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He got out before the storm, and landed a higher paying job with less responsibility.
On one hand, great for him. On the other, extremely sobering reality for the state of VT that we aren't willing to even pay collegiate position coach salaries for a coordinator role.
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Whit has already demonstrated that he's fine with having a lame duck coach for a couple years. Fuente was cooked after the 2018 season and lasted until 2021....so...
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If Pry doesn't win 7, he is out and he knows it.
Pry has to hire somebody with OC experience. No promoting with no experience anymore. His career is on the line. He also has to tell Whit, I have to have at least 1 million and prefer 1.5 with great resume.
I think what makes this so difficult is that we've actually been gifted an opportunity here - Bowen was average at best, and we have the chance to make a serious upgrade - but that opportunity will be absolutely squandered by a feckless, out of touch AD and a HC who's still learning on the job.
We will pay $800k for another first timer from a D3 school, and we'll be told it's a 4D chess move. We'll win 2-3 games this season. We'll be told it's a "rebuild year", and we'll waste another season during a time in college football when it's crucial that we get better, not worse, and fast.
At the rate we're going, under this leadership, we'll be lucky to get an invite to the Sun Belt in the next decade. Forget about the P2. The fall off in quality of VT athletics (especially FB) under Whit Babcock's direction has been nothing short of catastrophic. It should be studied.
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Whit and Pry have to know what the rumor are saying. Any less than a good hire means that Pry is going to be a lame duck even with 2 years remaining on his contract.
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Did the new OL coach we hired have OC experience? Maybe find his +1.
Conspiracy theory alert here
Bowen knows how the DC search went, and that it went poorly. Therefore, he knows he'd be coaching for a lame-duck coach in 2025 and decided to open up his options - figured getting an assistant role at a top flight program with national championship success is better job security than being the OC for a team that is destined for the drain where he will ultimately be fired when the entire staff is axed for going 6-6 again.
disclaimer: TKP is my negativity outlet - IRL I'm really a much more positive dude, I promise.
Agreed - I could also see a situation where an experienced playcalling is brought in, but we promote someone internally (who has a good handle on the offensive scheme) to be co-OC.
Seriously isn't this because Stiney was mean to him or they had some feud at JMU? Lol you can't make this stuff up.
I also think we have to move past the Stiney-expert-recruiter thing:
- He hasn't coached at the P5 level for a while now. The P5 recruiting game has changed pretty drastically in that time.
- Stiney did great in VA, but the talent in VA has fallen off (especially in the areas where he used to recruit). Does he have the connections/relationships to recruit NoVA, DC, NC, etc?
- I can't imagine Stiney coming back to VT after fans vocally lobbied for his termination for a half decade.
As long as Whit is the AD (and Beamer isn't the coach), Stiney will never have a job at VT.
I just pulled it up (so it soaked for ~36hrs) and I got a ~25" catfish and a ~12" perch. Good sizes, but I was hoping for more. It looked like the net got caught either under the dock or on the bottom of the river so it definitely wasn't as productive as it could have been. I consider that a success, though.
I threw it back out as-is but I'll probably clean the fish tonight and rebait. I still think there is a better way I should be anchoring it or keeping it in the right position. I may try to keep it open with PVC pipe or something like that. I've thought about throwing an anchor out but with the tide shift that would probably hurt it more than anything.
If he doesn't have to recruit I'd bring Stiney back to help out there
I hear Frank Beamer is not doing anything. I mean we already have Bud Foster back in the fold might as well get the whole band back together.
It's mostly the latter. This is the middle get smashed down by the P2. For us VT fans it is all about our program of course but this is happening everywhere in one form or another to anyone who isn't super rich.
It was a bad sign when G5 head coaches were taking coordinator gigs in the P4 and now this is the next level of that evolution.
I've said it else where but this is more and more proof that investing in VT as a regular fan, in the monetary sense, just isn't worth it. My $2500 a year doesn't do a damned thing against this.
So demoralizing.
Agree here. But my concern is, even though we have the cash on paper to make a big hire, we will still go cheap. We had somewhere north of $1.5 mil on the table and were prepared to go for Knowles. We ended up hiring Siefkes for half of that. I know that we paid around his value, but you would have thought we could make a run at several P4 DCs or even NFL with that budget. And we chose not to.
That brings up some good points and some questions. With the timing of this change, a new OC needs to be identified and hired fast. Will he be ok with keeping current staff? Often a coach or two is held over for continuity but most of the time the new guy wants to bring in his guys. I guess that hurdle could possibly be mitigated with a high enough salary to tempt a guy to take that arrangement. Which brings up a second question, could the new guy even fill out a staff this late if he wanted to bring in his own hires?
A comment was made that the Bowen hire at OSU took Pry by surprise so we know we are way behind in this situation.
Taking all that into consideration, I agree an internal promotion may be what we likely wind up with at the end of the day.
I am trying to look for the positive. We now have the opportunity to try an upgrade with a million plus OC.
I mean probably not, RicRods dogs were just dragging the poop that is Pitt through his house on their schedule reveal video
willing? or able?
I'd argue it's the latter.