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That's what Joebama said.
Evans stepping in as the #1 JUCO transfer is potentially another Brewer waiting to happen, heck they are both from Texas. This means we are going to have a potential real competition for the start between Evans, Motley (underdog), Lawson, Jackson, and Durkin (if he doesn't move to TE). The great part is if Evans wins the start and Motley takes the backup again, Lawson and Jackson can redshirt. Lawson's shirt getting burned was a mistake, they gave in to him.
We signed who we expected, minus the family guy. Florida flipping 1992 DB Torian Gray at the wire was the real shocker.
I'm not sure he ever leaves- he may retire sooner than not, but doubt he leaves. VT was his only shot at a HC gig that he would take (he's pretty much said he needs a P5 school job- he isn't getting one of those ). So the question is do you uproot yourself at his point in life for the same job at another school. At his age, he is not like TG or Shane where they have a chance to go somewhere with the idea of making another move later. He knew early enough that Frank was retiring, I'm sure his agent put some feelers out about HC and DC jobs that would presumably be available (especially if Whit told him early he wasn't in the running) so I'm sure he had an idea of what he could do outside of VT and decided to stay. I think he realized he's a DC for life and if that's the case, it probably doesn't make sense to move from VT.
My speculation is that Gray wanted the DC seat in a few years. With Scott coming on board, he probably realized he no longer is the clear choice. May explain the dynamics on why Scott was the last released hire.
To me we will be fine. Gray didn't make DBU, only kept it going.
Not disagreeing with you necessarily, just wanted to share a weird story about TGray. I think we will be ok without him, but I personally am sad about losing a coach that produced for us on the field as a player and coach at Tech. I think because he was a real Hokie through and through, it just hurts more maybe. It's the realization for a lot of us that this is a business first and foremost and that just because you devoted your college years and your early coaching career to the same university, that at the end of the day it doesn't really mean much when making a job decision. I can only speak for myself, but my fandom for VT Football tends to cloud my perception of reality, and when I finally get nut punched in order to wake up and see that reality, it kind of sucks, bad.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1so97rq
In light of the news #Hokies DB Coach Torrian Gray might be taking a job at Florida, figured I'd share my favorite story about Gray during my five years on the Virginia Tech beat. I was walking out of a movie in Christiansburg when I saw Gray pull up to the curb and park in the fire lane. He got out of his car with a cup in his hand, said hello to me and then walked into the movie theater. I stood there, wondering if he was just going to leave his car there for an entire movie. I knew VT football coaches had sway around Southwest Virginia, but I didn't know it went this far.
But a couple minutes later, out walked Torrian Gray, his cup full of soda. On top of being a fine defensive backs coach, and a pretty good football player back in the day, Gray also likes to use the movie theater for free refills. And why shouldn't he, considering he probably paid $5.25 for that large soda to begin with?
Why I am writing this now? I'm not sure. I really just wanted to share that anecdote, because I found it hilarious. But it gets at the type of guy Gray is. Like when I first called him back in 2009 and asked if he would tell me off the record if his boss, Bud Foster, was interviewing for a head coaching job.
"There's no such thing as off the record with me. It's all on the record," Gray said, and then proceeded to confirm, on the record, that Bud was interviewing for another job. I always respected that about him.
Interesting story about Torrian Gray
Correct. DB Coach to DB Coach, unless they are grooming him for a 1 - 2 year away bump to DC.
I think we should spend some money attracting a great swim coach who can attract and retain the top swimmers. While Coach Skinner has had success with some of his swimmers, I have also heard some negative feedback about him in terms of handling scholarships and personnel. We've been good at swimming but not great. If we want to be a top team, we need a coach who can retain the top swimmers he attracts. In the past few years, we have lost both Joe Bonk (our top sprinter) and Jan Switkowski (ACC champion when he swam for us and a key component of some of our NCAA relays) to NC State and Florida, respectively. Bonk most likely moved because our former sprint coach is now NC State's head coach (Braden Holloway). Holloway has transformed NC State's program into a national power, and I only hope we can find someone who can do the same for us. Of course, this is probably last on Whit's list because our men have managed to do relatively well on the ACC level the past couple years with top 3 finishes. I'm just not sure how long the success will last and if we will ever be able to compete with NC State with the current coaching situation.
(Note: The negative feedback is from only a few people, so it could be that only those people felt mistreated. However, the attrition of some of best swimmers is not a good sign regardless)
I'm excited about the OL prospects too. I don't know enough to actually evaluate their talent, but just the act of signing five OL in one class seems like a step in the right direction.
I'm also excited about Evans. An experienced signal caller who also has the physical tools? I love Brewer's grit and heart, but I'm excited to have someone who hopefully I don't fear for every time they get hit.
TG leaving has a lot of people worried, but I think there are a lot of positives in the program right now.
The losses to Clemson in 2011 were two of the more perplexing ones in recent memory. By pretty much all accounts other than head to head we were a better, more consistent football team that year. They got embarrassed by GT, WVU, and NC State. Our only two losses (it was a catch) were inexplicably to Clemson, inexplicably overwhelmed by their defense which was atrocious that year, it was just a bad matchup. Great example of how our offenses during the last 10 years or so have made horrible defenses look great.
