A Study In Decline: The Virginia Tech Hokies
I don't know why this is in the Texas Longhorns section, it's worthy of being on their main page.
And before you start, just know it's absolutely scathing to our entire athletic department in their absolute failure to keep us a relevant program post Beamer.
What happened? Was it simply the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime coach?
At one level, yes. The financial and organizational realities of college football caught up to a quaint personality cult.
But it also revealed a visionless, parasitic administration that squandered 25 years of success.
The whole idea of an upstart program is to use the lightning-in-a-bottle coach to build something more lasting. Virginia Tech not only didn't do it, but they had administrators that appeared to not even understand that it was their job.
There is a lot more in this article, none of it good, and I cannot really argue any of it. It's really frustrating that Virginia Tech is now being used as the model of what can happen when a good program is met with an Administration that is completely incapable and unwilling to adapt to change.
Comments
Beamer is a top 10 all time coach. He won 66.2% of his games at VT. The only other coach in the top 10 to have a winning percentage below .700 is Mack Brown and he would 75% of his games at Texas. He made up for his time at UNC and Tulane with winning a lot.
It took Frank almost leaving to a basketball school to get him paid.
I've said this before, and coach after Frank was going to lose because 1) we weren't going to hire another top 10 coach, 2) the program wasn't built for anything less. We had an entire recruiting department leave us during the Fuente era, it was one way over worked guy. Our social media was a joke. We adhered to all the rules no one else was. The big teams had analysts that were legit coaches. Even UVA hired a coach with like 25 years exp as a grad assistant. It was blantent and no one cared.
Now we sit at the bottom of the ACC in coaches pay even though we said we wanted to be in the top of the ACC 4 years ago. We pay roughly the same as UVA, which is depressing. The only reason UVA isn't a better job than VT is they drove off the only good coach they've had in the last quarter century (and VT actually has fans).
I just assume everyone in our Athletic department is Brent Norwark wanna bes: ""I then inherited the family business and in just 18 years, I grew Norwalk Materials from a $90 million company to a $94 million company"
There are a lot of people in the media who believe that Frank Beamer won in spite of coaching at Virginia Tech. Bud Elliott - who I think is one of the smartest people in the industry - has repeatedly said that the notion Virginia Tech can win a national title is misguided, and that our ceiling is top 15/20 with adequate funding.
10 years ago I thought this take was somewhere between pessimistic and incredibly stupid. Now... not so much.
Yeah beamer might should be elevated to top 5 coach all time. How he won so consistently is a miracle.
Beamer was at the tail end of the era where knowing and teaching football meant you could win a lot.
I mean none of the following as direct attributes of Frank, just of what coaches did in that era.
In the 80s and 90s head coach was the end all be all. They had all the power, they controlled the players as they could pull the scholarship, they could deny transfers, they could do so much. So you didn't have to be a player coach you could just be an asshole and it didn't matter because players couldn't do anything about it. You could yell and scream and do what ever you wanted. You didn't have to be likable. Recruiting was easier because less teams were looking at players you couldn't just email video links to everyone with 1 click of a button. Beamer was good a recruiting what he needed but he wasn't a good recruiter. Bama, UGA, OSU all have single classes that are better than our all time list. Players like Kam probably would be a QB today, but he had to find a place at VT if he wanted to play. There were like 14 people in the football department, only 9 total football coaches, a S&C coaches, and a handful of staffers. Now there's like 50 people in the football department. Also no social media which probably would have gotten frank fired with all the player issues in the 90s. The job of a head coach is way different and it's not about x's and o's like it once was. I feel like Synder from KSU benefited a lot in the same way Beamer did, they got players in and taught them how to play and then played sound football.
The job Pry has to do is not the job Beamer did and VT was not ready for that change.
