So that Whit Babcock interview with local media that was supposed to happen this week about the coaching search, BOV funding and other topics? It's off. We're told Babcock and the search committee members have signed NDAs and will no longer comment on the process. #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) October 13, 2025
Well this seems like a very interesting development. NDAs tend to indicate that we are well into the negotiation process with someone.
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Need to monitor the tracker for flights from Happy Valley to Blacksburg
OR the hiring process has come under fire recently (due in large part, though not completely, to babble-mouth-bruce) and the powers-that-be want to be able to operate without criticism/without TSL/Teel talking shit.
I lean toward this interpretation. For example, I signed an NDA as part of my role in the provost search on day one, before we had even received applications. It doesn't signal a state in the process.
Honestly, taking one look at the absolute dumpster fire of a shitshow that is the VT fanbase on social media right now, I don't know why any good head coach would want to come and coach here.
Our fans are legitimately fucking insane.
Because we have been ass for 15 years and still nearly sold out the game we knew we would lose to ODU with the north and east student sections being full 45 minutes before kickoff.
We pale in comparison to some of the bigger fanbases, and coaches aren't making decisions based on stupid shit people post on Twitter.
The problem is, its not just random people on Twitter, its some of our more prominent people who are just absolutely flying off the handle about every single update that occurs with this process. Guys who actively contribute to prominent sites and podcasts just throwing shit all over every update that comes out. These are people that coaches are going to have to interact with when they are here. Some of the negativity I'm seeing out there makes me cringe and I'm a Philadelphia fan.
I don't think these are the same thing. If J Pearson or Mehul were going on unhinged X rants sure, but I don't think the Sons of Saturday or Chris Coleman are really moving the needle in reality.
you must not have ever ever come into contact with tinnersee twitter
I was today years old when you taught me the proper way to spell "Tinnersee." Thank you, it has always felt off with the original spelling not correctly matching the accents from that state.
This is true everywhere. Don't base your judgement of anyone/anything based on what some rando says on twitter. This applies in all contexts.
Sorry, but this is a masterclass in how to snuff out any enthusiasm that stemmed from Pry's firing and the BOV announcement. Lack of transparency, Whit still saying he will be the final voice when he spoke publicly last time. My confidence in the leadership at VT (which I will qualify by saying I have zero insight into the people and personalities involved) could not possible be more waning.
Whit should have been gone the same day as Pry. Every day that passes where he's still the AD just makes things more confusing and awkward.
Exactly. If there is one rule of thumb in today's college football, it is that an AD gets two football hires. That is it.
Even disliking Whit, the idea that the athletic director wouldn't sign off one his direct reports is foolish. Of course the AD is going to sign off on the coach. I highly doubt a candidate that comes forward with a solid recommendation from the committee is going to get tossed aside while Whit laughs maniacally from his secret lair.
Also, did we expect there was going to be constant press releases about candidates as they interviewed or something? They should have made this move before the committee members were announced.
The AD should sign off. And Whit shouldn't be the AD. The new AD should pick who they want to work with. Every indication is that Whit is on his way out, either a soft ramp to a forced retirement or an inglorious leave your laptop with IT. So either he isn't, which is a disaster, or you are saddling the next AD with a coach they didn't pick (which is basically making that coach a lame duck.)
Ok, so we start an AD search and start looking for a coach in March?
No, we should have pushed Whit to retire end of last school year and had a new AD hired an in place. I think there was at least a strong chance Pry would fail and we would need to hire a new coach, and Whit couldn't get the third chance. But as usual, we avoid making difficult decisions and hope everything magically works. Just making our situation even worse and more difficult to navigate.
Honestly think Sands needs to go too. Thanks for the work on the academic side, but enormous blind spot with athletics, a nine-figure VT enterprise.
GT fired their AD and Coach on the same day in 2022. It's doable
Either Whit is making the hire, or the new AD does it. If you don't want Whit to make the hire, then fire him and replace him. If you're going to keep him around, then have him make the hire.
This hedge where a group of 11 people are going to vet candidates and send the top 4 candidates to Whit has way too many failure points.
