Virginia Tech OG/OT Bob Schick is entering the transfer portal, his agents @monnier_oscar and @EugeneTLee of @3strandsports tell @mzenitz and I for @247Sports. He's started 23 games over the last 2 seasons. Allowed only 1 sack in that period. https://t.co/8IMnEoJF5y pic.twitter.com/s3WbYGWMpp— Chris Hummer (@chris_hummer) April 22, 2025
Have to assume SEC tampering on this one. Horrible blow to O Line
Andy Bitter pointed out that this means all five starters from last season are now gone
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Precisely
Seeing some comments that Cunningham may have edged him out as starter after Spring.
Jesus. This is nice.
Wow, didn't see this one coming
considering how awful our ol has been... hard to tell if it is good or bad news
Its news. Either he got beat out for the position or someone tampered.
Tampering is not a thing anymore- at all- a judge ruled that you can in no way impede a players ability to make money in college football- that would including shopping him around to the highest bidder. There are no rules. Pretending that there are will only get you frustrated.
Tampering in the old sense of recruiting. Legally-peaking, you are correct and there are no rules, the whole sport is in shambles, and I see it getting much worse before it gets any better, if it gets better.
These things need to happen, and I doubt they ever do: 1. A true governing body for major football and basketball. This has to be agreed upon by the major conferences and presidents. The NCAA does fine with Olympic sports- and few have a gripe with it, but volleyball players don't have agents and leave school every year. This is a must - the SEC and B1G need to agree on governing the major sports and who is going to do it. If it is the NCAA, so be it. 2. Restrictions on movement OR contracts- one or the other. Either you have SOME type of transfer rules, or the players sign contracts. The current model of being a free agent every year does very few people any good. Thinks about it. Only a handful of players truly benefit from this. Hundreds are left without a team. 3. Implement true NIL and a collectively bargained salary structure. Don't hold your breath on any of these.
I completely agree on #1 and #2!
It annoys the hell out of me that these kids all have agents now. What agent is going to suggest that a player stay at the school that saw something in him to recruit him, develop him, etc. The agent will make more money if the player moves to a school with deeper pockets that can pay more each and every year. There needs to be restrictions like you suggest.
Side note, I don't buy current NFL player jerseys because I've been burned too many times with the player being traded or leave the team. I'm NEVER going to buy a VT jersey with a current player's name on it. Whoever does is just burning money.
Same for me on the jerseys- both pro and college. I just put 'Topher' on mine.
The agent will make money only if the kid moves or has to sign a new contract, even if it is at the same place. The incentive for the agent is to sign 1 year contracts or get more money. The way I understand it, they are getting negotiation fees plus a %.
I could be wrong, won't be the first time, but that's part of what is driving the constant moving.
On the plus side, USCe won't know who to scheme for on the D-line, right??
I hope this means we know these WVU transfers are coming.
sucks, wish him the best; always liked the guy. not a world beater, but definitely not a liability like others.. my thoughts are that cunningham and ghannam finally got coached up, and the wv guys are showing out
I always saw him as a starter as a sign we were not doing well on OL. He's been average and I have been hoping for awhile that he gets passed up.
Andy Bitter did his best to spin this positively (at least based on the tweet I saw) by saying this means the overhaul of the OL is complete
lol
if only. We're going to suck next year, and the year after that, and so on and so on for perpetuity - that's just where we are at the moment. The administration either doesn't care or doesn't have a clue - we're nowhere near top flight programs and we just can't compete - we're also stuck in a dead conference - a conference that our own administration was happy enough with that they thought it was a good idea to add Cal, Stanford, and SMU to effectively cinch the noose of the ACC anchor around our own necks at a time that there was a glimmer of hope of dissolving the conference and getting out from under the GoR with a simple majority of teams agreeing to leave simultaneously. It's a goddamn shit-show in the ACC and our administration is a contributing factor.
TSL is nothing more than a program mouthpiece. Afterall they don't want to get their press creds taken away.
Sneaky, but I got a good laugh.
That is what they've become.
Bob Schick has an agent. Yall keep pretending this is healthy for the sport/VT
From the sound of the tweet, he has agentS, plural! WHAT?! That's just...hilariously terrible. I mean good for Bob, but yeah, just nuts for the sport.
Who is "yall"?
I don't think anyone here is pretending that the current state is healthy for the sport or VT - but I think the majority of us have accepted the reality that it just is what it is, and there isn't much point in acting shocked or getting so worked up about it every time someone enters the transfer portal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
WADR many- perhaps most on here- are pro NFL 2.0. The players need their bag as part of the billions VT (doesn't really) bring in.
Are we reading comments from the same website??? I have not gotten that impression at all. This just seems like you're trying to create a strawman.
yes im serious. Very strong "the players deserve theirs" sentiment on here. Also decent support for the whole VT- insert SEC school here- mission is to support big time athletics and academics is a smaller mission.
