HWA

We're already working with a rotation of VMI, ODU, Wofford, Furman, etc. Then if you could "fix" the ACC side (by dropping the small/private schools), we'd have a nice home & away schedule. Imagine if we only played these 9 schools: UVA UNC NCSU Clemson Miami FSU Ga Tech Louisville and/or Pitt Notre Dame (some years with 8 + Notre Dame, some years with 9 conference games)

I'm near Sterling/Ashburn, and there are sit-down Mexican restaurants with $14-16 burritos.

And my one-way drive has always been 3-5 hours. In other words, it has been important to me. Not sure if I'll renew in 2026. Some of the reasons are me, some of the reasons are VT, and some of the reasons are the growing business/money of college sports. I sit with a group of 10 people, so Season Tix are really convenient for that. But when so many tickets are now available for $20-40, maybe we need to re-consider paying the full price in March/April of every year.

And several other states. Texas, Bama, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Tenn, Oklahoma. So many issues/topics are that South Park episode, where the locals complained about Walmart. Do you blame Walmart, or do you blame the people who keep spending money at Walmart? We get what we allow, and what we support. Not many people care if their state moves from #47 to #43 in public education. But if your state school wins a football championship, people will be wearing those t-shirts until they die.

Sure, the Upper seats are always last to sell. But who owns 24 consecutive seats? Did a private individual (or broker/scalper) buy all 24, or is this VTTO dumping their unsold inventory? And if VTTO, it is really short-sighted. Why buy Season Tickets (or a Plan/Package), when you can just wait for the fire sale? Pro/college teams need to be careful with the discounts and cheap tickets. If you do it too much, you condition your fans to be cheap-skates. It can take years to re-condition the fans.

12 consecutive in 507, on SeatGeek, for $8 each. I don't doubt that we've hit rock-bottom. Even though Cal was almost-full at kickoff, thousands (tens of thousands?) of people left by halftime. We're now at the end of a lame-duck season, and people are checking out. But who owns 12-24 seats together? Is this the VTTO, dumping all their tickets on the secondary market?

Made about $110M during his career. In addition to crazy spending, he also decided to purchase lots of real estate & property. Invest in a boring Index fund? Nope, I'm gonna play a Property Tycoon! Then his properties starting going to court, and he didn't have the people/experience/awareness to manage all the court dates & obligations.

Supposedly without the knowledge of Colorado admin. Unfortunately, the ship has already sailed. Golf, WWE, comedy, soccer, Washington Wizards/Caps. The Saudis (and Qatar, and other sovereign funds) want to throw money around, and very few people are gonna say no. Next thing you know, they'll probably get an Air Force base! I don't even see this as a Saudi/Qatar issue. More about the endless need for money & power, at the expense of everything else.

If it was so easy to become a head coach (or CEO), why doesn't everybody do it. Because they don't want the 70-80 hour work-weeks, the travel, the sleeping on a cot, the sacrifice of family/personal life, the loss of weekends & holidays. For every James Franklin, there are hundreds of guys coaching JUCO, NAIA, Division 3, etc.

Now who the heck is gonna enforce that? It sounds good (on paper), but let me know when a school sues Franklin (or any coach) for the full $50M. If Franklin heads to Tahiti for a 2-month break, that wouldn't be a diligent search. So what happens? In other words, whatever new salary he receives from his next job will offset what Penn State owes him in a buyout. And Franklin is obligated to search for a new job, according to the deal. That language, known as “duty to mitigate,” states: “Once terminated, Coach is obligated to diligently search for and make a good faith effort to obtain another position appropriate for his skill set (i.e., coaching, scouting and broadcasting only) and to provide the university upon request with evidence that he is seeking such employment.” Franklin is also required “to make good faith efforts to obtain the maximum reasonable salary” at his new job.

I'd say using those years as the Penn State baseline is a bit of generous cherry-picking. So the end of a coaching era (see Beamer + Bowden), combined with the shower circus? Might be more accurate to say PSU is a 9-win program, and that's exactly what Franklin did. But when a coach only meets expectations (and doesn't exceed them), and then fumbles an entire month, most fanbases are gonna get grumpy. UGA got tired of Mark Richt, even though he consistently won 9-10 games.

