Recent Comments

I remember reading the story of how Vinnie Burns first visited Tech with his dad who was on the Sugar Bowl committee in New Orleans. They came on a visit to present the Sugar Bowl Trophy after Tech beat Texas in that first National Signature win for the Hokies. It was during the Winter and a blizzard hit that weekend. They trudged over to Cassell and were amazed at the turn out in that weather. Vinnie had never seen snow before and thoroughly enjoyed the visit and was amazed by the school. That impression got us the best punter we ever had up until now..... just sayin.

I had to take the real Wonderlic as part of a job interview one time and got a 48 (and wasn't offered the position). Will take this version later to see if my brain still works real goodly.

I don't mind us popping around the country looking for recruits and spreading our brand as long as we take care of the recruits in our back yard. If we can just land the top recruits from Va., we will have a solid program.

To me it doesn't seem like top VA recruits are taking care of VT, so I think going out of state and getting talent wherever we can is the right plan. IMDO, VA recruits take a VT offer for granted. A VA recruit should feel a sense of urgency to get on board or be left out - not that they can wait to commit to VT and see if a better offer comes along in the meantime. Fielding a competent offense that can put us in position to win championships will also help.

Yeah the roads in PA are turrible, our state and local don't do nearly enough to maintain them. I don't notice a particularly poor quality to the drivers, except the abundance of Elderly Driver and Yokel Driver (where 'Yokel Driver' is the person who stays in the right lane, right next to you, as you're trying to merge onto the highway even though they are the only car on the road they can't be bothered to shift lanes to let you on).

It's pretty hard to judge them just based off of a few months of recruiting for this class. I think anybody that expected them to come in and start landing 4*s right off the bat for this class had pretty unreasonable expectations. They kept the existing class pretty much intact and added two jucos in positions of need. Now they're just trying to get a few under recruited guys that they think will fit their system to fill out the class.
JF and Co. were not recruiting the same kids at Memphis that we were here. Its tough to come here in December and start recruiting highly rated kids and trying to form a quick relationship when those kids have been recruited by other good schools for years. Its also not like Fuente came in here and had an abundance of notable un-committed prospects that still had a connection to VT. The last staff already missed on most of our top targets months ago.
I think we'll start to see results in the next class. It seems like they're already getting offers out to some highly rated '17 prospects, and they now have a full year to recruit these kids. But i do agree that on field results need to get better to change our perception with recruits.

It's a concept that isn't used much. Rich Rod and Butch have been using it a lot lately. The jist of it is, the recruit has minimal contact and doesn't take an official visit to that school. When thy sign they won't count torward that years class. There's some stipulation also about when they can be on campus too, but I know the main part of it is that. It's really been helpful with our legacy recruits. Their parents bring them on campus, and basically do the recruiting.

My only worry about all the four and five stars is making sure they fit the system and can play well with the team. Remember when Larry Coker (Miami) recruited all the 4 & 5 stars, but the team fell apart?

Got a 34, which says I'm as smart as Ryan Tannehill. Not sure if good or bad...

ahh..gotcha. Not where I went with it

Me's not to smart...

While I get what you mean by the question, I think this is where we lost out before. You may rather get #1 in VA to keep the in state pipeline etc, but you cannot control who comes. I think we focused so much on VA when we missed we had to take number 2, 3 or 4 in VA rather than suitable athlete. I like the idea that we offer 6-7 backs we believe will work best in our system and have the right character, regardless of stars or location, and tell them we are committed to the first 2 (or however many) that commit to us. I think going after first choice, then second, than third, etc has left us with leftovers, and that we would better off letting everyone know we are the type of program that has too much interest to hold a guaranteed spot while you shop around.

Given our recent VA recruiting troubles, what's wrong with broadening our approach? If we can stock the cupboard adequately from VA, well, all good. But upping our national recruiting profile seems like a good approach, maybe mitigating the effects of a drought year closer to home. I don't feel like this is a harbinger of abandoning the state, just a natural reaction to the state abandoning us. We win, keep working the high school coaches and targeting our local recruits and perhaps we regain our status, but we cannot just sit back and wait for recent perceptions to change.