Saturday , my two youngest daughters had the privilege of playing flag football in the Swamp at the University of Florida. I coach my youngest daughter's 2nd-3rd grade team, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience ;playing all day and then under the lights in a massive SEC stadium, surrounded by hundreds of other girls doing the same. It was truly special.
One of the girls on our team has a dad who works as an NFL scouting executive and has connections within UF Athletics. Because of him, our team and parents got a behind-the-scenes tour of the football facility, practice complex, athletics lounges, nutrition and recovery areas, staff offices, and the recruiting "war rooms." It was unreal. Every inch of the place was purpose-built for recruiting, development, and performance. You could tell the Gators have poured a ridiculous amount of money into building a first-class operation—and it shows. They even just moved all their football players out of the athletes dorm and into an apartment complex in town where each players gets their own space.
Now here's where it hits home.
As amazing as the experience was, it also left me feeling small. I love Virginia Tech, and I'm proud to be a Hokie. But standing in those Florida facilities, it was painfully clear just how far behind we've fallen. The Merryman Center, once elite, now feels outdated. Lane Stadium still rocks on Saturdays, but the infrastructure around it doesn't match the standard being set elsewhere. Recruits are touring places like UF and being shown top-tier lounges, pools, barbershops, recovery spaces, and world-class nutrition setups. They are even building a VR suite not just for relaxing but to go over plays and schemes. Meanwhile, we're crossing our fingers for upgrades and hoping tradition alone can carry the weight.
I hate to say it—but this is what the arms race looks like. Florida has made a clear, deliberate investment in being elite. We need to do the same.
Comments
I don't know that I agree. Given the choice between investing millions in the football arms race and just improving campus, making it as great a place for everyone who goes there, at this point, I'd take the second. Do we really have a path, as things currently sit, to a natty? Unless the realignment gods smile on us in a way that I'm not sure I see happening right now, we're already in a hole and its getting deeper every year. Some of that is the fault of administrators over the years, some of it is just bad luck. If we'd ended up in the SEC instead of the ACC, we'd be in a different situation probably. We'd have resources to keep up. But we're committed (basically) to 20m a year to athletes, we just don't have the resources to also sink 50m into a VR space for practice. Come a point, you're throwing good money after bad.
Sounds like a cool experience for both you and your kids though!
I think I'm at this point too. VT football is never going to have the resources or desire to compete with the top tier of programs. We had a window of opportunity to vault ourselves into the elite category, and we even had an opportunity for the SEC back in 2010/2011 and poppycocked our way into football purgatory where we stand now. Complacency, incompetence, and lack of true commitment from our donors have plagued this program, and you reap what you sow.
At this point, rather than gouging students with athletics fees to pay the NIL/revenue sharing arms race where we are never going to have enough, just deemphasize athletics and be a lower division school. There doesn't appear to be the appetite or even a realistic path forward to being a P2 school at this point, so just end the charade and be done with it.
It's pointless to complain about "other" donors not showing up.
WE are the donors. We do a lot with little, and always have. We're a program with limited resources, as are MOST college athletic programs.
We had a brief window of national recognition for our program, and should have invested/managed/controlled it more at that time, but we had the wrong administration for that. We're lucky ever to have had it. The management of our program is better now than what it was then, but the times are also different, and we didn't land in the SEC or B1G. And those conferences are in their "circle the wagons" mode, which I don't believe is in their long-term interest, but what matters is what THEY think is in their interest.
We're not gouging students for revenue sharing. We're collecting a fee to support athletics. I prefer transparent fees to other methods of financing college sports. There is a lot of public and private financing to support college football. Most of it's NOT transparent.
It's a "pay to play" world (it always was), and we're just living in it. For those folks who thought "sharing the wealth" was preferable to amateur athletics, well, this is what that looks like. Nobody in power got that power by sharing wealth. They got there by making other people share THEIR wealth.
A famous guy once said that behind every great fortune is a great crime. By the time you realize there was a crime, it's already been covered up and blamed on someone else.
I detest LIV golf and the fact that terrorists own F1 and major soccer clubs, but if the PIF wanted to invest 3 billion dollars in VT's football and basketball rosters, I wouldn't complain. Private equity is not far off in college football, btw.
Our path to a Natty was Boise's and Indiana's last year. They both had a path. Indiana was football siberia and took JMU's team to the playoffs in the B1G. Boise is not in a P4 conference. Both had a seat at the table. SMU had a seat at the table too- and didn't win the ACC. VT certainly has a path.
We tried going "all-in" on football last year by paying to retain a ton of players and bringing in some high profile transfers, and ended up .500 yet again. Either the coaching and recruiting is horrific, our definition of going "all-in" isn't the same as other schools ($$$ wise), or some combination of the two.