GT also made an internal hire to replace their coach. That is not an option here
They ran a search and were going to hire Willie Fritz until (a) Willie wanted to play in the American Championship game, and (b) Brent key went 4-4(?) with 3(?) wins over ranked teams.
They weren't planning to hire Key, that fell into their lap. They didn't announce it until the end of November.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/35139993/sources-georgi...
We could absolutely have done the exact same think GT did.
this
And if we fire Whit a month ago, who takes over in order to hire a new head coach? You fucking well know it would be John Ballein, so lets stop this nonsense that we are doing ourselves this massive disservice by doing things this way. There was NO good option when Pry was fired, we took the least bad. Whit is involved to rubberstamp the decision made by the committee and even that is apparently too much for our fans.
Agree with this take. We need someone in charge during this transition and, like him or not, he's the most qualified person on staff. I fully expect he steps down around the end of this year.
Then announce his retirement, and keep him on for the transition, and pay his whole buyout (it can't be that much). Get the new AD in, and (s)he can run the search.
I'm hoping that they're looking for a new AD, and that they'll hire them if they find one and can secure an agreement.
I wouldn't expect them to tell me about it.
How is a situation this convoluted the least bad option? Why do we need a rubber stamp on the committee's choice? HC candidates are going to want to know who their boss is going to be.
This is a benefit of firing Pry 10 weeks before the season ended. We had time to hire a new AD (6-8 weeks) and hire a new coach. The portal window doesn't open until January. There is so much time to find a coach.
If you're going to keep Whit around, then have him make the hire. If you don't want him to make the hire, then fire him.
I will go over the GT timeline again:
GT - a school that historically cares way more about nerd stuff than sportsball - was able to do this. We could have too.
At Virginia Tech, we COULD HAVE done that....but we waited around until it was too late.
Lol, made me think of that GT ad from years ago:
Georgia Tech - "We're at Georgia Tech. We can do that!"
Virginia Tech - "We're at Virginia Tech. We could have done that! Well shit..."
Virginia Tech: reinvent the past, but worse.
Is sportsball like hockeyball?
Thanks! It SOUNDS like it's in the same vein as hockeyball from Letterkenny.
Maybe it's both. They are looking for an AD of football, while Whit transitions to AD of Olympic sports. Until the new AD is in place, Whit is still de facto in charge, but guessing he only gets to rubberstamp the committee's choice and helps with contract details. Or maybe he's only here until the new AD of football is hired.
Don't let that man anywhere near the contract details!! Lol
Nice! Another Whit Babcock super secret hiring!
I think everyone in Merriman needs to go. Until we clean house we are going to have issues.
"let us bungle this hire in peace"
This whole process has become a dumpster fire. Why can't we just fire the AD and hire a replacement, then hire a coach? Or better yet, why didn't we initiate an AD search and push Whit to retire last offseason so we had a new AD in place already? Why can't we make a decisive move on anything?
At this rate we are going to end up with a horrible desperation hire at HC.
James Franklin said, look we're good, just stfu about it!
At this rate we're going to be announcing Johnathan Brewer as the new head coach at Christmas.
Why can't we have nice things?
This is going to be the response from agents when whoever the fuck is in charge of this charade reaches out:
Yeah, I don't see this as a positive development in the least.
Lack of transparency in a hiring process is rarely a good scenario --- ask the NFLPA how that worked out for them. Whoever is running the show here --Rocovich, J Pearson, Sands---they need to be making themselves available for all the reasonable questions that would obviously be asked in this scenario. Instead, they have rolled out Whit to be some sort of de-facto spokesman and now they aren't even doing that.
So to summarize we have:
1) An AD who may or may not have a future here, isn't part of the committee, but still has some say over the final candidates??
2) A committee that is much too large, has members with loose lips who don't necessarily have any experience hiring coaches and have sent mixed messages to the media
3) a supposed $50 mil cash infusion that is, a this point, still theoretical as there is no substantive proof that the large portion of "philanthropic donations" exist at this point or will in the future.
