Highlights:
- Coleman claims (reports?) that the BoV is in the process of firing Whit, and it's a matter of negotiating buyout, planning interim activities, aligning on comms, etc
- There's been recent turnover on the BoV, and this BoV has a good perspective that is favorable towards athletics (unlike past BoVs)
- Coleman criticizes Whit for hiring Hokie Club leadership with fundraising experience twice in a row and leaving the CFO role unstaffed for far too long
- Coleman claims that there have been multiple attempts to bring Hokie Club under university leadership, and that the Atheletic Dept has stopped that.
- Expect a new AD to bring 2-4 key associates to start, then more turnover throughout the next year.
I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing. Shout out to Hokie2013 for sharing.
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Comments
Lol we posted at the same time - I deleted the duplicate since your post is better
I'll repost this comment here: For some reason, full transparency: I can't remember why, I never trust CC as an 'inside' source.
I agree... I def view him as more of a blogger than a reporter. I tried to use language to hedge a bit.
Yeah he give me trust issues when he says things like "Mike Elko came in at Duke and that was before the transfer portal and turned them around" which is blatantly false and he brought in like 10 starters in that first year from the portal.
Maybe(?), but I can't think of a time when his content wasn't on point.
There's been smoke for a while here on this topic. Maybe the BoV has been a TKP visitor lurking to gather perspective
My (maybe very off base) perception has been that as someone who has staked out a career reporting on the VT athletic department he has had a difficult time balancing the need to have good relationships with the AD to get info while providing the level of critical journalism fans are looking for when times are tough. It's a hard place for someone relying on relationships to be.
He is definitely more of a reading the tea leaves guy though he supposedly has at least one "source" inside the AD.
I mean he gave them an easy out with the presentation he made in August. It showed he allowed a bad situation to get excessively terrible on his watch, and combined with the performance of the football program through last week, you can't really make a good justification on keeping him around anymore.
Fire him, replace him and give that new guy the revenue streams necessary to contend. Fund football with the level of FSU and Clemson and see if we can't get this thing turned around.
Andy Bitter had a great quote from Whit, that I've been thinking about since the August BOV meeting on the athletics department budget. (Link here since Twitter embeds seem broken as hell these days.)
That sounds like a man who knows his time in this job isn't for long.
Glad I wasn't the only one that thought that statement seemed a bit forward and provoking.
The part that seems weirdest is the "of my choosing." So even if he wasn't going to get fired, he doesn't plan on being around long? Is it because he doesn't feel appreciated, or doesn't like it, or just wants to move to a different university or what?
i assume retirement?
Wish I could afford to retire at 55 if that is what he does.
didn't know that, i thought he was around 60, which i could see.
retiring at 55 is very achievable if that is your goal from the beginning of your career, even with moderate income
100% true. My wife retired at
55edit: she was still 54 at the time. I am hoping to semi-retire at 57. We do (or I do and my wife did) have good incomes. But both of us had very, very poor incomes prior to ~age 30 as we both got doctoral degrees. Her's was actually negative income taking on loans for a Psychometrics degree (essentially, applied statistics for educational testing) while I did get a stipend in Molecular Biochemistry and Biophysics. My recollection was it ranged from $14,500 - ~$20,000 the one year where I taught both semesters of the calendar year and got the teaching differential. If you are (1) not extravagant in your spending, (2) at least okay with your investments and (3) do not have real bad luck like bad health issues while young, it is very possible.I think that third bullet (haven't listened to the podcast yet) should be "without fundraising experience".
If bringing it "under university leadership" means bringing it under the Advancement umbrella, then I am 1000% on board with athletics fighting it. In my limited purview (compared to everywhere else Advancement touches), things have always gone to shit when they take things over. They take and take and take, never letting those outside touch anything, because they want all the credit for everything good that happens. Again, that may not be universal across the board with university Advancement, but the 2 units I have exposure to all have nothing good to say about their Advancement wings.
But at the same time, it's not like the athletics department is setting national records for fundraising, so there is definitely plenty of room for new, proven, and experienced leadership in that area.
On one hand, I see that the university over the last 10 years had increased donations by 2.5 X while the athletic department has only increased gifts by 80%. On the other hand, it seems that like of the "best" athletic departments are separate from the parent university.
