And I’m not joking

I think the change in policy for one laid the foundation for VT to act on the other, but I don't remember which happened first.

Loooootttta Macro lax(atives) there... 💯 b.street

and recruit profile in the Big East IMO. I don't think there is a complicated answer here.

then comes Whit Babcock who is not P4 AD by ANY stretch… Pry’s hiring will confirm this sooner or later and frankly Mike Young’s hiring was the first indication. Babcock is intimidated by top echelon college coaches, therefore, we don’t get any

He’s severely limited his ability to deal with them because his fund raising hasn’t been good enough to pay the going rate for them. And some of that is due to the VT alumni and fan base.

Beamer aged and stayed too long. Whit should have hired Bud Foster instead of Justin Fuente. Fuente was from the wrong area and had no concept for Vt football or skills or contacts/connections for recruiting. There is more, but that is the gist.

After 2011 debacles vs Clemson when it was obvious they had more staff who could completely diagnose everything we were doing, nobody on our administration recognized the need for investment to keep up. Fuente was the right short term hire to win with offense while we still had Bud’s D recruits (he turned around our 14-12 previous 2 seasons to 19-8 his first 2 years he was the wrong long term culture fit ** Edited by hokiepro at 9/25/2024, 7:22:54 PM

What would have to happen to bring it up the the upper quadrant of the ACC for example?

Most NFL facilities pale compared to top college facilities. Ever heard of an NFL player signing with a team because they had the best facilities? ** Edited by marcbvtgm at 9/26/2024, 3:56:18 PM

they are by far the best in the ACC. VT's are definitely in the top though, they aren't lagging in that regard. I haven't seen Miami or FSU's though.

From getting players needed to be competitive in conference

The defense use to feed off his energy big time. Foster was exhausted as the players after the game. We have not had that since.. good play and foster was a shot of adrenaline, bad play and you knew you had to do better and he still a shot of adrenaline. Someone needs to keep the team pumped before the game and all the way through.

I personally think being a head coach would have been tough on him. Ultimate DC. I don't regret them not hiring him after Beamer. I do regret not going after Chadwell post Fuente. ** Edited by crazylane at 9/25/2024, 5:32:29 PM

- He reached a plateau of performing at such a high level every year, that it was too easy for everyone to convince themselves all they needed was just 1 or 2 more breaks. Look at how many VT fans still truly believe if they had beaten BC in the rain in 2007 that they would've gone to the national title game that year, for instance. This in turn made everyone sclerotic, afraid of change for fearing of breaking something and ruining a good thing, they knew how hard it was to get to that height in the first place, and how much potential downside was underneath them, so why take the risk? If we just get 1 more stop on defense, 1 more first down on offense, etc. - The increased visibility of the program, and the changing world around them. This point is made most evident by Marcus Vick's career arc. When VT was an up-and-comer, not only was there less media attention being paid to them, but the internet was still in its infancy. It was much, much easier to take a risk on a "discipline issues" kind of player because programs had an easier time minimizing it, or outright covering it up, when a player did something bad. But, by the mid 2000s, both of these had changed, now VT is seen as a premiere football program with all that commensurate attention, but also now the internet exists, everyone's on it, everyone has a cell phone that at least sends texts, information travels laterally at breakneck speed and now coaches can't just call up a bar owner and tell him to shut up and expect that to be the end of the story. Beamer eventually saw (probably through the "help" of Steger) that he couldn't risk the reputational image of the university as a whole by having players on the team who couldn't at least follow the bare minimum of rules. So, those kinds of players stopped being recruited, and fans start wondering hey how come VT football no longer plays with a vicious attitude? (Side note to this, going along with the changing world thing, many of the types of hits VT defense used to coach simply became illegal, so you need to recruit players who you will be able to coach into hitting in a very specific way that won't get you penalized.) You can even look to special teams for a microcosm of the 'success -> risk aversion' pipeline. VT did have some starters still on special teams in later years, but it wasn't like special teams was composed entirely of starters. Why? The same reason as everyone else, it's too risky. When Beamer and VT were down in the dumps and had nothing to lose, who cares if you lose a starter trying to block a punt? We might lose the game anyway even if we do block it. But if you're winning 11 games a year, instead of 4, all of a sudden the risk of that starter being injured looms larger. To draw an analogy, VT football under Beamer was like someone on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, who has already won $500,000 and is facing the $1,000,000 question, and they don't know the right answer for sure, they have a decent idea, but they'd have to take a risk to answer the question. Get it right, you win the top prize, $1M is yours. But, you get it wrong, and you fall all the way down from 500k to 32k. It's easy now, in retrospect, for people to appreciate just how far it was possible for VT football to fall. It's easy to understand why they would become risk averse when they did, I probably would've done the exact same thing in their position. But, even if it was the "right" decision to make, it did end up becoming a significant factor in the overall fall of the program.

upgrades. Slowed recruiting and results.

Beamer should have walked off after the ACC Championship and turned it over to Bud.