Seems like a really perfect recipe for a massive shitshow.
looks at the comments here, on twitter and on r/CFB
Reasonable questions? Lol
But they don't need to make themselves available. Having a non-transparent process is the only way we're going to get an agent to talk to us before the end of the season.
No other hiring process has been transparent. We may not like it because we live for info, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect one now.
But how are we fans supposed to trust that things aren't going well if our selection committee isn't telling us who they are interviewing every week!??
I get your frustration with the fan reaction, I really do. We can't expect daily updates, and the toxicity is at a fever pitch.
But try to understand it from the other side.... ask the simple question - who is in charge right now? A boat without a clear captain is destined for mutiny, and in my opinion the decision makers at Virginia Tech have taken the passion of this fanbase sorely for granted for too long. I'm not surprised in the least that it's beginning to boil over and people are getting rabid.
Any amount of good-will the administration had with the fanbase dried right the fuck up on the night of the ODU loss. As it rightly should have. Whit has failed so catastrophically at one of the primary functions of his job (hiring football coaches and ensuring football success), that there's no trust left between this fanbase and any of the decision makers. The optics of allowing Whit to be within 10 miles of the process is getting exactly the reaction it deserves to get in light of that, and I think they majorly miscalculated by not doing what GT did and firing both AD & HC together.
I'm not sure why we wouldn't operate under the assumption that they are monumentally fucking up, until given a reason not to.
No one is reasonably asking for them to give us a week by week update or to go through the names of who they're interviewing or considering.
But when your initial media foray is to have committee members giving differing stories/goals to the media, making your next move hiding behind a non-disclosure agreement doesn't inspire confidence.
Hiring a coach in college has never been a transparent process. There is no benefit to the powers at VT giving out info during this process. We love it as fans but it doesn't help anyone accomplish the end goal of hiring a football coach and/or GM.
I don't think you need transparency per se, but you do need to inspire confidence.
The current team/committee/leaders/whatever has done nothing to inspire confidence.
Nope. To be clear, I don't think the NDAs are necessarily a bad thing. But the whole timeline of events, lack of consistent messaging, and cohesiveness of the process signals to me and a lot of others that we are making shit up as we go along. And why does it seem like we are protecting Whit? If he doesn't want to voluntarily announce his retirement and the commencement of an AD search, then fire him and hire a search firm to conduct negotiations with agents. This is not rocket science. I seriously don't get what Whit has done to deserve such careful treatment here.
I poked my head around a little bit, and at this point I'd say I'm a little concerned. And I don't mean to come off in the classic Hokie Twitter-meltdown type of way but there seems to be a leadership void.
There's certain people on the committee playing politics (e.g. only considering GM candidates that they personally like). Bud is pushing for Shane (I saw that on 247 and floated elsewhere). Whit has more involvement than people think.
Maybe it'll work out, but my concern is this: hiring coaches is supposed to be a job for athletic directors. That's literally their expertise. Doesn't mean they get it right all the time. But right now VT has a neutered athletic director (except apparently he isn't that neutered) and in place of that an eight-person search committee who evidently hasn't met together and is pulling in different directions.
At least the money is legit.
Maybe this at least means we can stumble back asswards into a good hire
They can hire me for only $8M
I'll do it for six
Eff it, i'm in for 2mil/year and a Klondike bar...
With some help, I might be able to pony up for the Klondike bar. What flavor... Original, Reese's, Mint Chocolate Chip, Cookies & Creme, Heath, Krunch, Double Chocolate, Orange Creamsicle, Caramel Pretzel, Dark Chocolate, Rocky Road, or No Sugar Added? Dang... so many choices! It's like a coaching search; with so many choices you end up not making one. And if you do make one, you'll end up regretting it!
Mint chocolate chip, you can never go wrong with mint chocolate chip
Pshaw! HEATH is the best!
So THAT'S what you'd do for a Klondike Bar! I'd do it for 750k a year and a lifetime supply of Skippy Creamy peanut butter. And I'm 60 so that wouldn't add TOO much to the cost ...
At the rate you eat it, that's basically the $8m annual total comp, right?