I with you, I am not getting any anxiety over our class. We seem to have addressed our needs for a year or two down the road.
Bailey was a bit of a shock, but both brothers playing at ISU means it is a lot easier for the parents to visit and see games and not show favoritism. That was probably a family matter and a financial reason for the parents.
Wait how does Minnesota have the biggest enrollment? I'm pretty sure anOSU, UCF and ASU if not more have bigger enrollments.
To me, the NSD angst seems to hinge on us being unable to flip verbal commits to other schools and the shocker of losing JaQuan Bailey due to what appears to be a family issue. We didn't lose anything we thought we had going into yesterday, we just didn't add to it when we really hoped we would.
This was never a great class by the rankings. I don't get why everyone's pulling their hair out over a mid-30s ranking, since that's exactly where we've hovered for like three months. This isn't a sexy class, and it never promised to be one. Yet it still filled a lot of needs. We got 4 WRs, 4 OLs and 3 LBs.
Maybe it's because all the sexiest names enrolled early that's got everyone all emo over yesterday's signing class, but it was about what I expected. Losing Bailey sucked, but not nearly so much as if we had simply been out-recruited by the Vols for him. I would have loved to flip Fox, Ross or Pine, but I'm never shocked when we fail to flip a recruit who feels good enough about another program to give a solid verbal commitment to them. The fact that we went hard after them knowing they were verbally committed elsewhere was enough for me to appreciate that the recruiting culture at VT is changing under Fuente.
Yesterday turned out about how I expected it to, with the one exception being disappointment because a guy wanted to play his college ball with his brother.
Foster is different. People are drawn to his intensity and he makes every player that plays for him wants to do better because he is so passionate about the defense, and his players. All his players respect him and he commands them.
TG is on a different level. He had passion, but it was the kind that I don't think would command the attention of the entire room. It would get their attention, but I can see it working on a smaller level, but not when you are in control of 22 to 30 specific players.
I always think of the positives of a classes and not the misses. For those players who decided to go elsewhere, I just hope that at least once in their career they get steamrolled by Tech.
ESPN is reporting that we signed 2 ESPN 300's and 5 4-star prospects. We were light on a couple areas but that also leads room for our walkons and other players to step up. For one, I am excited about 5 OL recruits. I want a smash mouth OL back again.
Fuente had an extremely good reputation at Memphis for coaching up 2 and 3-stars. While recruiting classes like this aren't sustainable at a Power 5 level, this is Fuente's first NSD, just two months after being hired. Next year's NSD will be a better barometer as to how this staff will recruit.
Im going to go the reverse route and suggest a sport it would be unwise to invest overly in, that being Women's Basketball.
While a marginal increase can probably get us into the middle 50% of the ACC, anything more than that would be a waste.
There are about a dozen schools to be taken seriously in the sport and anyone else winning a title would be decades and millions spent in frustration as of now, and then there is UCONN towering over them all on a 58 game win streak.
What's the background on this $30/$40M you are throwing around? Who are the "Big Boys" we are going to catch with this amount of money? Is it even possible for us to gain that much in budget? Have other schools increased their giving to such an extent in the past?
My intuition is that revenues don't change much for any school. We are where we are, we need to do what we can do with that amount of money. And I'm sure our revenues are comparable to a school or schools who are performing better in football and across the board.
Edit: Looking at USA Today's NCAA Finances page
VT has $73M in revenue, $69M in expenditures, 42nd in the country
$40M more in expenditures would put us at $110M, comparable to OSU ($113M), OU ($113M), UF ($110M), PSU ($117M), UT ($106M), Minnesota ($106M -- biggest enrollment in the country), It would put us in the top 10-15. I don't understand how that should be a realistic goal.
Realistic goals? UVA ($87M), Ole Miss ($73M), UNC ($83M), Clemson ($73M)
So, why are we talking about $40M more in revenue? Shouldn't we focus on what Ole Miss and Clemson are doing in football and UVA and UNC are doing across the board and learn to spend what we have better?
Vinny Fuller did not go to Columbia Fordham Law School to coach football. There is literally 0% chance either him or Whitley get the job and if they did, the sky is falling.
Spoiler alert: in addition to my -10 power, Joe is going to bestow me with the ability to add this icon to anyone's post deemed excellent in the moderator's opinion:
A hockey rink would look pretty nice on campus.
I love these stories. From the sidelines and at home, Gray always to me seemed mellow, especially compared to Foster. Apparently TV can be diceiving.
In many respects recruiting is a sales job.
Clients buy because they can afford it (they can get an offer) and like the product (the school/team potential) and/or the salesman (the coach). Usually this is a relationship that's taken years to build before the buy comes. Getting someone who's buying brand X to change to brand VT requires them to internally admit that their evaluation process was flawed- they made the wrong choice. Barring external events this is something this is difficult to do- folks don't want to admit that they made a mistake even if it really wasn't.
Asking a new coach to come in and in 2 months and convince a HS kid of this is a tall order. That JF was able to get some very talented kids to even consider switching is; I feel, a good sign of his recruiting ability and what he's selling.