"Either the coaching and recruiting is horrific"- it is. Especially HS recruiting. Now while I think Napier is not a good coach and florida could have done MUCH better, at least he can recruit and had been a head coach before. In a critical point in our program Whit hired Brent Pry- never a head coach- because he was a GA here in 1995- no other compelling reason. When your philosophy is to cling onto ANY desperate tie to the Beamer years instead of hiring a legit P4 coach, well that isn't going "all in", is it?
I agree. I like Pry - cool guy and I think he's like the ultimate Hokies fan - but unfortunately not a very good coach. Especially someone with a defensive pedigree, the defense and LB in particular (his area of expertise allegedly) has been abysmal. Barring a miracle from our new coordinators in 2025, I don't think the Pry train goes much further.
The best coaches are prepared for situations- Bellichick was the best ever at this, and they have attention to detail. Pry has shown neither. He is awful in late half/game situations and his attention to detail is so piss poor duplicate numbers cost him 2 games. Could he learn those things? Jeffrey Lurie hired a time out consultant for Andy Reid. Maybe Whit can do the same. But I'd rather have a bigger coach than Pry at VT.
Recruiting seems to have gotten better since Fu (really only one way that could have gone), but the rest of this seems right. There's a way to be proud of the past of the program without making it the whole future.
I think Pry has raised the floor of the classes looking strictly at the rankings, but coupled with the holes on the roster (glaring lack of depth at some positions, overrecruiting at WR inflating our rankings) and lack of development we are seeing from our classes, this 2025 roster feels eerily like a late Fu era roster. I just don't see a ton of talent jumping out at me. At least Fu had a strong OL his last couple of years. I worry if we will even be able to field a competent/healthy starting 5 right now.
Pry is more chum with HS coaches and parents than Fuente. Fact. He has done well enough to where he doesn't have to panic and offer 2 star recruits on signing day or flip ODU guys- yes. He has NOT improved recruiting results overall in any SIGNIFICANT way. Maybe slightly better- but not much at the end of the day. Keep in mind not being able to beat an OOC P4 team or anyone consistently other than UVA on the field impacts this as well.
The floor has improved since FU. The ceiling has not.
Ceiling wins games though.
This is bull shit. Pry checked a variety of boxes:
You can say Whit was looking for the wrong things. You can say that Pry has failed. You can say the initial coordinator hires should have never happened. But to say that Pry was hired ONLY because of his prior connection to VT is bullshit.
That's your opinion now isn't it? He was never a head coach. And how many other guys that checked YOUR boxes were interviewed with no connection to VT? there are dozens of guys that fit your boxes, mysteriously Whit reached out to one of them. I wonder why?
Whit reached out to Bill Napier and Dave Clawson (Clawson never wanted to leave Wake, he used us as a way to get a raise). Both turned us down.
Yes, and both were head coaches. Please stay on topic.
There were some rumors that we had Napier until Florida came calling.
Does a path to playoffs really equate to a path to a natty? I guess. Both those teams lost convincingly in the first round of the playoffs. Maybe you squeak out one win, but multiple wins against top 5-10 teams? Seems unlikely. Our chances were better when an undefeated season (maybe) gets you into a four team playoff.
Like anything, a QB and a bit of magic, I guess anything is possible. The path is narrow though, and only getting narrower as the resource imbalance stacks year over year.
In order to win a natty, you have to be in the playoff. Boise was 3 wins away. They controlled it on the field- not in the polls, not by herbstreit slander and media bullshit. They were in the dance. They could beat PSU, ND and then play for a natty. That is an actual seat at the table as opposed to playing your fucking scout team against Minnesotas scout team and getting pushed around.
Yeah, to win you have to be there. That doesn't mean that being there means you have a real chance to win. Which was my point.
Some magic gets us there. We just don't have the horses to win multiple games against top 10 opponents. And horses are only getting more expensive.
Honestly, I think we have a better path to the playoffs outside the P4 than inside one of the non-P2 P4 conferences.
If we're being honest, Florida was among the "haves" in college football
longbefore VT showed up. They were well-positioned when the really big money started showing up."The fix was in", as they say.
Yes, Steve Spurrier introduced the forward pass to the modern SEC. They were a huge deal. They gave birth to the modern SEC championship game by playing a great game with Bama in the first one. Until Billy Donovan came along they were 100% a football school and still are.
UF was the most recent team to win their first natty - in 1996. Three years before Vick's debut.
But to your point - they were well positioned for each big financial bump. Maybe luck, maybe not. Theyve ridden a few big waves to success.
