomery needs to improve on. Also he needs to be able to move the ball in the first Q- Bowen was awful at this.
Confirms for the 456,899th time that there are no true inside sources regarding VT football. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise
how did precious child Notre Dame not get a seat at this table?
I can see it now: "We've decided on a 16-team playoff. Eight SEC autobids, and eight BIGten autobids. Revenue evenly split among the participating conferences."
And finally ND asks to join the Big Ten. But wants to keep its nonrevenue sports in the ACC for easy wins.
I agree with you that we should let them separate, but I am disappointed that it has come to this. At one time, the SEC was the "best conference in college football." ESPN's media machine eventually turned that message into "the SEC is the only college football worth watching. And a few name brand B1G schools are too."
Anyway, it's gone on for long enough now that the official structure of how we determine a champion is going to be measured by whatever the SEC and B1G want, I.e. whatever will make them the most money, and not necessarily whatever rewards the "best" or "most deserving" teams.
It likely wasn't autocorrect. That's what the folks on TSL called him back in the day.
I also choose this assessment.
I put this in another thread but I'll restate it here.
All systems of offense and defense have to evolve as opponents figure out how to deal with whatever it is you are succeeding with. To that end, I think Montgomery (/Davis/Moore) and Siefkes will be a good beta test for each other...an offense designed to create big plays against a defense designed to contain them.
He was only at VT one year. Just wasn't long enough to have the necessary effect.
I agree with the idea that Montgomery definitely fits what VT and Pry need in this hire. Pry needed a bona fide offensive leader, and Montgomery will be, without question, the top authority on offense.
The enigma is his resume. His best years were so long ago. And it's hard to make of his downward trend of offensive production at Tulsa and Auburn. It's fair to wonder whether he can recapture the success of the Houston, Baylor, and early Tulsa years.
It may not be too fair to grade him on his years at Tulsa as HC. There are a lot of examples of good OCs that are not great HCs. And when they're HC, their offenses are mediocre to bad. When they are rehired somewhere as an OC, they're great again. Joe Moorhead and Chip Kelly are good examples.
The Auburn debacle is also hard to be too critical. Auburn fans seem to suggest that it was a poor fit between Freeze and him, so I'm not sure he was even given a chance to succeed. If Freeze is calling him out because he's not running Freeze's offense, that's clearly not a situation in which Montgomery can succeed.
I do think he's a clear upgrade over Bowen. VT should definitely have better QB play with Montgomery. And with improvements on the OL, continued success in the run game and elite WR recruitment, it's possible VT's offense becomes a formidable force in the ACC. I want to see a 3000 yard passer, 1000 yard receiver, and 1000 yard rusher in a single season. Or 2 receivers over 1500 or two RBs over 1500. I think that is more possible today than 3 weeks ago.
When I was writing my comment in the OC thread about notable UFL coaches, my eyes lit up when I saw Montgomery. I didn't add him to the list because of his relationship to Baylor/Briles. Hopefully VT did the necessary background check to make sure that it's safe to have this guy representing our university.
On the football side, I'm excited. Taylor may have been fine or innovative, but with all the available names in the OC pool, I think we needed a guy with experience at the highest level. Somebody who wouldn't get scrambled by the circus that can come with a coach on the hot seat or crazy success at a power conference program. Add in HC experience, much like Neal Brown, which can help fill some of Pry's gaps.
The DC coaching pool had a lot of unexciting retreads with mediocre offenses and we have a former DC as HC, so I'm ok going with a younger guy with less experience there. But the OC pool had exciting names all over who had coached great offenses, and I'm glad we hired one of those guys instead of pairing a newbie with a newbie.
Jeff Lebby
Idk if the game has passed Montgomery by or not, but the Veer & Shoot that they ran at Baylor is what Tennessee and Ole Miss run right now, and it seems to work pretty well for them.
It's not like Auburn has taken a leap forward post-Montgomery
And yes, at this point I just want the P2 to split away, take their ball and fucking leave. I'm tired of them. I'm tired of the fucking circus. I'm tired of watching them try and bleed us dry just so they can get a little more. Fuck them, fuck this sport, fuck college athletics. I've reached my breaking point. I don't watch college basketball anymore. I do not watch college baseball or softball. And as of the last couple years I only watched VT football, and I'm thinking I'm done with that.
I'm so turned off by everything that is going on that I want out. I don't care and I don't want to care anymore. The greed has completely pushed me aside. From the schools to the players, everyone just wants their hands on our hard earned money, money they whine that they don't get enough of during a time when culturally we are being squeezed in every aspect of our lives where salaries have stagnated while inflation skyrocketed and its only going to get worse. Mind you, these same students already had their education paid for, an easily 6 figure benefit, but that wasn't good enough, no, they needed their hands in my pocket because god forbid they actually had to be treated like a fucking student and pay for their own clothes or meals. And boo hoo these fucking schools couldn't make due with their 8 figure tv revenue streams and 9 to 10 figure endowments, no they needed more because they had to just keep building and modernizing buildings and stadiums that never became old and obsolete. They just needed more.
Fuck
it
all
I'm done. For the first time in my life I genuinely hate what is going on with college sports and I'm realizing that it just does not bring me enjoyment anymore. Everything about it is miserable. Everything about it sucks, it just exists to remind everyone who isn't a chosen one that they aren't part of the chosen crowd and they exist to get walked over. I can't support it anymore. I can't do it anymore.
I'm out
I will care about VT going forward on a game to game basis, and I will try and go to football games when they play down here, but I'm not going to care any more and I am not going to dedicate weekends to it anymore. We are never going to win a national title in any sport as long as we are playing against the SEC and Big Ten. Period, will not happen. They can outspend us up and down the budget and we cannot control it. I'd rather us drop down to D2 than continue this charade anymore. And if we aren't going to do that, then shut down football and just go all in with other sports. Or just go the route of the Ivy League and eliminate all athletic scholarships and just do it for the love of the game. I don't want to play the game anymore, I'm out. And I will not give another penny to VT as long as we are just wasting it like we have been.