And Steger let it happen.

move up the food (or take another step closer to potentially achieving some level of blue blood status some day), then that chain of events may have a had a huge impact on the trajectory of the football program. Plus, I think there is enough evidence to suggest Steger stuck around longer because of April 16th which probably had a direct impact on the Weaver-Beamer situation. If VT had hired another president at that time, then it would have been interesting to see if that individual would have allowed Weaver to coast/run on autopilot (not sure the right word here) until he was ready to retire. Also, it would have been interesting to how that individual handled the siuation with Beamer especially since Beamer was a beloved icon within the VT community. Would the individual have allowed Beamer to stick around until Weaver was the first one out the door or would that individual force Beamer's hand regardless of what is going on with Weaver? If the college president had forced Beamer's hand at that time, then it would have likely resulted in massive riots among Hokie fans even if it may have been the "right" decision for the long-term health of the football program.

the Parkinson’s disease was limiting his ability to adequately run the athletic department. Problem was that Steger wasn’t in the best of health either and the 2007 shooting lawsuits were after him too. After it was finally determined that the lawsuits were limited by state law and the the Virginia Department of Risk Management would pay the max ($500 k, I believe), then Steger took the initiative to relieve Weaver of his duties and worked out an agreement to pay him his base pay and benefits through age 70, when the contract ended. Beamer wasn’t going to let Weaver hire another head football coach and Weaver didn’t want to hire Frank’s replacement. It was basically a Texas Hold ‘Em where neither party would give in. I believe Frank would have retired earlier if Weaver wasn’t the athletic director since his health wasn’t good either. Bad thing is that Steger knew this and didn’t want to act either. There are definitely a few “what ifs” scenarios that could have occurred. It’s also possible that VT could have hired a football centric athletic director if Steger had taken action earlier.

But it appears we didn’t ask the right questions during the interviews or believed bs answers to the questions. Whit had a decent resume for sure, but apparently it was deceiving. If The Weaver retirement had been “friendly”, it may have been a lot different as he could have participated as part of the interview committee.

more important) iceberg to focus on at the time. I'm not saying that the BOV couldn't have focused on multiple icebergs at the same time. It may depend on how much attention and resources were required to properly deal with all the issues going on behind the scenes for each issue.

not a fan of the 'temporary' north end zone bleachers aso the hokies respect campaign ** Edited by kingofcassell at 9/25/2024, 2:14:45 PM

Step 2 - Beamer aging out Step 3 - Hiring a replacement for Beamer after the administration forgot what got us to success in the 90’s Step 4 - Hiring a replacement for Fuente based upon personality and not 90’s level competency. As far as I can tell Pry was hired primarily because he does not crinkle plastic bottles during press conferences and smiles to all the Hokie faithful.

Money was coming in from all sources, football was automatic.... No need to reinvest in football and use the extra dollars for other sports. Then at end of the Beamer Tenure, leadership at VT all were in failing health and no one would push them out. 1st President of the University had terminal cancel with prostrate cancel, then Jim Weaver was fighting chronic parkinson's and crippling authoritus and no one wanted to push him out, then Frank was not in the best of endurance First, Weaver finally retired/resigned over terminal heath issues, Steegar, lead the team in hiring the new AD before he retired, he got the selection of Whit, then Sands has selected and Steegar advised him all set, football will be just fine, no need to do anything.. so Whit managed it the same, (worse mistake over the NIKE contract,, in accepting what Weaver and VT pre-negotiated at a low rate). Then when Frank retired, they felt all is good and all they needed to do get a fresh coach and it would return. wrong assumption. Also, when VT got into the acc, all VT leadership was looking for was the ACC guarantee income from rights; that check is great, so they had no need to do special investment themselves. So no really creative ways to improve the football program, innovative ways to raise any more and minimize expenses. Complacency Complacency etc. And to this day, the question is does VT want to invest top level at any cost to be top level? Is the community prepared, for top level, if VT was in the SEC and huge fanbases come into Blacksburg. where is the restaurants and support infrastructure. already blacksburg pushing back on VT growth to success with almost 40,000 students.

as well. But yes, complacency was a huge problem.

** Edited by dj97223 at 9/25/2024, 6:51:19 PM

more Freudian slip. ;-)

your description of the timelines and medical conditions was inaccurate and/or wrong. In addition, Steger did not lead the AD search. There were two teams, the AD team led by Ray Smoot I believe and the president search led by Mike Quillen. They worked on separate but, parallel paths with the understanding the incoming president would be selected first and then have input in final AD selection. No senior leader is likely to sign on without knowing who their boss is first. Your post to be charitable would be considered full of misinterpretation and at worst outright fiction. At least try and do better Merc/DMV or whoever you choose to be in your next iteration as this is not the first, second or even third time you have missed the mark by a pretty wide margin.

or metrics do you base your statement that VT is one of the lowest spenders in the ACC for athletics? While numbers for individual institutions may vary significantly from one year to another depending on the timing of projects and the revenue recognized to pay for those projects, I think, if you look at core athletic spending, VT is middle to upper middle of the pack in conference based on the past annual surveys published in USA Today and by the NCAA. Things may change some now with the additions of the 3 new schools but, historically the league if grouped into upper, middle and lower ties had FSU, UVA, Clemson, Louisville and UNC in top 5. The middle included VT, NCSU, GT, and the lower middle and lower included the privates and smaller publics.