/s Could easily make the argument that pre-legal gambling was MUCH worse for the college game (football and hoops). Boston College, Henry Hill, Tulane, Arizona State, Northwestern. In 1951, 32 players were arrested! Kentucky hoops wasn't allowed to play in 1952-53. Just because you see/hear more of something, it doesn't always mean the "something" is worse than before. Many of the college "scandals" today are a redshirt-junior placing $50 on the Orlando Magic (and the NCAA is now moving to allow wagers on pro sports). Sure, there is more gambling these days. But because of the legalization, it is much easier to track & monitor the suspicious activity. So in a way, isn't that better?

Happens in the military all the time. Or any family where the parents need to move for promotion, employment, etc. Pry will make about $20M from VT? More than enough money to figure out the best-possible solution to housing, schools, etc.

All coaches get $0 guaranteed, and are only paid on a per-win basis. Keep what you kill! This is America, we don't need any hand-outs! Of course, when you get zero candidates (other than some dude from the Arena league), you'll realize how things actually work in the real/employment world.

Heard from a couple kids -- they arrived 60-90 minutes before kickoff, and still missed Enter Sandman. Is that normal for the Student gates?

Vandy was sold-out, all the 2024 games were sold-out. People are pre-game fighting/pushing (for better or worse), to get in the gates for Enter Sandman & kickoff experience. We don't have the $$$ to compete with the Michigans or Georgias, but we really can't win some games against the Purdue/Vandy/Rutgers programs? Come on. That isn't asking too much. If Pry (or the next coach) could just get to 8-9 wins, we've still got the support & excitement. But how many years can you expect 65k people to show up for Enter Sandman, only to leave at halftime and 3rd qtr.

Every fanbase is good, until they aren't. Starting to see a whole bunch of "I love the Hokies, and I'll support them forever. But I've decided to focus my weekends on pottery and scrap-booking. One day, maybe I can re-engage with the Hokies and football." I mean, that's just a clever way of saying "Screw this, we suck!" Redskins had a good fanbase in the 1980s, and then the stadium was 50% empty, and now I guess they've got a good fanbase again? (And yes, I realize there are degrees. Nebraska is still selling-out games, and even the Hokies are still selling-out. But in the end, every fanbase has a breaking-point.)

You're not an infant elephant. Nobody is really questioning the overall accuracy of the scale. They're questioning the value of weighing yourself every 2-3 days, and drawing conclusions from what-is-normal daily fluctuation. It is a marathon, not a sprint. If you do the work (diet, exercise, water, sleep), you'll get the results.

But tell me that everybody deserves 4-5 years of free college.

I get your point. The need/desire to buy Season Tix in 2025 is waaaay different than buying Season Tix in 1993. People don't need to buy Season Tix in April, when they can simply wait to get 1-2 games on SeatGeek. (SeatGeek, the official secondary marketplace of the Hokies!) But if a school could sell 53,000 full-price Season Tix in April, they'd still do that. Not as though they're purposely holding back 5,000 tickets to sell as a discount Family Plan. There are still college/NFL teams that sell-out Season Tix.

Then the Heat/Knicks of the 1990s. Of course, sports (and society) has evolved since then. Almost every sport has cleaned-up the blatant cheap-shots, and/or penalized them harshly. You can make a hard play on the ball, but you can't just Kurt Rambis tackle somebody. Trying to hurt somebody isn't cool or competitive, or good sport. Except for the WNBA, where wrestle-ball is still a thing. They're plowing into people, 50 feet from the basket. Not even close to actual basketball plays or behaviors.

It was our first appearance on GameDay, and it was our undefeated + Vick year. "The GameDay show first visited Blacksburg in mid-October of 1999. ESPN officials held the show on a stage inside of Lane Stadium, and nearly 20,000 people showed up – an incredible number at the time. Later that Saturday evening, Michael Vick and the Hokies destroyed Syracuse 62-0. The GameDay contingent returned in November that season and watched the Hokies roll past Miami 43-10."