Players deserve compensation, 100%. VT isn't making billions, but billions are being made off the backs of mostly free labor.
You are being completely disingenuous by equating the statement above with approval of the regulation free, wild west bullshit that's going on with the portal and "NIL".
From what I've seen, most here are in favor of player compensation but totally against how it's currently being handled and I'm pretty sure you know it.
Nah, you are playing the result here. Those who equate scholarships, housing, food, stipends to "free labor"- talk about disingenuous- 100% got what they wanted. Players are getting their bag however they want to get it. This is what you wanted- stick it to the NCAA and VT for being greedy and using "free labor"... now you are trying to pretend that you wanted actual regulations around such... nah..
TBF, bud, a lot of the "free labor" arguments (including from me) come from the era before stipends. The fact that players were getting busted from borrowing a suit to go to a friend's funeral back home were absolutely absurd. The fact that the total compensation was not fungible in the least was just......wrong, considering the dollars that were pouring in. Stipends were an inevitable addition to the compensation, especially since many academic scholarship full rides included them.
That doesn't mean that the current state is what people wanted. There's an easy line to draw between letting the players share in some of the money that they're "earning" in a revenue sport, and unfettered free agency and runaway NIL compensation. Nobody wants this......farce.
We are here because of emotion "the players are slaves indentured servant" nonsense is an emotional argument devoid of any facts or nuance. The constant denial that a scholarship worth 250K fucking dollars was worth nothing. Its an emotional argument based on 1. Coaches making millions- so the fuck what- its a different skill than player and 2. There are fat cigar smoking people in Indy at the NCAA hoarding millions from players. 3. Schools profit "millions" on these players backs. None of that is true... but the adults were taken out of the room when these points became facts. IIWII we have the wild wild west because reality was never considered.
It's not that scholarships arent worth 250k, and really most like 1.5m when you factor in college grads earn on average 30k more a year than non-college grads (number might be a few years old). It's that coaches made 5-10x players in the 90s and now they often make 20x at the low end. They sport exploded with money and the people we actually watch didn't get any of it. Pry isn't worth that. Most coaches aren't worth that but the rules said we can only give money to certain members of the team, so we put our money there. We built facilities that are better than the pros because the rules said money can't go to the people we watch. We wasted so much money on stupid shit like slides and juice bars because we can increase player compensation. This all could have been avoided 30 years ago if they just did some revenue sharing system to let the players earn their share of a pie that they baked but weren't allowed to sell.
The fact that P4 coaching is better pay than professional football coaches is insane to me. If amateur athletes is more profitable than professional sports then we all have fucked up and it should be shut down. Is there any other sports besides college football where its better to work for the amateur organization than the pros? It did used to be that way, but it got out of hand for every one but the athletes. Now it's just 30 years of complete shitty management of the sport exploded into everyone's living room. Everyone had their hand in the bag trying to extract as much money as possible while using their other hand to slap the players away.
If you want to get really down to it, Pop Watson should make more than Pry, cause I only want to see one of those two on the team next year. He's way more valuable to me.
"It's that coaches made 5-10x players in the 90s and now they often make 20x at the low end"- why are we comparing 2 different jobs again? Who was more valuable to Duke in 1992- Laettner or Coach K? How about the bama kids that turn pro early anyway- them or Nick Saban? I have no idea why we compare 18 year olds learning their craft to a big time coach - the guys that make the big money. why? because its the same sport? OK- the jobs and value are not comparable. VT offers 200 kids a year for 100 spots. By definition, the 100 that do sign are replaceable as VT is picking from a pool twice as large. The argument makes no sense.
This is silly on its face. VT offers 200 kids so the ones who do sign are replaceable? You know that doesn't make sense. A QB can't be replaced with a LB, an OL can't be replaced by a WR. The top three kids and the bottom three kids aren't equivalent. You're the one who's always on about signing lower level players and how we shouldn't expect them to replace talent that left in the draft. There's a scarcity of high end talent, especially at specific positions, which is why the market for it is nuts. It's exactly the same forces that drive QB and LT markets in the NFL. It's hard, and there aren't many people who can do it.
On average, I agree with about 60% of what you say, but the next 20% is a little much, and the last 20% is just so absurd that it's hard to remember the reasonable 60% existed. I disagree with your point about coaching, but it at least makes sense. Then you try and pull some semantic gotcha trick at the end, that you don't yourself agree with, and it just derails entire discussions and boards.
"There's a scarcity of high end talent" - Ive never argued otherwise. The point you are missing is that VT, Bama, OSU, etc rosters turnover every 6-7 years now anyway- if 100% of the players stay for their 7th year. Fact is that never happens at bama or OSU or VT. So realistically every 3 years Bama has a new team. Look me in the eye and tell me that a big time coach isn't worth more money than those players that recycle that quickly anyway. I won't mention the fact that Pry is still here and 100% of his O line from last year has been replaced in one offseason.