Pretty much, yes !
Too bad our athletic department has a contract with Jif. We get three jars a year, plus a Hamilton, for Jif to be our official peanut butter.
So sorry, no Skippy.
Maybe they need to start asking how often is the committee meeting and have they narrowed to a top 20 list yet. Light a damn fire.
No idea why I got my hopes up. Rocovich sold me and then Whit remained, the committee happened, the podcast happened, the NDA happened. We are such an embarrassment and no one in Merryman deserves this fanbase. I'm so tired of this. The sad thing is, I'll still watch and follow intently.
Had read the same. Bud and Eddie pushing heavily for Shane. And sounds like Arians is just pushing for exclusively NFL guys with no real thought on college fit. Just don't like that at all. This should have been a 3-5 person MAX committee, and at least 1-2 should have had experience with hiring coaches/coaching searches. If you don't want Whit conducting the search, fire him and hire a consultant to handle agents and discussions. This is so seriously bush league at this point it isn't funny.
Yeah this gets back to why I had such a problem with it being almost exclusively former Hokies rather than someone who knows what the top programs look like from top to bottom that can critique what each coach has to say. Too much old Merryman ties to give us best in football rather than most comfortable for them to visit.
I see John Ballein back in his office, fist-pumping and yelling "Yep, I still got it" over and over.
Find the exact opposite of what we should have done and this is it.
We're fucked. $50 mil about to get flushed down the toilet
So we're keeping up with PSU
In a different post, I stated how much of a gut feel I had about Huff being a top target.
I also have a huge gut feel in the opposite direction with Shane. For yet another unexplained gut feel, I think Shane would be a disaster. He should not be involved with VT Football at all at this present juncture.
And I love Bud. I have had the opportunity to have a few conversations with him over the years and I really like him, but if the Shane rumblings are true, I would be disappointed.
I'll also mention that I think Andrea Adelson tweeted something and Andy Bitter may have mentioned it to, as to the legality of a public school having an NDA. Specific personnel matters (hiring, interviewing of candidates, promotion/demotion, discipline, termination, etc.) are one of several exemption areas under the Virginia FOIA legislation. It's how governing boards can convene in closed session when negotiations are ongoing and such in certain matters, or if they are receiving legal advice, etc. So totally permissible for an NDA, since it just helps to reinforce this specific allowable exemption and helps keep people quiet when appropriate.
meh... we all wanna hear the sweet juicy details but if I am sands and I have a committee member and an AD putting out conflicting messages then I would want to silence the noise as well. Doesn't mean its gone to hell.
I do agree Whit should have gone with Pry but he is here and perhaps Sands gave him an out. He wants this process to go as he wants and Whit makes the hire then retire. I could see that.
Then conflicting messaging got out and Sands wants that controlled. NDA. There must have been a clear plan attached to the money the BOV approved. I can't see it without a designed exit for Whit.
(edited to fix stooopid vocabulary mistakes. doh!)
I'm with you here. I think it's much to do about nothing
I would replace all mentions of 'Sands' with 'Rocovich' though to be fair. I don't think Sands has much active involvement in this search.
i mean, on the positive side of this, it could mean we're meddling with an active coach that we dont have permission to talk to yet and we're trying to secretly lure him away while not letting the competition know we're after them. There's a lot of attractive openings in college football (I like to think VT is one of those), and not tipping our hand to other suitors is a good thing. If this NDA is one way to do that, then so be it.
This isn't a thing in college sports. It's not like the NFL where there are rules about when you can interview coaches.
Lol was just about to say that. There's no tampering rules or any collective bargaining in college football. Fu went out and was actively interviewing with Baylor behind VT's back. The only ramification of that being Whit getting mad and putting Fu on double-secret probation lol.
It's super shady in college and most coaches just let their agents do all the talking. Probably a huge reason why these deals are getting more and more ridiculous with insane buyouts. And only a small handful of agents represent the vast majority of major coaches.
