By now, there has been a lot of discussion on the topic of athletic funding, how far behind we are, what is needed to close the gap, and that discussion can be found in several threads recently. Estimates are that we would need to up the commitment from the planned $144M to around $200M, which means that about $56M that was not previously earmarked for athletics would need to be transferred from other programs.
My question is: should we? Everybody recognizes that the money involved in major college football is completely out of whack these days. Who knows if this is a permanent state, or if the system is going to collapse under its own weight. Are we chasing an ever-increasing bar to competitiveness? Do we think that this additional funding will put us back to levels we enjoyed under Beamer? And most importantly, is it worth the opportunity cost lost from funding other education programs?
I'm really not sure. I go back and forth in my mind on this. Is major college athletics such a core part of the university that VT should sacrifice part of its academic pursuits in order to fund it? 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I would have been 100% behind it, but with the recent changes to major college football, I'm no longer so sure.
Thoughts?
Comments
Should we? Yes
Do I trust the current administration with the additional funds? No
how do we fire the BOV?
Ask Fireman
When the program is trending upwards (not even necessarily going upwards), I'll donate.
Till then, GTFO.
Great question.
I do think football is an integral part of Virginia Tech, and as such, it's worth significant investment of energy and money. Which we've already been doing.
I'm OK with increasing student fees, but where are we talking about transferring money from academics? I think you mean "other projects", which I'd be OK with as well.
More and more, though, I wonder if we need a top-tier head coach. I'm thinking we need a second-tier head coach, and top tier ASSISTANT coaches. I feel as if we haven't been optimizing our head coach investments, expecially in terms of buyouts. In this regard, we haven't been getting a return on our money. It used to be that you needed an ace recruiter (which we never had, by the way), but now that we're paying players, it seems that's where the big money should be going, and the salesman head coach may not be the highest priority. Strategist? Sure. In game coach? Yes. Decision maker? OK. Your head coach needs to understand the game.
But the assistant coaches need to be the sales guys, and you need the cash to pay the player NIL contracts. $5 million seems too much for the top whistle unless he's delivering the freaking wins. Sorry, I digress.
Can we just get a top tier QB and a couple real linebackers? It feels like a decade of absence
Agreed, bigly.
I'd like to know where the ones we have were last Saturday night. But we do need to fund those positions, and I expect results there, too.
Keller was trying to catch fireflies or something...
Meh give me a 5 of the best OL money can buy
That's the one thing that's really difficult to buy in the portal market unfortunately. You need a unit that plays together and understands each other.
People keep saying this, but teams around us keep doing it.
Duke did it with Elko and Vandy's OL was literally all transfers.
I think more than a money or difficulty issue, its an issue that VT has had shit OL coaches because Pry's hires have been as bad as his timeout usage.
Yeah. I keep going back to the original sin being hiring an unproven HC who was allowed to bring in unproven coordinators and the one thing that was really hopeful was Joe Rudolph coming in to "Finally get the O-line right." And when Rudolph bailed after one season the panic should have set in then. He's doing fine at Notre Dame. He didn't do a god damn thing at VT, borderline stealing money in my book.
100% --Rudolph jumped off a sinking ship at Wisconsin and Rope-a-Doped Pry into a nice paycheck for 12 months while his agent was working on finding him a job he actually had any interest in.
We hired Crooks without seemingly doing much due diligence as he was neither effective nor apparently liked by the players. Wonderful combination.
Moore - seems more competent but he will probably be back on a job search in December--taking Rimac, Altuner, ect with him.
This is misleading... We need $56M more, but the university can't - under state law - just transfer this money from main campus (as I understand it at least).
Many of the proposals shared were focused on new revenue streams (driving up donations, moving to a new conference, increasing student fees, etc)
Yes
Not unless we get into a conference that has competitive pay (SEC/B10) - a big piece of the argument for better funding athletics is that it's now or never, so we should shoot our shot.
Virginia Tech pulled in $100m in new gifts in 2015/2016, and that number has almost 2.5x'd to $242m in new gifts in 2024/2025.
In that same time period, Athletics gifts have grown from $16m to almost $32m (2x). Total athletics revenue is up from $80m to $140m (a 75% increase). Athletics gifts just have not grown at the same rate as the rest of the university.
So, yes, money is fungible, but new money isn't going to Athletics at the same rate as other parts of the university. So, I think the question is, are you okay with college athletics being less of a core part of the university than it was a decade ago? Because that's what's happening over the last decade.
The BOV is supposedly ponying up an extra 50 million one time for athletics.
I don't think it was a one-time ask. I think it was $50M/year more than currently given.
It wasn't a one time ask, but that is what the BOV gave them. I imagine the full time increase will be less than that.