There is no arguing their success since 1990.
VT went to one national championship. Florida WON three, and more importantly, happens to be in the right conference.
VT needs to stay invested enough to catch lightning in a bottle again.
It's a shame none of that has value though. Players were being asked to play for nothing of value until recently. Apartments, training facilities, nutrition- worthless.
This! I think fancy facilities matter less than they used to. Now, it's all about the bag.
Except with the looming House Settlement with the revenue sharing cap and NIL clearinghouse, the assumption is that we will see some leveling of the playing field somewhat. (Although I'm not convinced the clearing house will be as effective as they hoped.) If that happens, then all of that stuff will be back in play. The SEC and B1G schools will have excess revenue to spend on all of it, whereas VT and the like are going to have to scrounge for the $20.5M every year to fund revenue sharing.
There's an urban Meyer story where the first day as coach at either UF or OSU, he saw a trashcan he thought was too ugly for recruits to see. The next day all the trash cans in the facility were replaced with new, branded trash cans.
The story has nothing to do with trash cans. It's about the sheer devotion to winning at all times.
The much better Urban Meyer recruiting story is that he had a person on staff at Ohio State whose ONLY job was to identify coaches on the hot seat that year and which players they could poach from those schools. He was an assassin in recruiting. He also paid players huge amounts of cash to go to florida and OSU before it was legal, but hey.
This thread brought to you by 2018
It was opened in 2022 and is even now getting renovations done to offices. The football player apartments are brand new for this past semester.
when was the last time you were in Merryman?
The lobby and cafeteria 2.5 years ago, the back end areas and weight room 3.5 the practice field and Beamer barn 2 years.
Our facilities are so dated they're being lapped by the ones that have already been lapped by the top dogs.
We complain about how poor we are but do absolutely nothing to significantly increase revenue streams. Every chance we get we accept the low ball offer because its easy. We settle for coaches, we settle for results.
We absolutely deserve to be where we are. We have no real desire to compete. We never have. We say we do, but deep down we wish we could go back to the 60s when we were a small regional military school with no expectations of success. Even when we were at our peak, we pulled back because the lights just got too bright and we didn't like the attention.
Are we not capable of maintaining a mildly nuanced perspective?
We're a top 40 school in revenue with top 25 aspirations and a top 50/60 staff. There is area for improvement.
The 'low ball offers' (aka Nike deal) we accept are marginal differences - a couple million doesn't make a difference.
Coaching hires are a crapshoot; no one does it well. USC is failing with Lincoln Fucking Riley. Texas is succeeding with a recovering alcoholic who underachieved as an HC at two prior schools. LSU won a natty with a failed HC who they never wanted to hire. Everyone thought Fuente to VT was the best hire of the decade, until 2-3 years in.
Cmon Nobody wants VT to go back to the 60s.
We are 33rd in revenue in the knight commision database. This does not include Baylor, SMU, UF, FSU, Miami, ND, USC, TCU, Northwestern, BYU, Duke, Cuse, and Pitt. Not that I think Pitt is ahead of us, but it wouldn't be a stretch. That's atleast 10 schools there that have more revenue that us. No way are we top 40.
Who is this "we'' you are talking about? Bullshit on your last sentence, too. Bullshit, conjecture and hyperbole at best. And nobody wants us to go back to the 60s. Not nobody, not nohow.
Lets not forget about Gatorade money as well.
On one hand I don't like the idea of hurtling full force into the facilities arms race. OTOH VT wants to be a innovative school on the forefront of engineering and technology. Well all that engineering means little if it doesn't solve a real world problem. So we should be able to (jargon incoming!) synergize some of the academic initiatives with the real world application of athletics. Why can't VT, a technical school, have one hell of a VR setup for any sport where a player could benefit? Feels like we are missing an opportunity here.
The academic side missed the opportunity to keep the same logo.
Also, they apparently stopped inventing the future at an inopportune time.
Really simply easy stuff the administration just fumbles. Also why do we keep chicken coops near the lots instead of building more athletic buildings for softball, baseball etc?
I completely agree here. It honestly shocks me how little we attempt to synergize our pedigree and reputation as an engineering school with our athletics. That SHOULD be our entire brand - that we may not be able to run with the big dogs like Florida in terms of donor money, but we will find a way to beat you by out-smarting you. Out-toughing you. Out-developing you. We are long overdue for a modernization of what was the essence of Beamer's time - we will do more with less, and we will kick your ass doing it, and you will suffer for underestimating us.
