Of other programs. I hope it works. But it hasn’t the last two years.

UNC is dropping huge money on a role player! Yes, he could develop into a lead scorer, but his current skill set is facilitator and #2-#3 scorer. It is crazy! I do expect UNC to be a force next year and for Neo to be a significant part of that. But paying this much money for someone who is not an alpha dog is just insane.

when anything can effectively be backfilled with NIL. If there are dudes on the outside willing to underwrite "whatever is needed", is there really any meaningful distinction between revenue sharing and NIL? What am I missing? So Neo gets $4mm of rev sharing school money. Maybe the top two guys at unc "settle" for $1mm and then some ridiculous $4mm NIL deals? ** Edited by Vippie1 at 4/14/2026, 4:26:37 PM

to complement their "MJ." Since Neo seems to excel whenever he is the #2 or #3 guy on the team and they will only have "MJ" for a limited window, should a program like UNC overpay for "important" role players before the window closes?

you are taking a risk. In this case they aren’t just above the line. They are in an entirely different quadrant. One way or another this will backfire on them.

UNC may be using a different criteria, which you obviously disagree with, to justify why they agreed to the deal. Hence why I thought the Scottie Pippen or Horace Grant reference may be appropriate. The odds say this has a better chance of backfiring than succeeding because only 1 team can win it all. Even if everyone said this was the "perfect" move for all parties involved, the odds are still against them. What I am curious to see is whether UNC still considers a run to the Elite Eight or Final Four to still be a "failure" because their "MJ," whomever he is that year, isn't able to take them to the promise land. I think I would rather see that happen than an early exit.

conference, not the top 10%. We don't need to outspend Duke & UNC, or even UVA to have what I think most VT fans would be happy with. But we do need to be competitive with FSU, NCSt, Clemson, Cal, Stanford, etc. We basically need a lower-level Michigan model to pull together really strong role players from other teams and match them with an established core. I don't know how that shakes out to a $ total but it's probably 2x the $5MM number, if that's an accurate figure.

approximately 65% football and 35% men's basketball. They allocated $13M to football this past year and $7M to men's basketball. They had a token $250K to women's basketball and $250K to baseball. That is this current year's $20.5M. This does NOT include NIL. So, right off the bat, you can pretty much determine the priority of the school/athletics department when you see this breakdown. Index that $20.5M up 4% for the 2026-2027 year and that brings a school's rev share to $21.32M. That means Carolina basketball will have close to $7.5M in men's basketball revenue sharing this year alone. Contrast that with VT. Our current year's revenue sharing model is approximately 75% football ($15M plus), 15% men's basketball ($3M), 5% women's basketball ($1M), and 5% (another $1M) spread amongst other Olympic sports (the Olympic sports rev share are all in the form of additional scholarships). So, we are well ahead of Carolina in football, and women's basketball. Well behind in men's basketball. So, indexed up, we will have approximately $3.2M this year (26-27) in men's basketball revenue sharing. Again, this is not NIL money. BUT, one can see where NIL priority is placed (privately) when you see these percentages in print. Not saying it matches perfectly, but it paints a pretty decent picture for the general public. So, where (and how) we choose to compete is as much of an indicator as anything. But, yes, we probably aren't ever going to allocate resources like a Carolina, Duke, Louisville, etc. for basketball. That doesn't mean we should not try, to compete at a higher level, however. But, as of today, we are allocating a lot more to football than a Carolina, but they will get us pretty good in hoops. I am never in the camp of not being to be pretty good in both, but messaging plays a big part in how we accumulate donor resources (for NIL). And in fairness, Carolina basketball makes significantly more money (revenue) than VT does in hoops, so that isn't exactly shocking. Plus, in the end, it is what their support base wishes to be best at.

"...but messaging plays a big part in how we accumulate donor resources (for NIL)."

The $20.5M is essentially a salary cap for direct (non-NIL) player compensation, but the 5% toward scholarships means means we're only paying out ~$19.5M in rev share "salary". With the new NCAA rules, my understanding is that there are no longer any scholarship limits other than the total roster size. For example, wrestling used to be capped at 9.9 scholarships but it's now capped at the roster size limit of 30. So that means potentially 20.1 new full scholarships -- if the institution is willing and able to fund them all. If there's no "scholarship cap", it feels like we are leaving $1M in "roster budget" on the table if we could fund any new scholarships for Olympic sports outside revenue share funds. That approach would obviously cost VTAF $1M more overall, but that extra $1M would give some program the opportunity to pull more talent than they would otherwise be able to. It feels like VTAF could source that $1M from donors who are currently throwing significant money toward NIL via Triumph (without a tax deduction) or Hokie Way. Maybe there's something I'm missing here, but the Olympic sports scholarship portion of our rev share plan makes no sense to me.

unlimited full scholarships (up to the roster limit), a school can only use up to $2.5M of the $20.5M for revenue sharing to go towards scholarships. So, this current academic year, VT has to use at least $18M for "salary purposes." And yes, if the school wants to fund additional scholarships they can do that, but they can't use more than $2.5M from the revenue sharing pot. That is obviously designed for the money to go towards those athletes doing the vast majority of revenue earning for the school (and those sports mainly football and basketball already have full scholarships for those athletes anyways). In the wrestling example, Tony got bumped up to 15 full scholarships this current academic year. So, that gave him another 5 full scholarships to work with. If all of those scholarships go to out of state wrestlers (which is highly likely), that essentially provided him with roughly another $300K of revenue from VT for his program. That is significant. So, it is sort of a 6 of 1, 1 /2 dozen scenario. It accomplishes the same thing for now. To your overall point, if VT can fund the majority of the scholarships they wish to add (and we are increasing more for next year for programs) outside of the rev share pot, then you could use the entire revenue sharing for true salary payment. That is what Carolina is pretty much doing, as they have built their endowment to the point to cover many scholarships in perpetuity. They are pretty much paying football and men's basketball a true salary, with a tad for women's hoops and baseball. We will see how this looks over the years. We need clarity on our approach so many donors/supporters can help assist in some tactical thinking. This will help us compete across many sports.

I spoke with my VTAF contact who handles all of our larger donations. He said that while using revenue sharing funds for scholarship increases was a factor in the original discussion related to the settlement, we are fully utilizing our revenue share "salary cap" for direct compensation.

revenue sharing of which I was not aware. Thanks again.

and Bidunga. If that’s correct and Branham is connected so it probably is true then it sounds like Louisville got a bargain.

Although I do look forward to the new logo that'll be at midcourt of Hot 'n Ready Coliseum. ** Edited by KCHokie2 at 4/13/2026, 10:58:21 PM

** Edited by KCHokie2 at 4/14/2026, 12:16:51 AM

ready? Officer Barney Flife! Not making this up. He came by Hokie House one night I was bouncing to arrest a drunk townie!! I looked at his nametag and almost pissed myself LOL!!

College sports is the premier league only without contracts and selling players rights. Welcome to league 2

i'm curious if the bubble will ever end. Also i'm curious how many programs are in the black financial at the end of the season.

And no dedicated fund raising for MBB nil. It is a joke the more I think about it. The art of the not possible with this AD. But it’s all washed away bc “hey we’re VT, we can’t be that good in MBB and look we hired JF!” ** Edited by GoldCoast at 4/13/2026, 10:45:03 PM