it worked even better than perfectly. How dare you...I mean... ...What was I saying?...

My position has been that government employees should retire at age 76 to allow for new ideas/practices and to ensure that the employees are performing at peak performance. I believe most people start to decline in their seventies and it's hard to remove government employees. Some people are superagers whose brains are still functioning. Sands said in an interview that football won't be around in a few years and he cares more about olympic sports. Babcock needs to be replaced and I don't think Sands really cares. The university boards are strange since members are appointed by the governors to four year terms and they often do not have any association with the university. University Presidents should probably have term limits anyway since the part-time board probably won't have the courage to fire them unless they caught committing a serious crime.

I remember reading about 6-7 after it became a thing. The article below explains it a bit for the other old farts like me.

Babcock is busy bending over backwards to satisfy Franklin's wants and needs and, maybe even, demands on some level. Alot of other things are still bad in VT athletics, most importantly, fundraising infrastructure but Babcock is hitched to the success of Franklin. Football success will make most of us forget about all of the other little warts that have progressively started to show around athletics. It's Babcock's ticket to sticking around and retiring in his own timeline and terms. ** Edited by BG Hokie at 3/27/2026, 1:18:35 PM

His contract ends next year. Bov has the pulse on this

Competitive in men's and women's basketball, softball, wrestling, track. The only thing that has me concerned is men's and women's golf.

Was clearing out the legacy Beamer crowd. It’s tough when CFB walks around the building regularly, but Whit made some mistakes by not confronting the obvious.

That's a good point that Tech is a research university so the research and other revenue streams are more significant. The Flutie Effect is the documented trend of athletic success bolstering admission to universities and that would increase student admission fees. I contend that the Flutie Effect would also encourage alumni to make larger donations and could potentially encourage more investment in the local economy. The VA Governor wanted to make sure that Tech was included in the ACC in order to protect the Southwest Virginia economy. I linked an article below about the Flutie Effect.

regarding the "incompetent defensive coordinator". If you look at Pry's tenure at Vandy and then Penn State his defenses were high regarded and he produced a number of high NFL draft prospects; and, when you examine the scores of the Penn State v. Ohio State and Penn State v. Michigan games when he was at Penn State you see that the Penn State defenses by and large performed well; it was the offense (or lack thereof) that caused many of those losses. Pry's mistake regarding the VT defenses, among other things, was allowing Marve and his successor to run the defense. Pry, if he was capable of it, should have actually coached the defense himself. Venables at Oklahoma fired his def coordinator and started coaching the defense himself beginning the season before last and the Sooners' defense improved dramatically as Venables is a defensive guy. Pry should have tried doing the same; but as solely a DC he has proven to be successful over an extended period of time. ** Edited by lazarus1 at 3/26/2026, 5:45:52 PM

which wasn't so great; but that just shows that Franklin hired a good replacement for Pry (Diaz). I'm not saying Pry was the only good DC.

Pry was not the coordinator at Vandy and he only took over as DC when Bob Shoop left. Shoop was the coordinator at Vandy. Franklin likes to give guys titles so it's hard to figure out who is calling the plays. Pry did take over playcalling in 2016 and my original post linked below has some analysis of the Pry PSU defenses from 2016 to 2020. While Pry's defenses were above-average, I would argue that they underperformed based on the talent on the teams. A lot of guys make it to the NFL based on their talent rather than coaching. The failure of the Tech defense concenrs me most since Pry hired his buddy instead of hiring somebody who was capable. I would argue that Pry should have been able to fix the Tech defense if he was in fact a competent defensive coordinator.

and while you made a couple of valid points the only way he could have fixed the defense would have been if he took over defensive play calling, which I agree he should have. To make it to the NFL and to be successful requires both talent and coaching, not just one or the other imo

When he was hired, I thought Pry was a defensive mastermind because Franklin hired him BUT they were buddies in college. Overall, Pry is not a great defensive coordinator and he was only hired because Franklin knows him and he is loyal. A lot of people value loyalty over competence. I contend that making it in the NFL depends more on landing in the right scheme and in the right position that allow the players to thrive. Most NFL careers don't last many seasons. I'm not an NFL expert but I do know that a lot of guys get drafted based on their talent and perceived potential. EDIT: I suspect a lot of guys in the NFL are bigger, stronger, faster partly due to PED's and that is part of what I would cosider talent. ** Edited by Flanker at 3/26/2026, 11:50:02 PM