Almost 20 years ago I told a friend Beamer would never win a national title. He thought I was crazy. When 2007 came along he was like see we were 3rd, and i pointed out we got destroyed by LSU, it wasn't close, it wasn't competitive. They had their way with us. 2011 happened and we were two Clemson games away, and they weren't close, one we score in I believe the 4th to end with 3 points. It wasn't close to a 9-3 team. He had a fluke year in 1999 when some how Vick slipped past everyone. We should have never gotten Vick. The number of events that had to all happen was insane when you think about it.
Coming from an area where I grew up with large WVU donors and just about everyone cheers for WVU, VT was a stark difference in how the athletic department was ran in 2000. And WVU isn't anOSU.
Is this a hot take? This is a VT message board and I don't really think many people here would argue against this statement. Frankly, after the last decade top 20 sounds optimistic. We've been a top 20 program maybe one of those years (2016?)
I commend you for the excellent The Good Place reference
The Good Place is one of my favorite shows ever and that reference flew right over my head. Incredible reference
I knew I heard that line from somewhere.
Man, I really hated the first season of The Good Place the first time I watched it to the point that I'm surprised I stuck with it. I'm so glad I did though. Totally worth it.
Thank you, I've always loved that quote because at face value it makes you think he is so proud of mediocrity, but it's worse when you realize that $90m in 1998 was the sames as $132m in 2016, so only making $94 means he shrunk the company's significantly instead of growing it.
The absolute lack of ANYBODY in the athletic deperstment to have ANY level of foresight of what happens after Beamer for 25+ years is the EPITOME of small time thinking. I get absolutely disgusted thinking about it.
We the fans are not small timer quality. We deserve an honest attemp at big time football by somebody in the athletic department.
Fire everybody from whit to the janitors and start over. Or just shutter the place bulldoze lane and build a dorm.
While that article didn't really have anything groundbreaking it still makes me mad at what an opportunity this place has squandered. Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic. Mr Bob at the local oil change station would have more ambition than the VT AD the last 30 years.
I agree with the thesis, but the article was pretty poorly written/supported.
That said, this excerpt hit the nail on the MF head:
The 'civil servant mindset' comment hits so hard. VT has been stuck in 'friend zone' with big boy college football, afraid to truly compete, afraid that we'll come off too aggressive, afraid to take a stance and commit. We didn't go down swinging, we just stared at the pitches hoping they wouldn't be strikes. We played not to lose instead of playing to win. Pick your analogy.
My favorite part is this:
Its absolutely 100% spot on. While the rest of the world started to lap us, we sang ourselves to sleep every night knowing we were capable of getting a bunch of wins in an absolutely garbage schedule. Hell, even now, we still cling to this notion that as long as we beat an absolutely terrible UVa, its a good season.
We set our sights low, and then make excuses when we don't meet them. And now we're at the precipice of a major P2 shift, and we're lightyears away from where we should be wondering how the hell we got here when the answer is staring at us in the mirror.
I honestly think the legacy admin at VT is scared of being too successful because it will create expectations and then they'll have to actually try. I don't think anyone really has a championship drive or mindset with athletics honestly. It's just going through the motions.
This really hits home with a lot of the attitudes I encounter on the academic side of the university, unfortunately.
I don't think they're afraid of trying; I think they're afraid of being mean and cut throat. I think the boosters take pride in VT being a friendly, aw shucks organization. I think the administration thought that winning a title required you to be 'good enough' and then you just get lucky.
It's as if we lost the prisoner's dilemma because we insisted on being honest when everyone around us was like 'fuck that.' There's no honor amongst thieves, and college football is a sport of thieves.
That's one point of contention, for sure. And not even just being mean and cut throat...it's also skewing too far away from that "perfect Hokie football guy" model that Beamer & Foster embraced. Fuente, I think, flirted with that a bit, maybe because he didn't understand that player model or maybe because he wanted to win at all costs. But the administration pushed back on him and he also handled those kinds of players extremely poorly (among other things). Pry is swearing to bring that back, but that's also like trying to bring back pagers as a way to stay in contact with everyone. Those kinds of players are getting washed away by the greed of NIL and pay-for-play (if everyone else is getting theirs, gotta get mine too!). VT doesn't want to, nor do they probably know how to, play that game of buying the talent to win, and for that we are doomed to fail.