Yes, thank you for posting this. You reminded me that Phlegar had done some amazing things raising money for the university outside of athletics. However, what I am talking about is more at the ground level where it seems like we are paying people $200k/year to bring in dozens of $5k, single time donations that they trumpet as major, solo wins for Advancement. What I would like to see is more of making the average Joe, blue collar Hokie Club member who is donating $500/year feel as every bit as appreciated as someone who is laying down $100k/year. But holy shit if we aren't currently flat out saying "Whatevs" to that level of giving.
AND, I'd like to see fundraising as an across the board, we don't care how it happens, we're just thankful for the kind generosity of Hokie Nation type of mentality at the university. It currently reeks of "this is my job so I am the only one who can take credit for it" mentality.
I'll believe it when I see it. Also, I won't get excited about Whit being fired. I think it needs to happen but it's only a step. He needs to be replaced and that's the really hard part. Finding a good AD won't be simple and there's no guarantee that a replacement will be an actual upgrade.
At the very least, his firing would symbolize a desire by the powers that be to be better at football. That would be encouraging.
Whit and Pry will both be gone soon, according to sauces I have in the BoV and Hokie Club.
Chris Coleman has been dropping the heat this week on Whit and Pry, both in the pods and their behind paywall posts and articles. Can tell this has really been bottled up for a while and the floodgates just finally opened after Saturday. Sounds like he was never truly onboard with the Pry hire and has wanted Whit out for a while listening to the pods, based on things he has been constantly hearing behind the scenes. It's like as bad as we thought things might be just from an outsider perspective, seems like our worst nightmares have come true and it's just as bad or worse than thought. Awful predicament to be in, and I agree with CC in the pod where he basically says it's rises to negligence with how the whole situation has been handled. People just hoping things magically click so they don't have to make a difficult decision about anything and coast into the sunset.
There's also a non-paywall thread on this same exact subject over on 247. Mehul just replies to the OP, who said CC says big changes coming buckle up, and simply says "I'm in Blacksburg now. Go Hokies." That said a lot without saying anything.
Chris is a nice guy but I put a lot more on Mehul. I'll buy that there is movement afoot but getting specific on the particulars is a bridge too far for me; at least today.
It's interesting to me that all of this is coming out now. Why not report some of things that have been heard throughout the years?
No sauces, but I imagine that in the past he was more interested in not burning certain bridges than he is now. Which is telling in and of itself.
Yeah, I get it, and I've heard that thought before, but it's like, they run a news outlet over there. If you're getting good intel, source it and report it. Honestly, I'd be pissed if I was a subscriber.
Yeah... this kind of stuff has broken reporting basically everywhere and not just on Hokie sports. I expect some FOIA work could turn up interesting things, or at least the lack of interesting things. The fact that the athletic department was running without a CFO for multiple years was eye opening to me. This is a nine-figure operation, how TF do you not have a financial officer?
What bothers me from a media perspective is some of the media's main functions are to hold institutions accountable and inform readers. If you can report things, but are holding back that much because of access concerns, you're not a media outlet.
Yep! And like I said, this has broken reporting everywhere, and on things that are far more consequential than our football program. Of special contempt, for me, are the reporters or sources who have vital and timely information but choose to sit on it until they can write a book to cash in later. How can I make decisions, apply influence, redress concerns, etc if I'm kept in the dark? It is maddening and it only serves to protect entrenched interests and, as you say, is the opposite of holding entities to account.
To bring it back around to football, the vibes have been bad around the program for a while to the point that my gut instinct after last year was that we were not pulling out of the dive. So we skipped on season tickets, downgraded our Hokie Club donation and put those resources elsewhere for other projects that needed the time and money instead. They can't be asking for donations to make things better when there's no functional organization that can actually leverage those resources and no good faith efforts to maximize on those efforts. These things only get better with accountability and transparency.
An they (the ones you're "reporting on") aren't a serious contender in the athletic realm.
Both of them were taking part in a high school after school program.
And how the fuck do you hire two successive Hokie Club leaders without fundraising experience? Who was Whit giving the jobs to, his golf buddies?
