First, decisions are being made by executive leadership of the university who are looking for the long term future of the university. This includes the president and his staff and the BOV who oversee the entire university. Realization: in about 3-5 years, athletics is going to separate and the have and the have nots. The schools who are not chosen are irrelevant,. VT intends to be with the haves and ensure we are taken. Don't know some of the fan base has such a good vision for hte univeristy, While VT is a major international 3-4 BILLION dollar enterprise with almost 40,000 students and and endowment of over 3 billion, they see that it is wrong to soar, "ITS JUST SMALL REGIONAL TECH'... period. The BOV has made a decision to fund at the level for athletics, they have made the decision to make VT a full integrated department of the university (no overhead charges), and are demainding the staffing personnel and performance to match the intent. They realize they have to win NOW, no 5-7 year transition, win. They realize to be the best, they have to hire the best, they simply cannot risk and gamble with staff and personnel who dont know how to manage like a SEC/Big 10 school. VT has the resource partners, but they willl be introducing NEW partners, not the same old and true givers of athletics, but a new team with new capital (who give exclusivly To the university and university has partition them away from athletics. no more). Also with that, The Athletic department no longer is a mom and pop operation, where each cousin or relative or friend of someone is hire for positions they ABSOLUTELY HAVE NO QUALIFICATIONS. So VT needs to hire not big for appearance but big for performance. There are no way a head coach at Oregon can be compared with coach at JMU. Apples and Oranges. VT expects the coach to run a Oregon/P2 level program NOW> make it so. No we will see. UVA is on the way now, VT must match. Or in 5 to 10 years, we might see every weekend in Cvilee Great game UVA vs UT, or Ohio State. While a smaller attended game in blacksburg, a small contingent jumping to enter sandman with the fighting hokies playing Charlotte ..... Talk about irrelevant.