But I would still agree with VTJ12 that there is a lot of fear of trying...Weaver was notorious for not wanting to do anything if it meant the budget was going to flirt with going in the black, or god forbid ever go in the red. (didn't he try to avoid night games because of the cost of electricity running the stadium lights, which amounted to less than $1/ticket?)
Babcock has shown time and again that he's afraid to change anything up that might upset the aging fanbase who helped build the program up to what it is today (or at least was 15 years-ish ago). Nothing innovative, nothing saying "Hang on folks...just trust me with this and you'll see, in 5 years, this is going to pay off big." It has only been "I wont admit it, but we're 5 years behind everyone else, so we're going to do this thing to try to catch back up."
What did Michael Brewer say? Scared money don't make money?
Yeah well VT has been operating with scared money for the last 25 years. Every investment needed to be vetted 15 ways til Sunday to make sure the ROI was already there before the money got invested, and as such we've been spinning our tires the entire time.
Every time in our history we have tried to innovate we got cold feet and ran back to the warm comforts of the status quo, because we are too chicken shit to ever actually change. Just look at the Nike Pro Combat campaign we were in about 15 years ago. We were routinely showcased as one of the top Nike brands in football, given preferential treatment over others, and we turned our back on it because it was too forward thinking and made our donors uneasy because it wasn't blue collar enough for them. And now look at where we are, a pathetic merchandise deal that pales in comparison to everyone else where it easily could have been additional areas of income for us now.
Now look at basketball. We went out and got Buzz, a huge coup in the grand scheme and immediately gave him a top 10 salary in a sport that didn't make money for us. And what happened, we became a regularly ranked program, made the Sweet 16 for the first time in forever, and turned basketball into an actual revenue generating sport for us. So we obviously paid big for our replacement when Buzz left, right? Oh, right, we stripped all funding of the program to hand back over to football to allow basketball to collapse into a shell of its former self now being a net negative again on the financial sheets.
We are who we are. We are never going to change because we're too chicken shit to actually keep up. We're comfortable being a small regional school in the backwoods of Virginia, even if that means intentionally holding back progress to keep us here.
Totally agree with your post, but I thought it was Ryan Willis who said that
Was that a Willis quote? I could have sworn it was something Brewer said after we beat Ohio State
My recollection is that Ryan Willis said this after heaving a 50 yard bomb on 4th down that Dalton Keene happened to catch in order to keep our last drive alive that allowed us to squeak by UVA that season.
Yea, I don't think it's a fear of trying. I think Weaver was of a generation who genuinely thought his job was to keep athletics in the black. That's why I loved that line about our athletic department having a Civil Servant Mentality. He genuinely believed that his first priority was to keep VT sports out of the red, and his second priority was to make them good.
The problem is, that aging fanbase is also the people giving the most money. If Babcock wants money he has to pander to them. Or someone else has to give.
What was it that Whit said? "Those people don't give enough for their opinions to matter"
When you only cater toward the people who give the most, you don't get to whine about your lack of funding when the bulk volume of donors withers up and dies for realizing their needs and opinions don't matter anymore.
It's a two way street - if you want to have an impact, then give more. That's not me saying that Whit is in the right, just the reality of the situation IMO.
Every other college football program caters to the people who give the most.
Every other program has some kind of kickbacks for every donor. Every other program is actively working to make the fan experience better in stadiums and arenas, and actively investing to make every fan feel like their money is going somewhere that they can see.
VT exclusively caters to the top donors. They exclusively listen to the top donors. And they actually make hiring decisions based on how willing a coach is to be buddy buddy with the top donors rather than doing what is best for the program and school as a whole.
Hokie Respect, y'all!
Barf... I would rather win football games.
Nailed it.