This...I actually wanted Whit fired more than Pry for this reason. Not just Hokie Club but all fundraising in general and financial management. Point in that would be who reviewed the awful seat back contract and remotely thought it was a good idea. Years of wasting money ahead of us there because of how they built that contract. As was reported we have second highest amount of members in Hokie Club in terms of ACC like orgs yet we fall below middle of the pack in overall giving. If they are that inept at the basic giving level than how much worse are they at communicating with the top donors. I can't tell you the last communication from Hokie Club that motivated me to really change my giving level.
Wasn't one of his big priorities when he initially came on board to fix the garbage deal VT made with Nike right before he arrived?
He rubber-stamped the extension of the contract because Weaver negotiated it but never signed it before walking away
I don't disagree. Sometimes to make an omelet, you gotta crack a few eggs.
Also, one reason of many why I've never given TSL the time of day.
I always call TSL state media. It's fan propaganda.
I will say, since Andy Bitter has joined, TSL has gotten a lot better. More objective and he and CC have been a little more open and critical of the program when justified. I think now that it's official that Whit is likely gone, they feel like they can be fully transparent and not protect their access in the country club AD operation down there. Which I totally understand and I understand their frustration finally bubbling over and feeling like they can be fully honest on how just dysfunctional Whit/Pry and the whole operation truly have been. Maybe now that we are cleaning out the good old boys club down there things will be more professional and TSL can continue to be more objective and like a media outlet versus a fan site that is regurgitating the party lines.
I will say that 247 I think has gotten overall pretty protective of the AD/staff. I feel like the info from TSL has been more objective and transparent on the whole than 247 for several years now. I honestly wonder if some 247 scoops are actually OKe by Pry at this point.
I mean, TSL was never intended to be a hard news outlet. It was a blog before that word existed, Will Stewart's reflections on VT sports as an acknowledged outsider and untrained football eye, and its spirit was always in that vein. There's room, and demand, for that.
It's why I was surprised (but pleased) that Andy Bitter wound up there, because he's a serious reporter and always has been.
This is TSL's playbook. Drop hints every 3 weeks that changes are coming in the program based on inside sources but they don't want to burn bridges. Then when something inevitably happens, they take credit for "that's what I hinted at X months ago". I don't think they have any sources and just speculate like all of us.
Everyone knows they're going to fire Whit after that presentation. Whenever it happens, he can take credit. When it happens in 6 months he'll just claim it takes time for these things to work out.
That's an opinion site - no news has ever broken there. Andy Bitter has never broken a story as a journalist, just summarizes press conferences and reports the weather. The rest are speculators and click bait artists. I enjoy some of the opinions given they are around the programs 5 days a week but nothing is revealed on TSL.
Thing is most sports "journalism" is just being a conduit for well-placed access-controlled sources. ESPN is particularly bad about this. Most of their reporters are just press agents for CAA. And with gambling and sports books being inside the same boardroom as the broadcasters and the "reporting" orgs now the potential for some extremely shady stuff to happen is really concerning. Not to mention the ownership stakes that various outlets have in the leagues they cover. And I've been way way down on ESPN since all the Craig James vs. Mike Leach nonsense happened.
And sure, this is ultimately all entertainment and it functions a lot more like the talk show and Variety beat than just about anything else but still, given the money that's being siphoned off of people now... I dunno, it's just something that's icky and gross to me.
Had they reported and been more concerned with getting news out, instead of retaining access to the sources, I don't think we are in this situation. Whit would have been called out years ago, Pry isn't our coach, and we're running the table annually in the ACC (or more)
If they had done that I doubt they'd have a business. They'd have no access press conferences or players, it would just be a blog with no sources and no real insight. The blog could complain about admin all they want but no one would listen or care. Nothing would've changed.
This isn't a Whit or VT problem, it's a college sports problem.
Access Journalism, in a nutshell. You know better than most how resistant and insular this athletic department has been to "new" (now two plus decades old) media. It was an uphill battle for TSL to even get credentials under the Weaver regime so I'm sure whether it is stated or not that you don't want to step on too many toes.
He's definitely alluded too and said stuff heavily over the past couple years at least on the boards and a nugget here and there on articles.
