Recent Comments

As long as you attach a sweet PowerPoint with your application, you should be fine

...and killed someone 8 rows up.

He was just a tad erratic.

I really don't know anything about Plonsky to give any opinion. I have known of or read about most of the others though.

I agree though, Plonsky is very intriguing candidate.

I'm a Yankees fan and I miss Chipper Jones. He was a great player.

Had an official to Marshall on the 17th. Nebraska has been after him hard for the past month or two, but I'd still be shocked if he went anywhere other than VT.

In my opinion this is a fairly naive understanding of college athletics. Just as people clamoring for a "fair" playoff there is a huge misunderstanding of what athletics is. It is a BUSINESS. This is not peewee football where everybody gets a trophy for participation.

Athletics may have started as recreational clubs but it quickly changed, and remained unchanged, a business to make money. If not directly through athletics then by using it as a marketing tool. Since the mid-90's there has been a huge shift in how this business was modeled. Before it was a much smaller business model predicated on immediate returns of ticket and merchandising sales. Since that time (and certainly before for the likes of Mich, ND and Texas) conferences and teams have had increase exposure and in return increased revenue from that exposure stemming from television rights primarily. If college football was not so popular then it would not be able to demand such high returns on these rights or even in some cases a specific conference channel. But it is. As bar1990 pointed out quite astutely VT spends a hell of a lot more on Academics than Athletics.

You claim that the extra expenditure increases cost on students but I would counter that had VT football not been around or had not won the Sugar against Texas, then played for Championship in 99 then it would still remain a fairly small, regionally recognized school. Football put the school on the map nationally. That is priceless for the Academic programs in the university as a wider recognition means more boosters give to the school, more research grants are given the school, better professors are attracted to and paid for at the school. Look at how much the school has grown since my time there from 95 - 99. So many new buildings and facilities built, almost exclusively academic expenditures. Expenditures that could not have happened if VT was simply that engineering school in Southwest VA. I do believe VT academically would have continued to excel at a slower upward curve but football was this school's flying delorean taking us 88 mph into the future and Beamer it's Doc Brown.

Your comment about slave labor is also IMO fairly naive. TKP had a thread about whether to pay athletes or not, stemming from the O'Bannon case. I am very much in the camp to not pay them. Here's why. No athlete is required to play, they volunteer to pay. They can elect to stop at any time. Most athletes never go pro and make the big money. And if you wanted to use a metaphor then you should consider that the relationship is more of a Artist and Art Gallery. Athletes being the artists are given a venue to exhibit their art in hopes of a payday. Meanwhile universities being the gallery take the risk that the artist they choose may in fact suck and bring down the brand and therefore the financial return of the gallery. They do not pay that artist for displaying work (except that universities do pay athletes now in terms of scholarships). In fact, they take returns from the artist's sales. So if you really must pay student athletes proceeds of merchandise then the University should be able to take from their future earnings at the professional level. It is not slave labor. Not in the slightest.

It is easy to argue that the focus is on athletics. They are on TV every weekend, but this is not representative of where Universities money goes. This is simply what the university uses a publicity tool. Athletics is the Duck in the Aflack commercials. It is a method/ploy to engender the name of the university onto a wider population in hopes for financial return in student enrollment, endowments, research grants, etc. Not the other way around. (Unless your Ivy League or Military Schools, and even then maybe not)

Apologies for rant-like writing.

Post a ten second video of him playing catch and let's see how many "is Motley a QB or a TE?" threads show up in a week.

My bet is 3.

oh those I would prefer Babcock. Cincinnati is not a huge booster school but he's been able to get a lot out of them over the years.

Kelly would be interesting as one would assume he is very football oriented and may push things like coaching salaries to the next level.

Agree with other about Ballein and Bourne. I would not go in-state. I personally still harbor some bitterness towards Ballein from Tyrod's pro-day. Completely unorganized event and didn't prepare him with even an understanding of the rules which led to Tyrod having to throw to substitutes found that day. Plus he has been around VT a long time and boosters are on a downward trend at the moment. I don't see him energizing that crowd that already know him or of him.

So what you're saying is....

He would be a terrific tight end.

I would give any amount of money to watch Logan Thomas, Tyrod Taylor, Michael Vick, Motely and any other strong-armed QBs take on all comers from on top of a snow fort in a snowball fight. Pretty sure people would die.

Boone would have thrown it 85. Just sayin...

I feel so validated in my opinions right now.