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Since pie is so great and obviously the prefered dessert for most Americans it gets to be celebrated 2 times per year!
I think Under Armour-owner/head guy or whatever is a Maryland Grad. So he is subsidizing the Athletic Dept ala NIKE/OREGON but not exactly the same. Also, think he might have been big influence ($$$) in move to Big 10.
Well said and I count myself one that isn't looking for Greenberg to emerge from the ugly hazy past. That said JJ has way too many of his own faults that don't seem to be correcting themselves. I know lacking talent plays a part, but as a couple people have noted, we still lack any offensive game plan and our defense looks rag tag from what Seth used to put on the floor. At this point this season, every game is like watching us play hot potato on offense and chickens with their heads cut off on defense.
The defense has slightly improved throughout the year as some of the freshmen get their legs under them but we are inconsistent on rebounding, would be getting blown out if it wasn't for a few players ability to block shots, and struggle to transition from defense to offense.
The offense though is what drives me nuts. JJ needs to figure out if he wants to be a run and gun or if he actually wants to operate a half court set. If he is going to run an offense, then he needs to do so and force his players to execute it. I honestly would rather watch us lose by twenty but with signs of working a real game plan than be in these frustrating four to seven point losses where we throw up 25-30 three point attempts to stay in the game. I think it would pay benefits in the long run in developing these freshmen. Right now all they are developing is BAD HABITS.
Speaking to Bad Habits and the like, one of the worst things I see are the failures in fundamentals. The ability to shoot free throws late in games, the ability to come off a ball screen cleanly, the ability of big men to take the ball with their back to the basket and reliably get a real shot, the ability of anyone other than Devin to drive the lane to create. These basic fundamentals of basketball are missing on this team and there is only one person I put that on and that's the Head Coach.
That said I am not all on board for firing JJ at this point. The program is at a crossroads with talent. Let him have his third year to bring in his guys. If it works next year, than fine, but if we are hearing the same excuses about "well they are only freshmen" or "we are such a young team" after double digit losses I wont be ok with giving him a fourth year.
I don't see the Cowboys. Romo has only been playing for 8 years as the starter, so I think he's got more left in the tank than a normal 34 year old. Plus, he still moves like a guy that's got something left in the tank. However, I wouldn't put it past Jerry Jones to trade up for Manziel.
The Browns, that way he can continue to wear Orange..
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12 years 6 months
# | David Teel Interview with John Ballein- Not an AD candidate/Problems with Fundraising I give at a level that puts me in the top 900 in the Hokie Club ranking, but haven't heard from my Hokie Club rep for at least 15 years. I've also attended local events, but evry time I leave wityh the feeling like it's a good old boys club with very little reaching out or appreciation shown. Not even a "thnaks for coming, we're glad you're here." We need a total restructure of our fundraising arm with fresh ideas and quite frankly, some youth. And this comes from a 55+ year old fart.
Yeah I see that.. just crazy, I hope when our Nike contract runs out we look elsewhere. Think of all the hype we could have had with ALL Maroon at least 1 a year. Instead we got du du Grey for Alabama.. LOL Nike couldn't come up with a sick White uniform I mean heck I would have taken all white with a maroon strip down the side and been happy.
IIRC, Nike made us a HUGE offer to consolidate the entire Athletic Dept under Nike. We were all over the place before this current contract. BBall was Adidas, Football was Nike, i think some sports were Russell, etc. I rem reading that JW got a lot out of Nike in order to commit the entire school to them. as i said up above, i wonder if timing explains the discrepancy. If our deal is the oldest, it would naturally be the smallest. 2014-15 is the last year of the Nike deal i believe, so i wouldn't be surprised to see us sign a new deal with Nike (or someone else) this summer when we're inside the 12 month window.
I think the Cowboys are a very real possibility. Romo is 34 and Orton is 31. I doubt they'd use a first round pick on Manziel or Bridgewater, so it leaves the later rounds for their searching. As a Skins fan, I cringe as I say this, but Logan could very well be a Cowboy.
I just want him to land with a franchise that has patience. I think he made huge strides in is last year and I beleive Lefty when he says that if he had another year with LT that he would be a first round pick. He seems to be a great young man - I hope he gets his chance in such a situation.
We want LT for TEAM PIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
VERY well-written piece with good research and facts.
I think Seth needed to go - it seems to me that he had simply isolated himself from the rest of the athletic department and the fact that he couldn't keep players and assistant coaches tells me his management style was one that was made him a difficult person to work with. However, I will also be the first to admit that his discmissal was handled poorly and that we probably went cheap on finding a replacement.
Sadly, this has left us with the current state of the program, which is really depressing. I think realistically that you have to give JJ another year to get his recruits in the program but I'm also worried that one year won't be enough and then what do you do? Start all over again? It makes my head hurt.
How many days until spring football?
UnderArmour was founded by a couple guys who graduated from Maryland, so I'm sure their contract is incredibly inflated because there is mutual interest from both sides to make Maryland the premier showcase entity of UnderArmour apparel. Plus, I'm sure it doesn't pain the guys at UA to give a little extra to the university they got their degrees for and openly root for on gamedays.