We need to adopt the mentality that we're the best funded mid-major in college football. Need to be innovative across the board to compete. Can't be Goliah playing like Goliah.
The only common thread post beamer is fossil John Bellein. Start there.
Jim Weaver and John Beilein can fuck all the way off... The foundation of the downfall of VT football rests on the shoulders the old guard who was too stubborn (and lazy) to change/adapt.
Having said that, Babcock is fuck off too. He's proven to be an unserious AD for revenue sports, which is the only thing that matters.
Funny how the trajectory of the University of Cincinnati football program has changed since Babcock left. You could argue it was built on his efforts, but you could argue much more easily that they are much better of without him.
Given they've sucked for last two years that coincide with moving to Big 12, they had a good 5-year run from 2018-2022. But that was in the AAC fwiw.
Cincy has always been a spectacular G5 program - before, during, and after Babcock.
They had undefeated regular seasons with Brian Kelly and Luke Fickle. Babcock was there from 2011-2014, in which time they had two 10 win seasons with Butch Jones followed by two 9 win seasons with Tommy Tuberville (who I suppose did that with Butch Jones' players - sound familiar lol?).
The AD after Babcock (Mike Bohn) had a bunch of work place harassment claims against him. This later came out after he got booted from USC where - you guessed it - he got fired for work place harassment. Mike Bohn hired Luke Fickle (who performed relatively poorly as an interim coach at OSU).
Anyways... I think Cincy was one of those special G5 programs (similar to Boise or Fresno) who was able to uniquely operate in the sport's middle class, in a way that few programs could. They were able to succeed regardless of AD. All that has changed, for a variety of reasons.
I'm honestly afraid to even look into the article to see what is written there.
Basically put a TKP thread into ChatGPT and tell it to ignore any gifs and memes.
The article has a strong thesis and zero substance.
It's all Truth
Maybe now that an outsider put it in print it will hit home but I doubt it.
Even the Nike deal piece. Stark reminder of how piss poor the negotiation on that was and continues to be.
VT in general needs to realize it's not special. It's absolutely special to us, but every single grad/fan can say that about their school. Operate with a hand tied behind your back because "we do things differently here" and this is where you end up.
Could not agree more.
Ah the annual offseason article to talk crap about the program and get everyone in the football spirit...
Everyone needs to copy the article link and email it over and over to Babcock and the rest if the admin; every day, multiple times a day.
Print 5000 copies and hand them out at the Spring Game
Good point with locker room material. Although these days I'm not sure if it'll motivate or demotivate the athletes. One upon a time we would get angry and then take it out on the next opponent. Prove something. I'd love to see that again.
It's more like "mail room material" if anything, but I doubt it will have the intended effect.
I mean, we've had this discussion hundreds of times on this board, with similar conclusions, and about the same amount of actual facts. Let's hear some solutions.
It's pretty obvious we didn't continue to get the same results Beamer got. And the wheels were coming off even before he left.
I feel like Pry is on the right track, but performance is measured by results.
I don't know where you get your feelings but I have zero faith Pry is on the right track, and some of that isn't his fault.
We wanted to be top 4 in ACC pay, but we paid Pry the same we paid Fuente 6 years earlier. With inflation and the market value in coaches we went cheap. We didn't even play a game with top 4 staff money, because as soon as we announced 3-4 teams lapped us. And after 4 years we are at the bottom of the ACC in pay. We hired two very green coordinators for a first time head coach. We hired two really qualified coaches that left after 1 seasons, that's suspect. Our high school recruiting hasn't noticeably increases. Our in game coaching is well below Fuente's. And Pry is betting on a 33 year old DC who has 3 seasons of DC experience 5 years ago to help him not get fired which would cement him as a bottom 3 coach at VT. Siefkes might be great, but based on all the other moves made, Pry doesn't have a track record of good football decisions. Even in the portal where we brought in two Dlinemen that were all Americans and the most physically impressive RB at the combine. We still had a losing record.