Heard Stewart Mandel on the radio explain the crazy coaching contracts like this:
ADs have a lot of duties. Negotiating contracts is only one of them and they don't really do it that often. On the other side you have agents for the coaches that do nothing but negotiate contracts and that know how to play interested parties against one another for leverage. The ADs are basically just prey to the agents.
In addition to all that, because there's only 2-3 agencies representing everyone, coaches effectively have monopoly power.
Jimmy Sexton after this years cycle.....
After the cycle every year, really
Feels like they could, I dunno, hire an attorney?
This reminds me of Dan Snyder hiring Jim Zorn to be the offensive coordinator of the Redskins, before hiring a head coach, and then 10 days later making Zorn the head coach.
The more time passes, it seems like VT's athletic leadership is on par with Dan Snyder's leadership of the Redskins.
That's a very generous use of the term "leadership".
Agreed but without the sexual misconduct. It's concerning at best
And now for the unbiased perspective of a national writer from outside the VT fanbase....
Not nearly as doomer as our extremely vocal fanbase right now
They didn't say good things, just things
Is he necessarily talking about us though?
To this point, is our fanbase extremely vocal or are some peoples timelines just very Hokie centric? As much as we'd like to think we are, we're not a goliath fanbase that garners national media attention. I'll admit I don't have twitter but I don't see any of this annoying fanbase discourse anywhere on the internet outside of when it's brought up here. I truly don't think our fanbase moves the needle that much
He was.
None of the other openings have 'gone dark' like ours has this week. That is what he was referencing.
Anybody have a direct link? t.co does not work in my office. =^/
https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/hot-seat-rumors-coaching...
South Carolina's slide may have Shane Beamer reaching for escape hatch
Coleman saying he is hearing the same of a lot of what's in the article.
"Multiple sources told CBS Sports this week that Beamer to Virginia Tech is more than speculation -- it has legitimacy -- and would strengthen if South Carolina's downturn continued this season. Multiple members of Virginia Tech's search committee "are pushing for Beamer," one source said."
His buyout is $5M if he leaves on his own, also notes that he was hired by the previous AD. Doesn't think there's necessarily any friction between the two, but Shane was the previous AD's guy
Shane would be a gigantic gamble.
There's no middle ground. He either pulls us back to relevancy and possibly a P2 invite/tip tier ACC payout or VT becomes permanently irrelevant.
All else equal, I think VT would better weather taking on someone who isn't ingrained at VT and gets us back to 8-4/9-3 then takes a job a rung up the ladder.
Shane would be here for better or worse and I think it's more likely to be worse/same as last dozen years.
Yeah, that's a good point, if he's shot his wad, it'll be tough to get rid of him.
I for one want nothing to do with Shane being here. We complain about the complacency and nepotism in the AD office and bringing Beamer back just strengthens that continuing. I want a clean sweep.
1000%
Do not want Shane. I think it would be a weak hire and I don't have a ton of confidence that he would be able to turn things around. I think we need to completely overhaul the entire AD and hire someone with no previous ties to VT. We need a full reboot. Anything else is just repeating what we've been doing for decades and, news flash, it ain't fuckin workin
So Shane having a worse year means he is more likely to come to Tech? WTF?!?! I hope the hiring committee is taking this as a point of caution and not talking themselves into scratch and dent lot is as good as new
Yeah, if we hire a coach having a shit year, that doesn't seem like it would make donors happy that their money would be well spent. You'd have to hire someone with a winning year last year and good record so far this year.
I think its also worth looking at it over the big picture. If the coach has a trend over years of steadily improving performance, and then just happens to have a down year this year that either gets him on the hot seat or fired, I don't think that would necessarily discourage me from hiring him. Both Franklin and Beamer would fit that role, they've both had programs that have steadily improved over the years, just for fanbases that have vastly overestimated their own team's position on the overall college football totem pole. They both have a steady enough track record that you should be able to have faith that they would immediately raise both the floor and ceiling here to have us operating like the programs we want to be, which in and of itself is something we desperately need right now.
So glad the comma is in that sentence
Given the string and how NDAs were signed, how is it that so many people seem to know exactly which candidates are our numbers 1, 2, and 3? Any chance it's misdirection?