I don't know enough about basketball to say whether this program misses Greenberg or not. All I know is, if you can't get along with your boss and your co-workers, it usually doesn't end well for you. I'm not saying that Weaver is a good boss to work for, but if Greenberg really wanted to hang around, he would've found a way to deal with the department.
As far as Johnson, I think he's in over his head, but he deserves another year to be sure.
How Maryland gets more $$ than us is unheard of. What do they provide in the way of athletics? The only good team they have is men's soccer. Football is awful, basketball is not the best? Is this where Weaver played us like a fiddle and didn't negotiate properly and just took Nike's first offer? Also if you look at the article we give Nike the least amount of seats/tickets? I wonder if that is why we get screwed with uniforms. I mean heck we can't even get maroon pants but by golly we can have a turkey paw print on our helmet.
Granted Under-Armour gets to make a mockery out of Maryland's uniforms every year, its still cool and the players seem to love it.
"A unique stipulation to Virginias contract: Nike gives an undergraduate student a paid summer internship at Nikes world headquarters in Beaverton, Ore."... wtf I see Nike giving us the Middle Finger and more
This!
I really don't even want to respond to this, but I just can't resist...
HE'S NEVER PLAYED TIGHT END. EVER. NOT ONCE IN HIS LIFE.
How is he more of a project at QB, which he's been playing for 7 years now, than TE?
Would you say these are all....Pieku's?....
Agreed...as long as we win I don't care if the team wears pink tutu's and rainbow colored helmets...
I like orange and maroon, maroon and orange...whatever combo. Winning goes a long way towards us not worrying about the uniforms. I don't care if we wear black for a game either...I was at the Boise St game and I thought we looked pretty cool in the black.
Go for it...I will support the team either way until the day I die.
I think JJ has the guys playing hard and trying their best, but I do question his gameplan and his X's and O's
Defensively, I don't see much direction and offensively we seem very limited strategically.
I think he is well liked (except by Cadarian Raines) and a good guy...but I do question whether he is the one to take us to the next level. By next level I just mean being consistently competitive in the ACC...at least middle of the pack. A team that is a threat to knock off a "big dog" once in awhile. Greenbergs teams were always a threat to pull off at least one major upset each year, ie Duke, Wake Forest, etc.
Lets give JJ the rest of this year and next year....if we are still 8-10 and losing to the worst teams in the ACC at that point, well then, all bets are off and it is time to make a change. We at least need to see improvement next season.
Firing Greenberg was the right decision. How quickly we forget that the team was not much better than we see now in his last season, and the downward trend was there. Not having that class of Allen & Delaney ever make the NCAA Tournament was hurting our recruiting and the writing was on the wall. It was also extremely likely that Montrezl was going to decommit anyway (was already being rumored before his firing), and Finney-Smith had already decided to transfer, so keeping Seth around wasn't going to help keep that talent we love to keep pining over.
The problem wasn't in firing him, but the timing of it. Weaver waited a month and a half after our last game, with only weeks before signing day, to pull the trigger. The rest of basketball was already well into the coaching replacement circuit, and most, if not all, the quality guys that we could have had come in were already off the board. And then you're telling whoever we hire that you only have a couple weeks to get your first recruiting class lined up with a team that was already pretty bad in the previous year. Its not surprising that we hired a guy with no previous head coaching experience. For JJ it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, but he was also too inexperienced to realize just how horrendous a situation he was walking into. There was practically no way JJ was going to come out of this looking good, through no fault of his own, and thats just sad all around.
I believe jefferson could have enrolled in may/june as well but he wanted to enroll earlier i believe that is why he went elsewhere. Not a 100 percent on that tho
I graduated in 1996 and was a donor/season ticket holder since 2002 at the silver and then golden levels. Last year I finally hit the wall when I was storming out of the stadium after the UMD debacle and realized that the whole experience was too aggravating and too much work and far too little fun. I dropped down to the $100 minimum just to keep my years of continuous giving, even though that doesn't matter much. Like beercontrol and others have said, I'll catch a game or two without worrying about selling the tickets to the crap games. Multiple factors contributed, but in order I'd say they were: quality of product on the field, feeling that the money wasn't being used effectively to reach the stated goal of the program, and crappy gameday experience (kickoff times, quality of opponent, constant nagging by weaver et. al.). Having a 2-year-old definitely made things more difficult but wasn't a deciding factor. Financial situation had nothing to do with it.
For the record, I haven't received so much as a phone call from VTAF. I'm under no illusion that I was a "big" donor, but the fact that they don't care when a golden hokie drops off the rolls confirms that there is a serious complacency problem in the 'burg. Also, I took a quick informal poll and discovered the following:
- My sister (an '01 grad) has never once heard from VTAF.
- My parents, who paid to put two kids through VT and have been to a few games, have never once heard from VTAF. My dad got his PhD from tOSU in '76 and still hears regularly from them even though he doesn't donate.
- My wife (an '03 grad) has never once heard from VTAF.
- Two of my best friends from school who I keep in touch with (both '96 grads) have never once heard from VTAF.
So while I guess it's a good thing that Ballein has (finally!?) acknowledged that there are problems, it's pretty sad that for years now no one involved with the program has done even the bare minimum to fix them.