It's odd to comment on whether Pry is on the right track by how much he's getting paid. The VT model is, by definition, one of success breeding more success. We won't be buying a championship unless a lot of people start donating harder than they have to date, so that leaves us in the "do more with some" category.
I think he's on the right track because he's focused on the building blocks that the team needs to succeed, and he knows how to sell the program.
VT is a program that has to choose a coach and give them enough time to prove themselves. If it doesn't work, rinse and repeat. Pry deserves his shot, which isn't over yet. Until it is, he has my support.
Based on Pry's contract if he was doing the right things he'd make more money.
Sure he can sell the program because he's great at PR, but he's a used car salesmen and he's not selling it to the most important people, the recruits. I don't see any building blocks. We haven't seen a lot of players development as transfers largely have led the way. Our high school recruiting isn't any better than most of Fuente's years. Our fund raising hasnt really changed in more than 15 years as donations have been between 24-26% of our revenue every year and os just scaling with everything else.
If Pry only wins 4 or 5 games and we actually do move on then what coach takes over for what would be one of the worst coaches in VT history and doesn't say burn it all down, we have to rebuild everything. Pry has to win like 9 games just to not be bottom 3 VT coaches in the last century.
Maybe I'm just blinded by the miami game cause he just looks like fluff.
Fuente was a decent recruiter, he just couldn't hang on to the recruits. He drew a harder line than he could enforce, and left the program worse than he found it.
I question your assessment of "bottom three coaches in the last century" as the numbers used to arrive at that conclusion don't tell the whole story. Is it really fair to blame Pry for the shitshow Fuente left him? Not many coaches could have had a winning record in that first season.
If we're honest, I think we can say Pry is an improvement over Fuente, even if his record is worse, and even if he were to leave next year, his successor would be inheriting a better program that he received. On the other hand, if he can surprise us with an unexpected win or can continue to improve the program, then he moves up the list.
Fuente was a decent recruiter of certain positions. But he never filled out an entire roster. About half the positions we addressed by throwing a lot of noodles at the wall and hoping something stuck.
Didn't he have an entire roster of running backs?
somewhat /s
Fuente was a decent recruiter when Foster and Wiles were on staff - Recruiting drops off for the 2020 class, which is the first class without Foster & co.
My belief/interpretation of this is that Foster and Wiles had so much equity with high school coaches that they could get VT into almost any kid's top 5-10. Fuente couldn't really close the deal, but Foster/Wiles had enough equity to keep VT in the top 30.
Foster/Wiles leave, and the bottom falls out. Not only can Fuente & Co not close, but they can't convert at the top of the funnel either. This leads to them abandoning the recruit-the-state strategy, which leads them to fall even further into the hole, which leads to more losing, which leads to them eventually getting fired.
Both Brent Pry and Justin Fuente are below average recruiters if your expectation is to finish 4th or better in the ACC, much less anywhere nationally. In order to do that, signing a 4 star player isn't a miracle. At VT, it currently is and parades are thrown and if the kid is a 4 star from ViRginIA, he's the next Mike Vick/Cornell Brown- regardless. THAT is how far recruiting has fallen.
I mostly agree.
The one thing I'll push back on is that Pry has done well in the portal so far, landing multiple 4-star transfers and has mostly scouted the portal well (we'll see about the upcoming portal class).
I'm open to the idea that the new blueprint for success at Virginia Tech is to take projects out of high school and use the portal to give local guys second chances and land talented players at positions of need. But, if that's a strategy, it has to translate to wins at some point and Pry has been unable to do that thus far.
"we'll see about the upcoming portal class"- barring many outplaying their past performance and ranking- its 100% meh thus far with some REAL reaches that only OM glasses see as good players. We'll see about this next window, yes.