So I can only go off of the data that I have for the public schools. And yes I realize that the private schools make up almost half of the ACC. So perhaps it is more accurate to say, VT is one of the lowest spending PUBLIC universities in the ACC. Here is the data for that. Annual athletic department spending by year...ACC ranking of the public schools with data. 2022 VT #8 of 8, $116m 2021 VT #6 of 8, $117m 2020 VT #7 of 8, $85m 2019 VT #6 of 8, $97m 2018 VT #7 of 8, $93m 2017 VT #6 of 8, $93m

they were also 6 of 8 in 2023 and I agree with your public university qualifier. The private data is not as readily available but, I have seen some not all in articles over the years. I have also seen it ranked by number of sports and number of athletes. I think VT has held pretty much to their originally stated goal of being top one-third in spending, although the addition of Louisville in 2013 slid them down one more spot.

We had a 20+ year bowl streak, multiple 10+ win seasons, multiple major bowls, lots of NFL draft picks, great fan attendance, long win streak vs UVA. Everything was just good enough and keeping it going didn’t require as much effort as it took to get there. But that complacency kept us from getting to the next level and blinded us to what was needed for improvements (facilities, salaries, recruiting, staffing, etc.). All we needed was a slight crack in the system and it came with Beamer staying a couple years too long when he started having health issues and slowing down. After that it all came crumbling down with failures at every level. And that has carried over to the team and the product we see on the field. We are a program trying to stay afloat while pretending that we are Olympic swimmers.

And how easy it was to win 4 titles in our first 6 years

His coaching hire philosophy appears to be "get someone who's the opposite of the previous guy". And that's exactly what doomed VT to a decade of crappy football in the 1970's. Jerry Claiborne was the Frank of those days (and Frank's mentor). When his tenure petered out, VT hired a guy who was supposed to be a flashy offensive coach (Coffey). When that didn't work, we hired a guy (Sharpe) with no head coaching experience, but who worked at a blue blood program, and was a good ol' boy. Sound familiar? Finally, enough was enough, and we finally hired a head coach who was actually a proven winning head coach at the same level VT considered itself to be. Miracle of miracles, that worked! Whoulda thunk it? We saw the same thing in men's hoops, over a span of decades. From the time Charlie Moir left until the day Buzz was hired, VT did not hire a single head coach who was a current winner at the high major level (Greenberg was about to be fired by mid major USF when we rescued him). And amazingly, a program that allegedly was a coaching graveyard found itself in the Sweet 16 after hiring a guy who had already shown he could reach that level of success. I sure hope the current downtown in football doesn't last that long. It doesn't have to, as we have seen at VT previously, and at many other schools currently, football revival is only a good hire away. The key is to have the right guy doing the hiring.

Disrespected for decades - conference nomads - seemingly homeless -- that chip seemed to fade away when the ACC invite finally came - I also think we wanted to prove them wrong when it came to fan and player conduct - I remember some UNC Prof pearl clutching thinking about tech coming to ACC 😆

** Edited by XundaVT at 9/25/2024, 1:19:17 PM

We had the same staff and IMHO focus as late as 2015 that is 11 years into the ACC. I cannot see how who the Prez and AD are has anything to do with it at all. In fact I think that is another of the real misreads by those so critical of Sands and Whit. The head coach runs his program and any place or time the AD or Prez gets involved in anything but hiring and firing, things don't work well.

The first question about the ACC came from a thought that we came in and dominated and then it tailed off for some reason. Was becoming part of the ACC a catalyst for change in personality over time. As for Sands and Whit, we have failed to replace with coaches that seem to lead with that toughness mindset. My views about sands and Whit are solely around the leadership they have provided in the sports arena, especially our football program I recognize we all come in with biases, but I do think the leadership in place drives some of the mentality and university expectations for our football program.

I understand where you are coming from as the BE was a tough physical league and the ACC seen as more finesse but it seems we were tough enough right up to the end of the Beamer years. After that, I still think fans are expecting another Frank Beamer and Bud to come walking through the door and bring an Bud clone OC with them. That is not impossible but the odds of that are low. There is a reason Frank is in the hall of fame and it mainly hangs on how much above who VT really is that he took us and stayed there so long. IMHO the biggest problem the fans have is they undersell what Frank Beamer did and think it is way too easy to repeat.

The losses to Clemson & Michigan started it

Also, S&C seems to have degraded - that’s were a lot of the mental toughness is built.

Beamer and Foster are hall of fame type coaches. If you have a coach hiring standard that the hires be HOF quality, you will forever be in turmoil.

At lease when talking about program personality. The expectations they set and the people they hire are their responsibility. But your other point is taken, the downhill seemed to start the last couple of Beamer's years and he is a HOF coach.

If we indeed have a personality problem, I don't necessarily think we need a HOF type coach to change that.