The problem is that one year isn't going to do it. That's a $50M hole that needs to be filled each year. And oh, it will also grow each year so year over year you're going to be escalating that. By the end of a ten year cycle it's going to be closer to $600M in additional commitment to athletics beyond what we're able to provide now. That's $0.6B. These are absurd values but that's the reality we find ourselves in.
So one thing I think about is what this means to the donors. Virginia Tech has a small number of "whales" who can afford $LARGE gifts but most of the Hokie Club membership is made up of smaller donors. I'll share my numbers. I was a Golden Hokie donor for many years. In our last year of season ticket ownership (2024) our Hokie Club "donation" for the privilege of purchasing tickets was just under $3000 a year. And then on top of that you have your ticket costs and parking pass costs. We held four seats in Section 7, so our total cost was just shy of $5000 a year. If you're looking at club seats, etc that's going to be more but we liked our East Stands seats.
So what happens if we double our global Hokie Club donations? According to the BOV slides the philanthropic portion of the budget was $31.7M a year in FY24. That's *still* $20M a year short of the ~50 that we need. And I personally would not be able to double what we were paying. It's a hard problem.
They're not. They were asked to fund $52M but that's not possible under the law. They WANT to, but simply can't.
They want to but they don't know whete that money is coming from yet.
Take any budget allocations to national advertisement and put it into Athletics. People talking and writing about VT athletics is worth more than some commercials. Keep and maybe cut back in-state ads, but again Tech showing up on every TV all fall and winter is the best ads you can buy.
I'm wondering if we should switch to actively supporting the breakoff of the P2 from the rest of college football.
The P2 has done everything in their power to separate the P2 in terms of resources, but they want the rest of college football to provide patsy teams for them to beat. They're willing to let those teams stick around and have just enough money to look like they're in the club.
What if we supported the idea of separating the ACC and anyone else who doesn't want to play that game into what used to be college football, a place where, sure, stipends are paid but not professional level money. Why are the teams in this category spending $5 million per year for a head coach, even ones who can't win?
It stings to do that, but why break college football and make it more expensive for students and fans in order to enrich sports agents and professional players, who took the bag early?
This wouldn't mean players couldn't go pro later if they want. Would just mean they couldn't be professionals in college. They can make the leap to the P2 or the NFL anytime they want. You just can't go the other direction.
Would mean the rest of college football could continue to have competitive football outside the system ESPN is currently developing that has their thumbs on the scale for their chosen teams. Would be much less expensive for fans and students, and would mean lot lower costs in terms of coaching and recruiting salaries. Would mean strick financial limits on team spending. But as I write that, I suppose the problem is that it might be impossible to keep the dark money out. But you could sure limit it.
I wish VT were in the "haves" category, but that is becoming a money sport, not a college sport. When we're talking about having to add $50 million in addition to what we're ALREADY spending, it has become stupid money.
Where the hell is the non-profit version of Jerry McGuire? Where is our "The things we know and do not say"?
Honestly, waiting it out won't take that long. The SEC and B1G want so badly to be their own thing, and there's a few others that would truly commit to go with them. Maybe 32 teams will roll out leaving the rest to go back to what cfb was when games mattered and bowls were a reward for a good year. All told, that could be within 3 years.
The only reason the P2 haven't moved on is the fact that there are two different network deals in place.
This is affecting all of college football, and like VT, most can't afford the madness long term. The system has to revert to something else because it is simply unsustainable. It's not if, but when. And this won't take too long - my guess is three years. We need a 5-year plan that enables us to hold on while things get settled out. If it goes beyond that, we won't be the only ones out.
The P2 and ESPN are going to do their thing - whatever that looks like. We will either rise to that level, along with its higher levels of TV money, or we will join the dozens of other teams forming the next version of college football. Probably the latter, and that will likely be okay. The top of the non-P2 is going to move up, but the bottom of the P2 is going to be jettisoned to join the league of mortals.
As long as that morphs into a sustainable league under one TV umbrella so conferences (or divisions or whatever format it takes) aren't competing with each other off the field. The format would likely include more regional divisions to control travel spending by schools and fans, and will most certainly have its own playoff.
My hope is that somewhere out there, there's a movement that sees the coming split is inevitable and is already behind closed doors formulating what the non-P2 league is going to look like. The rest of college football isn't simply going to go away after a super league forms.
So, back to the 5-year plan. This means VT needs $250M-ish, less if things happen faster. While still a lot of money, I believe that having a cap makes it more palatable to universities and donors, knowing that it won't be a never-ending black hole they are throwing their money into.
So, should we? I say yes, but with a cap. We're not alone.