Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock offered an apology to Hokies fans for the way the 2024 football season turned out and vowed to get things turned around during a 30-minute interview with Bill Roth, the voice of Tech football, that released Friday afternoon.
“Certainly the overall results of the season, extremely frustrating and disappointing,” Babcock said. “We’re so invested, all of us. It always hurts when you fall short. I want to empathize and apologize to the fan base and let them know that we’re determined to fix it.
“The effort and the intent was there. We’ve got to get better on the results.”
Babcock called the Hokies’ 6-6 record this year and where the program has been the last five seasons — 27- 33 overall with a 17-22 mark in the ACC — “not what Virginia Tech football represents.”
“We are dang sure not a .500 program,” he said, taking responsibility for the season’s shortcomings. “It’s too much tradition, too much emphasis, too much focus and pouring into football. And that’s not who we are.”
Still, he offered a backing a football coach Brent Pry, who’s 16-20 in three years in Blacksburg.
“I believe in him,” Babcock said.
How exactly the Hokies will go about fixing the program remains to be seen. Babcock plans to sit down with Pry next week for a post-season meeting, an annual exercise he undertakes with every coach at Virginia Tech, to discuss the program from top to bottom.
“Nothing is off limits for critique, review, evaluation, improvements,” he said. “We’ll make the right decisions for Virginia Tech, even if they’re difficult.”
Asked Wednesday if he plans on keeping this coaching staff intact, Pry gave himself plenty of space to go in any direction.
“I’m hopeful,” he said. “We’ve got great people in this building and I think today’s a testament to everything that these families and these prospects feel about the people in this building. Got tremendous folks in this building. There’s certainly some things that we have to do better. Again, it starts with me.”
Despite the .500 record, Babcock said the Hokies were close this year and just need to get over the hump, expressing optimism that they can get there. He cited a stairstep process, going from 3-8 in 2022 to being more competitive in 2023 to having a better team with more depth this season, despite the same record.
The next step? Winning closer games and then doing so convincingly.
“I truly think we’re close to that,” Babcock said. “We know what Hokie nation expects and we know what they deserve.”
He said part of that growth is coming away with a signature win, something he thought Tech had at Miami, calling it a potential turning point in the season in hindsight and a good example of an effort that met the standard of Virginia Tech football.
“We know we’ve got to move the needle,” Babcock said. “I watch the same games as all of our fans. It takes years off my life when we don’t perform too. I feel for them. I hope they hang with us.”
In addition to addressing the football season, Babcock outlined how an upcoming settlement in the House court case against the NCAA will affect Virginia Tech. If approved, the settlement will provide some antitrust protection for a decade, pay $2.8 billion in back damages to athletes who were denied money-making opportunities in the last six years (a roughly $1 million impact annually on the Hokies over 10 years) and establish a revenue-sharing plan going forward of up to $20.5 million annually from the athletic department coffers.
“It doesn’t mean you have to do it, but to compete at the top tier, that’s the level to get to,” Babcock said.
Babcock said the Hokies “pieced together” the full amount in Year 1, which will be payable July 1, 2025, with the majority of that money going to three sports: football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. The Olympic sports will be supported more by additional scholarships, with roster limits being expanded.
The challenge, Babcock said, is finding a sustainable flow of revenue to come up with that $20.5 million every year.
“We just don’t have that laying around,” he said, saying they’ll partner with campus and try to find other avenues for revenue.
Babcock said Tech will tap a revenue-cap management system called LBI to help manage that money (it’s done work in pro leagues), with a front office model in store. Kelly Woolwine, the Triumph NIL CEO, more or less fills a general manager position right now that is heavy on negotiations and relationships with players and their parents, but the Hokies plan to build out from that, with another group involved in player and transfer portal evaluation that’s data-driven.
“Maybe like the ‘Moneyball’ book back in the day,” Babcock said. “Now that you have a revenue-share cap, what positions are going to be worth what? How do you return on investment?”
Babcock said Tech will tap some alumni who are general managers in pro sports — Tampa Bay Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander and Chicago Bears senior director of player personnel Jeff King — as advisors.
“When you have a cap and spend strategically, you have to be able to operate like a front office,” Babcock said.
NIL will still exist on top of the new revenue-sharing plan, but after July 4, 2025, those deals will have to be made public for anything over $600 and have to go through a fair-market clearinghouse run by Deloitte.
“It’ll be a totally different paradigm than what we’re used to,” Babcock said, who called it a bit more like pro sports. “But hopefully more structure than the Wild West NIL era we’ve been in lately.”
Babcock said Tech’s goal in the next 6-12 months is to “strategically position our department to compete at the top of the league,” pointing to an obvious need to “right the ship in football and men’s basketball.”
“Quite frankly, we need to reinstill trust and confidence that may have wavered in some of our fan base,” he said. “We’ve got to reward them.”