That, to me, is how we should have taken Beamer's legacy and ran with it. It's not about doing everything the way Frank did it and being stuck in the past and stuck in our nostalgia. It's about taking the ethos he gave us, and modernizing it for college football in 2025. To me... that absolutely means going all in on the broader skills/assets/attributes of Virginia Tech as a community and university - engineering, technology, analytics - and applying them ruthlessly to our athletics. There's zero reason we shouldn't be using some of the most advanced technology, strategies, etc. and sabremetric'ing our way to a natty. We're never gonna get there trying to be Florida. We have to do it by being Virginia Tech.
The last time the college landscape changed for VT at this scale was conference re-alignment. At the time we did well- made it out of the Big East into what we thought was a great conference. We didn't come out bad. well now times have changed again- lets see how the entire admin reacts. Players are paid millions now- its a different world. Is VT going to adapt?
I have no faith that the current leadership in Blacksburg gets it done.
it pains me to say this, but I agree with Joe 100% here. I just don't see it with this current administration - they're either completely clueless, they have an idea what needs to be done but have no lead in their pencils, or they just flat out don't give a damn about being competitive in football (or any revenue sport, frankly). Of the three, I think the last option is most likely. Maybe I just think that because I don't want to believe they're completely incompetent. That said, "do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence", so perhaps it's more likely one of the first two. Who knows?
I've been want to have a thread about this for a while, but Whit has been big on fund raising, yet it's been ineffective. Sure he brought in more money every year, but so did weaver. Donations has been something like (i don't have numbers infront of me) 24% of our revenue +/- 1% for as long as I can find data. We got more donations last year than any other year, yet it fell inline with our revenue at 24%. He is just keeping us at the level we've been at. But Weaver did the same. Whit was known for being a money guy yet he has failed at VT to move the needle.
whit is like our CFO- he cuts travel, pinches pennies, doesn't invest- so the bottom line looks fine. He never grows the top line- neither does Whit. And yeah, Whit is more CFO than athletic director.
i dont think the bottom line looks fine when we are at the bottom of budget for an athletics department in the P4.
THe only thing people who matter care is if we are losing money. We aren't, so he's doing well.
We're also not investing in order to grow, but they don't care about that.
We're not "botton of the budget" for P4 athletic departments... probably bottom third. Top 40/45. We're not in a situation like Cal.
Cal spent $146m last year to our $132m. They have a bigger budget.
At some point you are what you are. We've heard from years about how we have plans, resources, vision to move in the right direction, and we haven't seen the results.
The leadership with athletics has been ineffective. I have no idea how Whit and Pry both have jobs. There's no accountability.
Well in one way there is accountability, the department is in the black not red. That is what is important to the Tech Board of Visitors.
Scared money dont make money
I don't know if that's true, but I will take your word for it. It would explain a lot of the mediocrity though.
I imagine a large part of it is because there would be a largely negative net benefit to anyone with appreciable power to speak up, saying something like "Hey, maybe we should really stop and think hard about if these two guys are really doing a good enough job to keep VT football & athletics relevant." Even in the context of college athletics, especially for revenue sports, being a cutthroat business, I think that would be received as someone yelling fire when they think there is no fire.
Sounds like a really cool experience. I bet the kids loved it!
I'm only 2.5 hours from Gainesville, so hoping to get there for a football game someday soon. Probably hit up Tallahassee this fall.
I've given up trying to compare us to SEC teams, but I still have bucket list trips to see games in those stadiums.
What kind of Addict are u really.....?
JK
Ouch! Ask my wife - it's definitely everything Hokie!
Even living in FL, still go to 3 games a year when we kinda suck.
Where in FL, we lived in Melbourne area for 22 years.
I live west of Tampa on the other coast.
I've spent some time in Melbourne for a previous job. Lou's Blues on the beach and a couple places downtown bring back some memories.
I've been to over 50 stadiums, and honestly none of the SEC ive been too are in my top 5 stadiums to watch games at. Ole Miss has a great tailgate, UT also has great fun before the game, USCe is eh, MSU is the best stadium experience when they are decent (read: Dak years), but it's on par with WVU. Bama is pretentious, sane with OU. Vandy is the worst I've been too, and A&M isn't as fun as they were under Slocum. I haven't been to LSU.
Sleeper experience is definitely Hawaii, Aloha bowl is a rust bucket, but they love their team and everything around the game was great. It helped that I was there for Colt Brennen to tie the NCAA TD record before he got concussed.
I also love watching games in Bobby Dodd with the Atlanta skyline at night.
LSU is bar none the best stadium experience in the SEC.
Homer opinion I know, but it still isn't as good as Lane (when we're good).
Oh I am aware, hence why I called it out, I just haven't been