QuadHokie

I'm also a life-long Browns fan. I'm not allowed to have nice football things. I went to the 2000 Sugar Bowl game against FSU, as well. Sorry. Before 1984 I was not a Hokie so that's someone else's doing.

The major programs won't want to keep bidding against each other forever for players. Eventually a new entity will be formed encompassing all the major programs. How many? Hard to say. Will it include VT? Hard to say. I will say that the way VT is now operating makes that more likely. But, that entity will need to exist in order to collectively bargain with a newly formed players union. CFB needs a players union, just like the other professional sports do. They don't exist in every major sport by accident and CFB, at the top level, is a professional sport. Probably going to be a bumpy ride though.

Shouldn't the GM have the power to hire the coach of his choosing? I haven't read up on all the ins and outs of the new setup so maybe I'm off base.

, we may be onto something. Maybe they will have hired them for something other than "pedigree" and name recognition. Break out of the Good-Ol-Boy coaching fraternity rehab system. Take a shot at being there first and spend less money doing it. Maybe the next big check you write will be a fat extension after some success instead of a buyout after failure.

Make some impressive inexpensive younger guy out there look like a genius because you bought him a good QB.

All schools won't want a union but the ones that drive TV contracts and pay players 10s of millions will. This will be an exclusive club. ** Edited by QuadHokie at 10/15/2025, 11:03:16 AM

This "chaos", which is really just individuals making choices in a free market, will only become more predictable once the players form a union and collectively bargain with the major conferences. I believe that to be inevitable. CFB is a professional league and I see no reason why it would not eventually organize itself like all the other professional leagues in its relationship between players and owners. It won't be easy. It would be the end of conferences as we know them. Ideally, there would need to be one organization on the "owner" side for the players union to negotiate with. That doesn't exist either yet. Still, I think the major schools will eventually tire of bidding against each other for the top players and the will will be there to reorganize the whole endeavor. They'll be the ones pushing for the formation of a players union, not the players. Think of all the traditional parts of the CFB that have already been tossed aside for money. These are just the final steps to maximize and control revenue. People will watch regardless. None of that is good for VT I don't think. Pretty sure they would not make the cut to be a part of this new set of major college football schools bargaining with the union. It will probably only be 30 to 40 schools and VT is a close call in that regard. Personally, I would prefer to be big dogs in the highest minor league that forms, sort of like baseball AAA teams. It would have its own meaningful championship and would be one hell of a lot cheaper to maintain and attend as a fan.

He's too expensive. No expensive retreads. No recruiters, unless recruiting big donors is a proven skill. Not likely. Hire a coach we haven't heard of that seems to have eye for talent and then spend as much money as possible on players, especially a QB, and make the coach look like a genius and get overpaid somewhere else. Rinse, repeat. Spend on players.

Play/coach hard, play/coach smart, don't do embarrassing things on or off the field. Players and coaches. I'll cheer for you and throw some money your way. I don't expect miracles for VT in a player portal/NIL world. It's a low bar. Meet it. I was there before the winning. I saw a LOT of the winning years in person. Neither changed my life. So, just don't besmirch the university I love. That does affect me.

I hold no ill will. You are in a business, making business decisions. It's almost impossible to make the press release sound genuine. Just do what you need to do and good luck.

The top 25 paid coaches make an average of $9mill a year. That's what I could find data on. Beyond that many, many more are making millions. Almost none of them are worth it. You can't tell me ALL those dudes are better than the best coaches coaching lesser leagues. No way. It's F-ing football. A game. They all know it well, use the same schemes. The guys at the top are lucky and mostly rode the success of talented players to the top. I might buy there are a very few exceptions throughout the years. Frank was probably one. The vast vast majority are just another guy. But, with the advent of NIL, I would argue NONE of them are worth it now and you should slash coaching salaries and put it into getting players. Hire a lesser know coaching staff making far less. They get too big for their britches, do it again. Pump the money into players. This has to eventually happen, right?

What is insane is that member institutions of the same entities (conferences) now compete against each other monetarily (not just with promises of playing time) for the services of players. And they do this within a nearly 100% free agency. That's what they need to fix. NIL makes sense. The alternative that people are used to was the aberration, not NIL. I discussed it some in a post lower down, but until the major football playing institutions get together and form an entity that allows them to collectively bargain with the players as a unionized group, chaos will reign. Freedom and the open market are the American way but it's no way to run a sports league. All the pro sports know this and they all have unions and collective bargaining.

...why the conferences will eventually align under a single bargaining entity and will push for the players to be unionized so that they can collectively bargain with them for just those sorts of rules. Sound familiar? Like every other pro sport? When that happens, the VTs of the world may get some power back I think. Because, if the have-nots of the CFB world (basically all the schools not in the SEC and BIG10 plus ND) refuse to help form that entity unless there is some form of TV revenue sharing across all of CFB, it will be very hard to get any deals done with the players or the networks. Additionally, if the have-nots are left out of any such bargained system, they can offer some players more than was agreed to within any collectively bargained agreements made within the two power conferences. The incentives are there to finally organize this sport in a open market constitutionally sound manner. It will take some time, but I think in the end we will all be glad NIL finally got this ball rolling.

People like to watch football and travel, though, so I imagine they will survive to some degree.

