1) Football is the only door opener in eventual realignment, VT’s entire brand is built around football. You bring up UCLA, who got picked primarily because they have a long history, massive fanbase, and play in the most famous football stadium in the world. It would take decades of excellence in basketball (no other sports are driving it, ask Stanford) to even sniff the same level of impact that just being on average a top 25 football team would have. 2) if you believe in your staff, which I would hope the people in charge who hired them do, then this is an easy decision. If we hired the wrong guy so be it, but hindsight is 20/20. MY has proven he can only win with guys he has developed, good luck relying on development even with big NIL dollars. With more money comes accelerated timelines, imagine the reaction if we pumped basketball full of dollars and ended up on the bubble. 3) This is unquestionable, just the gameday economic impact alone from 6 home games dwarfs every other sport combined. Way more fans care about football so if the team wins 9 games the level of giving goes up. VT can do crazy things like win the ACC in basketball and it’s just a blip (just ask Will about board traffic that day vs any fall saturday), no VT fans plan an entire 3 months of their weekends around other sports, the only ones who do live within spitting distance of campus and tbh those aren’t the ones who have big money to donate. Bottom line is all the actual decision makers at VT with deep pockets and careers built on making strategic decisons did the math and all agreed on football. That’s where we have our core competencies, that’s where our capex has historically gone, and that’s where incremental improvement pays outsized dividends. Being a tournament basketball team doesn’t move the needle, being an infrequent sweet 16 participant doesn’t move the needle, you need to actually win. You don’t have to actually win in football, all you need to do is be a participant in the big show. Don’t get me wrong, basketball is my favorite sport and I’d love if we supported it, but objectively if you had to pick between the 2 as VT the choice is obvious. If we had no football history then sure, but we were in contention for national titles for almost a decade and the entire brand of the school is based on the football crowd. ** Edited by soflahokie at 11/4/2024, 8:09:31 AM