FWIW, the coaches at all of those places are making more than pretty much any individual player. Which I think tracks with what you're saying. A coach is at least as valuable, and maybe more so, than any single player. But, the truly high end talent also carries significantly more value, in a free market, than what they were previously capped at. It doesn't have to be all one way or all the other. Coaches have value. Players also have value. We're in the middle of a truly chaotic moment of figuring out where the balance point is between those two.
100% Lattner, With out his shot cosch k doesn't win in 92
Nah- sub a 3 star power forward with Hurley, Hill, etc and K has them in the final four. His track record proves it- He was Duke baksetball. Sheldon Williams, Zion, Hurley- they were all replaced by teams that went to final fours.
And Coach K was replaced by a coach that went to the final 4
That coach will be a 1-2 seed next year without the best player Duke has had in a decade. We can do this all day. Cooper Flagg is a generational prospect- that will be replaced next year and Duke will be a top 10 team.
Right so, the coaches don't matter because Duke keeps getting the generational talents, glad you agree /s
OR they get the generational talents BECAUSE they are able to retain the best brand and coaches.
QB isn't a job, I am comparing a participate on the team with a paid employee on the same team. If QB was a job then there would be market compensation, not flat rate compensation to all non-employee participates of the team arbitrary set by another organization (academic institution vs athletic department).
When QBs are employees they way outpace coaching salaries. We see this is professional sports, where everyone on a team is an employee, not a select few. But when you only allow coaches to have market value then they get over inflated values because the market for players is fixed.
We can compare Pry to others at VT. Who don't have the same job bring millions to VT and don't get paid like Pry, who would have to bring in 10s of millions each year to be as valuable as sone of the professors. At the end of the day Pry is just a department head and in charge of teaching students. Pry's resume and work don't bring in the money, it would still come if we replaced him which can't be said about a lot of the other professors who have niche research that no one else does. Pry is one of the most replaceable employees.
Let's also not discount that the $250k scholarship comes with a fast track admittance to a school that most athletes would not get into if they were not athletes. Not just VT but most D1 schools.
Of course you didn't address my point. Attack one tiny portion of my statement that's basically immaterial to the broader point to create your argument. 100% on brand. Change "basically free labor" to grossly underpaid and my point is still stands while yours falls apart.
Your revisionist history isn't fooling anyone. You're on here 24/7, so I know you've seen posts since the start of NIL warning about the lack of regulations.
Yeah "grossly underpaid" and rules and restrictions around compensation don't jive- even though you now pretend they do. Humor me- what rules do you want to address the GROSS underpayment of players?
Schick was a replaceable depth piece. He's not X. We'll be fine without him.
...or more specifically we won't be any worse without him. I completely agree that he was decent, but replaceable.
How does one get one of these agent gigs? /s
You have to be part of the Baller Industrial Complex of course: High school football coach now working at Lowes- NIL commisions pay better- Go Hokies. Uncle of a fast kid, Step Dad of a tall kid, Youth football coach that works at verizon- this pays better. Former teacher at "schools" read sports factories- Oak Hill, IMG, Fork Union. These are the entry level points to the Baller Industrial Complex. Its a huge industry.
You forgot former HS teammates turned College dropout that took a 1 hour Zoom NIL Agent training for $19.99 to be certified
Outside of Chaplin, and maybe Moore, this overhaul is not a bad thing. I expect our OL to be better this year than the last couple seasons.
I consider this a depth loss rather than a starter loss.
Great to hear this take from you - hope you're correct. I agree that losing Schick has to hurt from at least a depth standpoint. Tough to lose anyone from the line that has significant experience.
You got some #sauces?
edit: appears so
Exactly, I've expected the same for 20 years now. Never happens
I don't have any inside sauces on this one. I am trusting the new coach's overhaul and the players we got from WV. I think everyone on staff knows this is a make or break year, so I read the OL coach going for a bunch of his old guys as a signal that he thinks that's the way forward for immediate improvement.
He's getting guys who have already worked with him and each other, and were highly regarded as a group before.
Seems like a great way to get a head start on building something that will work.
Agreed. Also my statement about our OL being better than the last few years is a pretty low bar lol. I think we are in quite a bit of trouble if it is not better.
He's going to get PAID - experienced D1 tackles are getting bank regardless of performance. I bet he ends up at a 2nd tier SEC (Kentucky, MSU, Auburn) or Big 12 school with seven figures this year.
Agreed- I totally see Bob Schick on commercials in Starkeville, MS. Totally
I'm just sad we lost MegaJesus 2.0.
Ranked as (an almost) 4* by On3: Link Here
Supply and demand at its finest...
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king"
On3 losing some credibility with this one
crawford is in if you want to start another thread
I guess his schickt was up here!
I just thought it was funny that a guy named Schick looked like he hadn't shaved in months.
I really thought he would Schick around longer.
I am Schick and Tyrod of all these puns
Heading to Oklahoma St. Get some T Boone money!
Looks like an example of being decent and getting paid versus being decent and getting PAID.