I kid, I kid. But at some point (if you go back decades, or centuries) --- isn't almost everything arbitrary? Who decides that one crime is a 3-year sentence, but another crime is a 10-year sentence? Who decides the Standard Deduction for single filers is $14,600? Who decides you only have 4/5 years to play NCAA sports. Who decides you need to maintain a certain GPA, or be on-path to a degree. Who decides the Portal is only open during certain weeks. I mean, I can quit my job today, and start another job tomorrow. So why can't a football player @ Tulsa do the same? If Rutgers wants to pay that player an extra $200k in October, who are we to say no? You are suppressing competition! You are preventing the player from reaching his full income & athletic potential! It never ends.

If you think tickets are too expensive, then stay home. If that means you need to have a tough conversation with your son/daughter, then so be it. Not everybody gets to attend every concert, and not everybody gets the hot toy for Christmas. And on a music-snob note -- if you actively searched for new/different music (instead of the 10 most popular artists in the world), you'd have the opportunity to see awesome bands @ small/intimate venues, often for $20-40.

You've already got entire teams that are 100% online-only classes. Partially because going to a real class would "interfere" with the practice, games, training, video, etc. If an athlete dares to take a real class, it shows they're not fully committed to the team & coach. Or maybe you'll get a situation where every athlete is on-track for a "Sports Management" degree. Instead of playing 3-4 years to get a high school letter-jacket, you just play 3-4 years to get a Sports degree from LSU.

You know what opening the windows does? Allows your house to reach the same temperature as outside. Then your house reaches 79-83 degrees by late afternoon, and probably won't cool-down by midnight. Yes, your house will also warm-up with windows closed. But it won't warm-up as quickly. There are a few situations/houses where "open windows during day-time" is the best method. But in general, keep windows shut if the indoor temp < outdoor temps. And use the blinds & drapes.

These are hard plastic, and jam fingers/hands/knees behind them, as people lean back. And the big difference (compared to the old seat-backs) -- the "most comfortable stadium seat on the market" was installed to 32,000 seats in 2024. You can ask VT to remove your seat-back (probably no refund), but that still leaves 31,996 of the crappy seats. At least the old seat-backs were an extra purchase/request, and they were scattered around the sections.

The race between What Will Happen First -- RFK Stadium is fully demolished, or the Rays get a new stadium in Tampa/St Pete.

Half of the problem is from the row in front of you. As people lean back, they jam your knees & fingers.

Yep. Gotta wonder when Vandy and Northwestern get smaller shares of the pie.

MLB just found out the hard way -- if you think you're worth $550M/year, but nobody wants to pay $550M..................then you really can't say market-value is $550M, can you? I agree with you, the ACC hasn't always received the best treatment from ESPN. But when it comes to market value in the sports-broadcast industry, it isn't as though you're dealing with 75 bidders. Often, ESPN *is* the market value. As for the link: 1) Yes, the ACC deal is relatively under-valued. Primarily because it was signed in 2016, and hasn't been up for a full negotiation. Similar to those years when Kirk Cousins was one of the highest-paid QBs -- not because he was the best (or most valuable) QB, but because other QBs were "stuck" on older deals. 2) Ugh. Flee vs flea, premier vs premiere, meanwhile while. The man needs an editor. "Meanwhile while unhappy ACC schools make less money than their Big Ten and SEC counterparts until 2036, the rich will get richer."

Maybe the deal *is* market value? Just because you can't sell your house for $800k, that doesn't mean the market value is $800k.

The DOE guidance is only guidance, not established law. And with a new administration on the way, it's very likely the guidance will change.

One guess, you (or your source) is confusing the stats, the face-value AI answer, etc. For example, 75% of students took "at least" one online course in 2020. Presto, that suddenly means 75% of college courses are remote! Facts! "In fall 2022, 54% of college students took at least one online course. This is down from 75% in fall 2020, when the pandemic caused a surge in remote learning. However, online learning is still more popular than it was before the pandemic."

The fees on StubHub are almost always more than the primary seller (usually Ticketmaster). On top of that, I think Ticketmaster is using "all-in" pricing for the Mayo Bowl. Where they don't show any fees, they only show the final price. If you check Ticketmaster for Section 111 (which happens to be on the 40/50, behind the Va Tech bench), you'll see a Total Price of $207.76 per ticket. Don't get me wrong, StubHub has gone crazy with fees. But I wonder if the "all-in" pricing has thrown-off the typical formula for StubHub fees?