This is the first he's put it all together.
Something is going to have to change and it needs to be done soon if VT wants to remain at all relevant in the next 10 years ago. Unfortunately the last decade doesn't leave me any hope that anybody in this administration is going to di anything proactively or with conviction.
We need to be relevant again before we can remain relevant. We are a sad and irrelevant program right now.
I have no real information here (though I will inquire through my channels) but I was in a meeting on campus this week with Whit. President Sands gave an overview of some items related to Athletics and called on Whit for additional thoughts, Whit said there were none because Sands had covered them, then offered an apology for the result of the football game. He looked absolutely forlorn, so either something is going on behind the scenes and he knows he's a dead man walking, or he's just pissed about the whole situation (maybe both). No #sauces on any of that, but #vibes.
College athletics is a business, and if we need to move on from Whit & Co., I understand it, but I do feel bad for the guy. He's done his level best and he loves it here. Maybe that just wasn't enough and he wasn't the right guy at the right time. Tough world out there for college athletics.
It is a tough business for sure. But it's also the rare business where you have some guaranteed parachutes if things don't work out. Both Pry and Babcock will have multi-million dollar severance packages to cushion their landing. I'm guessing that Whit can retire whenever he would like at this point and Pry is still a young guy and he could be a greeter at Home Depot for the health insurance for the rest of this life and he's millions of dollars ahead of most of us working stiffs already.
I feel bad for Whit because I know he truly did want the best for VT and took this job thinking he was going to be able to vault us to the next level. I remember meeting him shortly after he was hired and you could tell he was genuinely excited.
I don't think he was prepared for Fuente to blow up in his face and I don't think they expected Buzz to bolt like he did. I think they expected the aura of the ACC to help keep him in town and they really did think pairing Fuente and his offense with Bud would bring us to the level of a Clemson.
Unfortunately, sometimes these things just don't work out, and I can imagine how heavily that weighs on him. They made some bad decisions overall in reading tea leaves wrong that further damaged the school, and I bet they wish they could change it, but we can't. And that reality has to be setting in now, especially with the team cratering right after that BOV retreat.
I think my issue with Whit and why I can't feel bad for him is he has known money was a huge issue for at least the last 7 years and he did very little in identifying people with fundraising chops to fix that issue. He rearranged the seats on the Titantic a couple times with Hokie Club et Al but didn't bring in outside help there. It was always internal moves.
The one area I would be curious to hear laid out is how much Whit and Co bought into all things Triumph to fix money issues and how close Triumph ever came to delivering on promises. That is one area that I can't knock Whit too hard because everyone was learning how to interact with collectives and it's clear now how much of a Wild West that game was.
shit, I did too
You can do everything right and still have it not work out
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And we didn't do everything right. Started well though
To be fair... everyone in college football did. I've heard Andy Staples, Stephen Godfrey, Holly Anderson, and others in the media all say that the Fuente failure was when they realized that it was truly impossible to project if a coaching candidate would work out.
I agree. And it was looking realistic for a couple of years (from the outside at least).
The most damning thing about the Fuente hire is that I remember hearing Whit speak the summer Fuente was hired that part of the main focus of the new coaching regime was an intentional focus on recruiting, and that just never happened.
I do think he got sold a bill of goods regarding to what Fuente wanted to overhaul our recruiting profile. What Whit was excited about never ended up happening.
I have no doubt that Fuente had the right goal to start. But he's said that he thought VT was a school that recruited itself. Jokes on us, it very much does not.
Every day it seems like Beamer is more and more deserving of gis spot in the hall of fame.
Even if VT recruited itself, you double down on that by overhauling the department to maximize that advantage.
But that's just the story of VT through the years. An adamant refusal to exploit our strengths over the long haul and just allowing us to ride it out back to mediocrity
Wasn't that also part of why we got Pry? He was stealing VA kids for Penn State. Now he would steal them for us.
I think Fuente talked a good game about recruiting, wanted to do it right and then had two big issues pop up. His chief recruiter got caught sleeping around and the money/support from Tech wasn't there.