We also lost our recruiting department which meant all the players to scout and everything was just not in a place Fuente's team could find so they were late in talking with the kids which can be seen as insulting. But not having Bud to back you up hurts too. Fuente was rebounding once we hired more recruiters but 34th just ain't cutting it.
plus 2020 was that whole pandemic thing which canceled the spring game and what was gearing up to be perhaps the biggest recruiting weekend in program history for the 2021 class. There is a nonzero chance the hindsight takeaway is "Man, Fuente pulling all those overlooked Texas kids to VT was genius" instead of "lol TX2VT" but boy oh boy did all the eggs go into that basket
So far Pry is not an improvement over Fuente, we are still a .500 team at best. Right now you can't convince me that the talent on this team is better than what Pry inherited. QB and WR are better, but Oline isn't and DB is way worse. DLine and LBs all depend on transfers, but LB has been terrible under Pry. TE is a push. RB depends on Stewart being good. But even if they are all decent it's still isn't much better talent wise than what Fuente left. If Pry is fired after this season then the cupboard doesn't look great for next year, so the next coach will have just as bad a roster. Fuente was also a better in game coach. And after this past off-season you can't really say Pry is better at player retention although that's apples to oranges.
Now Pry is trying to run a program, which Fuente didn't do well. But even then we probably could have spent a lot less money and got the same outcomes with Fuente. I see a lot more resource being thrown Pry's way, resources that Fuente asked for, yet they haven't help Pry. What have the extra 30 staffers done? We aren't winning more, players retention doesn't look much better after this past season, player development still has a big question mark around it, and our roster managment might be a little better but we've cornered the marked on 5'10" QBs and 7.5 RBs (depending on the guy from Tennessee that's probably a slot reciever) is better than 10
Look what Baber left Brown at Cuse, he went out and won 10 games after getting a .500 team with out much talent. Or Mike Elko at Duke, it can be done.
Pry is a very likable guy, way more than Fuente, and I want him to do well, but nothing points to that. If you look at point differentials we were the 5th best team in the ACC behind Miami, UofL, Clemson and SMU. We weren't there on our record. And lots of the statistics in the past two seasons say we are a netter team than our record, that's a big coaching problem.
Yeah I agree with bar, there is not a whole lot of substance to the article beyond its main point. Guy was clearly just trying to make word count by the end.
That said, I'm to the point now where maybe more negative press is a good thing. The more attention we call to these problems, the more likely a change is to be made.
Regardless, it's been abundantly clear for a while that the thing Saban says you need to win - total alignment from all parts of the university - is not present at all in Blacksburg. This is just more evidence of that.
Tim Thomas joining in with his own article. Its not behind their paywall at TLP
When we are behind Auburn in running a program we are in trouble as they are a mess.
This is a well thought out and well written piece. Thank you for sharing.
Tim does a good job of recognizing the positive impact that Babcock had in the first half of his tenure, while also pointing out that the landscape has changed and whit may not be the guy any more.
I don't hate whit, and I surely don't believe that he is the single (or even primary) reason that VT athletics are in our current predicament, but I also believe it's time for a change. This relationship has run its course.
I'd like to know whether Babcock has his hands tied and if so, what is tying them first.
Reading this and being reminded about Woolwine's role just makes me think Whit may be past his shelf life and struggling to keep up. We have Jeff King in the Bears front office and Neander with the Rays. Please tell me someone in the AD at least called them to get some idea of how to structure player management and who might be a good fit. Woolwine hasn't been excelling and it feels more like a hire of convenience than expertise.
Whit spoke to talking to both of them in an article this year but just doesn't seem like it's generated anything as of now.
Good to know. Now the question is why does the dept always seem to be two steps behind the competition?
Because aww shucks this is the way we do things rather than hey, this program is kicking ass, let's dissect them and see what we aren't doing
We are just a small time school from the hills of the Appalachians who should just be happy that we were once relevant, because we used to be so bad back in the day when we were in the Metro and independent, happy to get wins over VMI.