If a player wants to protect himself from injury going into the draft or going into the portal, that starts at the end of the season, regardless of when they open the portal. I also wonder if we start seeing players on losing teams, who fully intend to leave, start sitting mid-season? Not sure how those NIL contracts work in that regard. Of course, if you aren't getting NIL, and think you have played to a level where you can leave to get NIL, sitting to avoid injury makes sense too. When does that start happening? In a way, if you aren't pining for the past, CFB is fascinating right now. It's transforming from the ground up. A players union and cross-conference revenue sharing look to be logical results eventually.

If there was data to show the ACC is outperforming its contract, I think we'd know. I suspect it is not, so no additional revenue is going to be forthcoming and eventually the top part of the ACC will be absorbed into the monster conferences. Hate that but I'm not going to cherry pick when I want free-market forces to be allowed or not. College football is a business and is subject to those market forces. Eventually, all ACC schools will be released from the current contract either through time or litigation and then bye bye ACC as we know it.

I don't know one way or the other. Haven't seen anything reported but I would be surprised that our match-ups and ratings are creating some kind of windfall for them. The ACC is mostly high-end filler games for ESPN.

I would love for the ACC to generate more revenue. I'd love for the conference to a big happy family. I have no idea how, in today's reality, that will ever happen. Do you? Phillips only has the existing contract to work with. No savior is coming. You play the cards you're dealt. The countdown to the PAC-12-ification of the ACC has started. Just a matter of time.

Clemson and FSU are suing the ACC? They don't want to be at the kids table.

Players are what matter. All this coach swapping business is pointless, especially since the ability to recruit is diminished in the NIL era. How do you convince someone to take less money? No one has that skill.

In this post NIL world, which I do begrudge in the slightest by the way, I'm just not sure it matters anymore. Championship dreams, which were never that realistic to begin with, are a thing of the past. Lower the ticket prices and I'll put more concern into the food at the tailgate than the game itself, like the good ole days. :) By the way, "the ACC being picked apart" is not that easy for now. It keeps getting brought up by these speculators though as if it is easily done. If it was easy, it would have already happened.

That aint happening so neither is any of the other things he mentioned. Besides you can't conscript kids to certain schools like pro sports do to players being drafted to certain teams. The only way you get to what he is saying is by separating the schools and the sport. Create a pro NFL feeder league with teams affiliated with schools but separate from them. Then you can make the rules and pay anyway you like and the kids can declare themselves eligible to the league and agree to the rules the league (and likely players union) have established. That aint happening either. Personally I don't think there is a "fix" because I don't think it's broken. The kids should have been able to earn NIL from since leather helmet days. It has always been wrong. So it creates competitive imbalance? So what? They are schools, these are students. Those students are American citizens with the same freedoms as everyone else. Creating a system that forces competitive balance is way less important than protecting those freedoms. Now, if you create a league with a union and the players have a voice and trade their individual freedoms for a say in how the league operates, that's different. I'm not holding my breath that happens.

Some programs (Texas, Bama, etc) have donors for which the success of the football program personally affects them. It's part of their identity. I love that I went to VT but the success of the football program is not personal to me. The school itself is. I'm much more concerned when the program reflects poorly on the school off the field than when it does on. I guess that's just a cultural thing. Fine by me. Still, we can do better. :)

was my last as a student and as an MV. I certainly remember that one. :)

If you believe what has come out about the hearing, they didn't even present anything that amounted to an accusation that he did anything to break their policies with regards to violence and women. Just that he was a creep and made them look bad. That's not enough to me to stop someone from playing but I understand not everyone sees it that way. If the NFL wants to toss folks because of non-violent accusations that end up in civil court, they need to put it in the CBA.

to make as much sense. I think it's the most interesting part of this development. Will the school give you priority seating for giving another entity money? It probable should try. Is that legal? NIL could get to where football coaches don't recruit, they go shopping. A NIL generating organization could say "You have this much money in our NIL coffers coach, this is what you can afford..."

Just because some kids got something extra. Seems ridiculous now. This NIL business is messy now but it'll sort itself out. It's better to have everything out in the open. Less BS and hypocrisy.

political definitions that could be used to distinguish the true political intentions of candidates. Those words are used as weapons now and their meanings lost. It makes all of us less informed. "Birthing People" is a harmless term that accounts for the fact that some women can now give birth to children that will not be their own. They aren't actually mothers. The reaction to that and how it triggers people is the problem. Weaponization of words for political gain does nothing to improve discourse or the lives of people. Last I'll post on this. It's a football board and I have already gone too far. :) ** Edited by QuadHokie at 7/14/2022, 2:09:45 PM

....when someone else decides to limit something I want to do. Honestly, the word has lost all meaning, it's been abused so badly. Same with conservative and liberal. They mean whatever people want them to mean in whatever context they think benefits them. We're almost to the point where politics needs a new language.

I think you are correct, anyone's in the game now if they choose to play. I just assumed we will not, or can not. Not really sure which is the case. But, it is true I think that if a billionaire decides he wants to make Alabama Birmingham or Rice, or whoever, the FBS champion, he just might be able to do that by buying a couple of great recruiting classes and a #1 QB. Why not VT? Just have to find our sugar daddy I guess.

It's unlikely the difference would matter enough anyway. Just hit it hard! :)