I don't think Galen Scott was his 'chief recruiter' - I think it was when our only person running the entire recruiting dept left for florida
I think he was also dealt a difficult hand with the most dramatic changes to the structure of college sports maybe ever. We're not the only school that has struggled to adapt. Apparently Alabama's infrastructure was based on Saban and they haven't adapted to the new landscape.
This is true as well.
On a human level, yeah it sucks anytime somebody's job is in jeopardy. But big time ADs and coaches like these who are making absurd money and then have a parachute when they're fired, I have no sympathy for. I do have sympathy for the small business owner or servers or retail workers who struggle or lose jobs that depend on thriving VT football and its economic impact to the region and the state. No sympathy at all when people making that much money are that inept. Wish them well but it's needed change.
I have sympathy for coaches/ADs who care about the university and community at large. I didn't have sympathy for Fuente because this was just a job to him. Pry and Whit have roots in this region and care about VT job or not.
That doesn't mean they should stay, it's a results business and the results aren't good enough.
I mean is trying to conjure up some feel good nostalgia of the past with the Beamer era, even though that is long gone, truly what was best for the university? It was like a big stiff drink. Made us feel good for a while but masked the problems and now we're hungover. If someone gave me a $4mil plus a year contract with a buyout I'd hoot and holler about VT all day too. Doesn't make me a good coach or good for the job though.
I mean i feel for Fuente, i believe he wanted to fo a good job but failed and thats tough to go through at any job especially on national media coverage scale like football.
I don't really, the last two years or so it didn't seem like he was trying that hard.
Those guys aren't doing their job (just) for money - they are there for self fulfillment, for their egos, etc. And now they are publicly failing.
I've been laid off with a nice enough parachute before (not a 'buy out' but severance pay outlasted my unemployment) and that was sorta shameful/disappointing. No matter how much you pay me, having millions routing for me to be bought out/fired is going to be a difficult, shameful, pitiful experience.
Especially when it's done so publicly
I don't feel bad for anyone making 7 figures. It's business, they won't starve. If you fail, someone is always there to take your place. I feel bad for people without options, not people in high profile jobs that can't produce.
I believe this should be without, correct?
I was wondering this too...it seems like it should obviously be "without", but lately the truth has been so strange that I wasn't sure if that was a typo or not lol
I listened to the podcast yesterday. It is "without fundraising experience"
Currently I cant even load TSL because it says it is under attack and only those logged into accounts can access
Message on TSL: "We are under attack right now. We are only allowing logged in users. If you haven't logged in please be patient with us"
This site (TKP) was loading very slowly last night as the game was ending, and it seemed like more than just user activity. I wonder what's going on.
Lots of angry people wanting to vent and burn everything down would be my guess.
Whit spending NIL money on ddos farms to slow our rage posts
Every other refresh of the Tracker here for me times out. Started doing that last night. I assume it's the stress of everyone all coming to gripe/read everybody else's gripes as well.
The TSL thing does legitimately seem like a DDOS attack, though.
I rebooted the box a few hours ago it's performing better for me. How about you?
Better here!
I figured it was an altruistic decision to intentionally degrade load times to let folks breathe, considering things!
Back to normal here too
Me too. I thought that ODU game finally cracked Joe and he unplugged the server for the night haha. Just gave it "fuck it, we'll start over in the morning."
Sometimes it's the best fix.
For lots of devices these days.
The Microsoft reliability model has replaced the Bell Labs reliability model for most commercial products.
Can we try that with the football team?
Lol, great comment!
I'm pretty sure we did.
It's rebooting in safe mode.
I know this is way after the fact, but yeah, definitely started performing better. Sorry for just now seeing this one.
Based on what I am seeing I think Whit will announce his resignation effective 3-4 months from now. Sands and the BOV will line up a New AD and let a committee hire the next football coach while Whit holds down the fort in a lame duck role.
I think it will be announced sooner but he'll stay on for the transition, leaving office in 3-4 months.
The point CC made on the most recent TSL pod was that Whit has hired so poorly, there's no one else in the AD who could act as an interim. I'm not sure if that's 'sourced' or just his opinion after reading tea leaves, but it seems reasonable to me.
I still have to argue that metric. Fuente was considered a top hire at the time. Buzz was an amazing hire at the time. Heck Mike Young, and Duffy so far have been good hires.