No but seriously, those were actual arguments being made toward the end of Beamer's tenure on why we should be content with the status quo as it appeared we were rapidly falling behind
if you want to generous interpretation, it's that due to our mismatch between funding and expectations, there is fires burning everywhere, and not enough resources to address all the fires.
bar put it more eloquently than I have.
With our funding capabilities, we need to prioritize.
There are
someimprovements that need to be made in the funding methods but they will not get us to major school levels.Yep - this is the issue. SEC/B10 schools are getting $60m+/year for just existing. VT and the ACC get half that.
Add an inefficient fundraising org on top of that... how are we supposed to innovate/overachieve?
Way back when, we did it by hiring a hall of fame football coach who had a connection to the university (leading him to stick around longer than many would have).
There is never enough money. Never. If Whit raised a billion dollars, UNC would raise more. It's never enough. Tennesee's mid QB is leaving over a salary dispute. Never enough to feed the machine.
Because Whit's mission is to have efficient EBIDTA vs. fucking winning. Must save money. always.
Jeff King- TE extraordinaire now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time
King was the shit! Remember when he filled in on the basketball team cause of injuries to other BB players?
Yes! Wasn't there another FB player who did this too?
Probably thinking about Devin Wilson
IIRC Bryan Randall also played on the basketball team for a little bit. My memory fades as I get older though.
Devin Wilson was a VT basketball player who also joined the football team.
Bryan Randall was actually on the basketball team around the same time as Jeff King.
Randall played the year before King.
18 games played about 13 minutes a game, scored 3.1 ppg
John Burke was the one I remembered playing both.
I could be off, but I think King was a starter on the basketball team.
I don't remember him starting, but he did get time off the bench.
16 games as a Senior off the bench
Averaged about 6 minutes and 1.1ppg
I remember Seth putting him in to body up Sheldon Williams. Jeff was able to show him down by keeping him far from the basket, but he sure couldn't do much if they ended up within 6 ft.
Some interesting college football numbers...that unfortunately include the Hokies. The FSU and Florida numbers though.... 🔥 🔥 🔥
Since the tweet cut it off
Some interesting W-L stats...
Alabama is 4-4 in its last 8 games vs. FBS opponents
Wisconsin is 4-16 in its last 20 vs. winning P5 teams
FSU is 17-13 in its last 30 games vs. P5 -- and that includes a 16-game winning streak.
USC is 12-12 in its last 24 games vs. P5
Auburn is 11-26 vs. P5 since start of 2021. Only Vandy is worse in SEC.
Oklahoma is 5-9 in its last 14 vs. P5
Florida is 6-21 in its last 27 games away from home
VT is 3-15 in 1-score games since start of 2021 (and 1-12 since '22)
Okla St is 5-6 in its last 11 vs. P5 teams who finished with a *losing* record
Clemson has 11 losses since start of 2022; had 10 from 2015-2021
K-State has as many P5 wins in last 3 years as Alabama (23)
Since the start of 2022, Duke has more P5 wins (17) than UVA and VT combined (16).
Kentucky is 4-12 in its last 16 home games vs. P5.
Texas A&M is 3-11 vs P5 after Nov. 1 since 2021.
Colorado is 2-9 vs. winning P5 teams under Deion.
Ole Miss is 32-0 when scoring 28+ points under Kiffin and 7-13 when it doesn't
woof
well we had a chance to beat Duke last year... but their receivers were running free uncovered early, and then we couldn't close late which Pry has no clue how to do. Maybe next time.
I mean it's because VT is different and special so it has to hang on to bad coaches instead of hiring good ones like perennial floor mat Duke. And UVA only hires coaches if we do it seems.
FIRE EVERYONE! I don't know which is worse the Duke stat or that we are lumped in with UVA football. Print this and put it EVERYWHERE in the coach's and ADs offices. Just make sure to take it down before recruits come around
On the bright side, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
K-State has as many P5 wins in last 3 years as Alabama (23)
Of course, I will probably not enjoy it if someone posts a graph showing the weekly rankings of of KSU vs Alabama over that same time period.