Probably more, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly #1 and #2. I don't think deliberate misdirection even makes top 5 on this list; it would require too much forethought and competence.
I recall the VT athletic department being able to keep such close hold on candidates for both the Fuente and Pry hires that nobody saw either coming. And that's without NDAs (at least I didn't hear about anybody having to sign NDAs during those hiring processes).
But those make sense, thanks!
There probably were NDAs but because of the way the cycle ran for us those years (our current coaches, Beamer and Fuente, were employed until early November) there was a limited amount of time between then and the hire. The fact that this time around there was also a big funding/structure announcement for football, with a publicly named search committee, and a long time until a hire is announced, necessitated announcement of the NDAs mostly to keep the questions to a minimum.
Also, Whit has said multiple times that all rumors have a purpose, often floated by someone with something to gain if the rumor gains any traction (e.g. agents).
my guess. those were both ran in the Athletic Dept which I assume their employment contract has non-disclosure clauses within them. this process has a Selection Committee fully made up of non-employees who need an agreement to keep things withheld legally.
There seems to be a lot of smoke rising right now around Shane, and.... He didn't exactly deny the rumors with this response....
Also, when questioned about his OC's playcalling, he channeled a little bit of his dad's energy from a old Hokie Hotline call in from years and years ago....
Frankly, I think hiring Shane would be worse than hiring some unknown
VT needs a reboot - not some legacy coach with deep ties to the program. If we hire Shane we'll win 6 games next year and everyone will be patting him on the back because it's an improvement and then we'll extend his contract for another 4 years and he'll fail to win 10 games a single time. VT will be skipped over when the ACC implodes and we'll be stuck in football purgatory for the rest of our lives.
DO NOT HIRE SHANE.
My thoughts exactly.
We can honor and respect our legacy without tying it's weight to our ankles and expecting us to swim.
Has anyone considered with Bud on the search commitee, John Ballein is in his ear trying to push for Shane?
Unfortunately Bud doesn't need Ballein chirping for Shane. Sounded like Bud was pushing hard for Shane early on. I hope it doesn't happen. Too much Status Quo
If Shane were to come, one of the conditions should be that Ballein is out. Maybe that should be a condition of any hire, though.
Why is Ballein even still there now? Should have been a condition of Whit sticking around.
Yeah, it seems like he should have shared the bus out with Pry.
Ballein is leaving, he is in his exit plan now.
If Whit finally got him to retire, I understand why he's being allowed to stay
My understanding is he is leaving at the end of the current school year.
Let me go ahead and set a countdown timer on that bad boy. If true, that's a moment worth popping a bottle or 2 over.
So after the football hires get made?
Yes. Most people who work in a school atmosphere retire at the end of the year not a random Thursday.
Is his wife going too? Are there any other relatives still around? Want the full sweep.
His daughter moved on a while back.
Yeah was tracking she left to go work for the Washington Wizards....Tale of Two Dumpster Fires
Man if we had a basketball pyramid VT would be in the second tier and the Wizards would be 3rd tier for sure. Non-zero chance they would fold or merge with Georgetown or something.
Source?
Don't worry about it. He has good sources.
I hope my source was right. He has shed blood, sweat, and tears for the program in the past. Nobody doubts he is a Hokie, but his ways are too old fashioned and set in their ways. We need new blood and he wants to keep the status quo.
I said it after SC beat us. Do not want him to coach VT ever.
On top of all of the other reasons to not hire Shane, if we were to go that route, the administration also needs to be prepared to fire Shane if things go wrong, and the negative publicity that would go along with firing the son of your legendary former coach - whether valid or not
This is my thinking. It throws the already-fraught dynamics of coaching tenure and accountability out of whack. It's already hard enough to move on when a coach isn't working out (and let's be honest, most coaches don't work out). No need to add the emotional weight of the Beamer name in there.
'Out of whack' you say? Seems I've heard that before somewhere.......
Yup. If we ever do hire shane it has to be after he has proved himself to be a good coach, which I think the jury is still out on that and after Frank has passed.