Yes Fuente failed. He didn't get the recruiting resources he asked for, he had John Ballein by all reports working against him, and he refused to fire Corny. But the man is still a respected coach. He was hired to be a playoff analyst.
Pry failed because he didn't hire experienced coaches to help him. Not because he didn't try.
I think bar1990 is referring to athletic department staff. There's nobody sufficiently qualified to serve as interim AD. That's what CC was talking about in the pod.
Yes, not to speak for bar1990 but I heard the same TSL pod and CC was specifically talking about Whit's hiring within the department, not coaches.
In fact on that pod they lauded Whit's non-football coaching hires, which I believe deserve praise overall. In another life, Whit would have made a great second in command, an AD in charge of non-football sports or something.
Would've thrived in the current Big East maybe since those are non football schools
Yeah its pretty thin at the top, you have Ballein which we dont want, The chief revenue officer which really isnt an option when our issues are revenue based. The CFO which again, money issues. I dont see compliance being some one that gets promoted to AD at any school. Out alumni engagement is bad so no to them too. So that leave the head of sports administration and strategic affairs. Both of which i dont know anything about.
FTFY.
David Teel indicated on the TSL pod yesterday that his sense around the program right now is that Whit Babcock will still be AD going into the 2026 season. It was interesting, it kind of contradicts what CC seemed to think.
If the board hangs on to Whit, then it's a signal to me that they are not serious about changing this program and turning things around. And it's not just me who will feel that way, it's a signal to the entire CFB world. As CC has pointed out many times - it's not just his bad football hires, it's his management of the department as a whole - lack of critical backfill hires, the state of the Hokie Club, hell - the not hiring a CFO thing alone should be enough to send him packing. It's inexcusable. Teel mentioned that he gets the sense that Whit really wants a chance to get football right and doesn't want to be remembered as the guy who ruined Hokie football.
I don't really give a shit how strongly Whit feels about wanting to get football right, and not wanting his legacy to be that he ruined VT football. If he didn't want that, he should have simply been better at his job. This isn't a charity case, where we should let him stay on to save his feelings and dignity.
I don't think we should let him within 100yds of this program, ever again. I don't care that he's been stripped of decision power regarding football. Just knowing that he is still a voice in the room AT ALL, even in an "advisory only" capacity, makes me feel uneasy about the whole thing, as though there are already half-measures being taken rather than just ripping the bandaid off and truly starting over.
Serving Whit Babcock up to us again in 2026 as part of Virginia Tech Athletics, in any capacity whatsoever, would be like serving us a sandwich and telling us there's "only a little poop" on it. How many failures is it going to take for the culture at VT to learn that half measures cannot be tolerated?
If Whit has been effectively demoted into a role which has no teeth and no power, what is the point of keeping him around at all? Just fire him at that point. No half measures. I'm tired of the pussyfooting around. I understand that we are probably going the way of having a football GM somewhat separate from the AD - I still do not want that AD to be Whit Babcock. Whit has underperformed monumentally at THE most critical function of his job as an AD here - football - for over a decade now. Someone needs to be a big boy, shake his hand, and show him the door.
I heard that and cringed a little as well. However, I respectfully disagree with Teel here. I don't believe Whit will be here in 2026.
I think he's around 1) to advise (he has a lot of knowledge and I believe he's well-respected in the AD world), and 2) with all fall sports under way and winter sports right around the corner - VT needs somebody at the wheel.
I think he's negotiated a plan where he's here until a new AD/GM is hired and then he retires.
His press conference demeanor was not that of someone here for the long haul.
Even his BoV presentation mentioned this, i think.
They could hand the football program to a GM that doesn't report to Whit and buy him a little time. Hard to envision a new football coach reporting to a short timer...who would take that job?
I believe the powers that be will keep Whit around as long as he can continue to provide some value (maybe 2026). I believe he will be given his flowers on the way out because he has been the fall guy for Sands/BoV (and I say that without excusing him from mistakes he has made without Sands/BoV).
Actually Whit has 2 assistants that are pretty knowledgeable and could step up if he walked away tomorrow. But football aside, Whit has been good for Virginia Tech athletics.