would be interesting to see who ended up on the candidate list. I can't of anyone off the top of my head. Then again, I am not sure how willing VT is to give up the "culture" it has proudly built over the years while moving into the modern era. Heck I am not even sure someone with professional business experience could balance maintaining the culture while moving VT into the modern era because they may be in conflict with each other in some areas. At least something may have to give somewhere if VT athletics wants to modernize.

After he was reappointed by the governor

though you probably have a lot of convincing to do on that at Southwest Virginia Tech. 🤣

I noticed within the Burress hall, they are making more 'regional hires' not really inspirrational for a large university like VT. Getting the deputy admission's officer from emory and henry. (that is no experience at a major university level)... and they are promoting within.... with folks getting degrees with radford,. While college athletic salaries are escalating, the same is true in academic world. Im wondering that VT is not being too compettive for a national search. (The same hiring process than VT athetlic staff.

** Edited by MrBayAreaHokie at 8/1/2025, 8:06:30 PM

You must be financially successful, that produces more money to acquire more players, and you get a group of players and staff and winning takes care of it all

is it really something unique that requires a certain type of AD? I don't think our athletics needs that kind of specialized care. We need to be an efficient and modern business. Let the coaches focus on culture within each sport. Or were you talking VT culture overall? I still don't know how I would define the VT culture.

Babcock is a traditional college athletics director, meaning he came up in the traditional structure and learned to do the job the traditional way. What that means, generally speaking, is that he's more or less doing the same thing that a high school athletics director would be doing, but with a much higher public profile, much larger budget, and more sports. For some aspects of a big-time college athletics department, that skill set is still very important. But not for the most important aspect - football. Football drives the bus at any big-time college AD. College men's basketball, the NCAAT notwithstanding, is largely a niche product, and everything other sport, including women's basketball (no matter how hard they try to force it down people's throats now) is an ultra-niche product consumed only by die hard followers of certain schools. College football has always been a big deal, but it's now morphed into something else entirely. What was once the highest profile extracurricular activity at most schools has now become the second biggest TV sports entertainment product in the country, right after the NFL, and is worth multiple billions of dollars annually. You cannot have a glorified high school athletics director at the very top of what is, in practice, an entertainment company whose bread and butter is providing an entertainment product for TV. Once you understand this, you will understand why these new AD hires (and, in some cases, conference commissioners) have pro sports organization, legal, entertainment, and marketing backgrounds, and haven't worked their entire careers in college athletics departments. I hate it for Babcock, and others like him, but that's the way it is. It's a bad time to be part of the old guard, because the old ways are no longer the most crucial skillset for an athletics director, or whatever you want to call the person in charge of a university athletics department, at the highest level of the game. ** Edited by Baltimore_Hokie at 8/1/2025, 4:27:42 PM

You just laid it out. I HATE THE IDEA OF WHAT I HAVE LOVED SINCE MY FIRST LIVE VT GAME IN 1961, CHASING OR BECOMING AN "ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY." That is not college ball. That is not a connection to players under "Ut Prosim." It is just a NFL wannabe. Yeah, I do know that my preferred model is gone but I am intrigued at what the ACC and Big 12 cando to more closely mirror the former college level football after the P2 is off playing with itself.

I used to listen to Bill King's college sports talk show when I had Sirius in my car, and he would always spout back then (a decade before the playoff) that he hated the BCS, and if he had it his way, it would go back to just bowls after the regular season, and no there would be no "national championship game." I used to think that was a really stupid take, but the older I get, and the more I see my favorite sport getting progressively worse and worse, less and less interesting to me, I believe I may have been wrong about Bill's position.

Time is not on our side and we are wasting the time we have now with an old guard approach. I think VT only has a 3-5 year window to modernize and to become relevant again in football.

I believe he is getting the direction from Tim Sands and the BOV. Sands not a big advocate for athletics . Coming from Purdue and Cal not much optimism. I think Sands is driving this as well as BOV.

We are what we are. We struck gold with Frank Beamer. A guy who could do it all without a lot of support because of who he was. He's one of the winningest coaches of all time, in the Hall of Fame, precisely because of how special he is. Whit Babcock hasn't done anything negative, he's done everything that VT could expect him to do. In the two primary non-football sports, he has hired Buzz Williams, Mike Young, Kenny Brooks and Megan Duffy. The jury may be out on Duffy so far, but the rest all took VT men's and women's hoops to successes we wouldn't previously dream about. Sweet 16? ACC title thrashing UNC and Duke in the semis and final? 5 NCAA tournaments over a 6 year period in men's hoops? (Are you kidding me??) A #1 seed and Final Four in the women's tournament? Check. Check. Check. And Duffy looks like a good one so far. Ahhh, then there's football. Whit hired Justin Fuente. People seem to forget that Fuente was THE homerun hire outside of Tom Herman that coaching cycle. And Fuente could coach, he really could. He took Beamer's players and immediately had VT in the ACC Title game. 19 wins in 2 years. He just wasn't Beamer. He was an introvert, he wasn't affable, and he didn't realize that the success Beamer had at VT was because of Beamer, not because of VT. And he couldn't go and get the players he needed to keep VT's level of play high. So when Fuente failed to be Beamer, what did Whit do? He went looking for another Beamer. Makes sense, except for the fact that lightning very rarely strikes twice in the same place. Brent Pry is an attempt to hire the same type of coach who took VT to the mountaintop, nothing less. Unlike Fuente, Pry still has a shot, because he still has the personality of Beamer that is evidently necessary to succeeding at VT. And Sands.....good grief, what do Hokie fans expect from him? He's done magnificent work leading VT forward as an academic institution. Enrollment way up, VT in the Top 50 overall universities for the first time ever, VTC Medical School, Innovation Campus close to DC, partnership with Amazon, what the heck more do you expect from him? I get the feeling that VT football fans think Sands sits in his office all day doing nothing but fielding calls from influential VT alums, imploring him to make easy fixes to VT's athletic department that will help the football program: "Just raise more money Tim, it's so easy!" "Just simply fire John Ballein, Tim! The wins will come, when the Ballein dynasty falls!" "Tim, all you need to do is spend an additional $30M every year, it doesn't matter that you don't have it! Everybody is doing it! Look at Maryland! Why can't we be just like Maryland?" "Tim, the easy fix is to make the P2 invite Virginia Tech! Why haven't you made them invite VT yet, Tim?" No, Sands just laughs, Purdue and Cal banners flowing behind him, while he snacks on cake and sips wine, never touching his pinky finger to the goblet. He thinks maybe now he will try to lobby the BOV to change VT's burnt orange color to gold, in honor of Cal and Purdue. Maroon and Gold! Yes, that will be his legacy at VT. You gotta let go of that crap, he's doing a great job leading the university, and he's probably just doing EXACLTY what the BOV wants him to do regarding leading the football program, because he doesn't have time to do anything else, because he's.....doing his job! He's letting Whit make solid - but not elite - hires and keeping VT in the black financially. *GASP!* Look, since Beamer left, VT Athletics has become EXACTLY what it was prior to Beamer. Solid fanbase with a mediocre football team and some exciting basketball teams from time to time. But all in all...not much to see here. If we were a sleeping giant because of our fanbase prior to Beamer waking us up, well, we're snoozing away again, just waiting on success to find us. But at least the University is in good hands. ** Edited by hokieZ71 at 8/3/2025, 10:12:16 AM

I agree that Whit is in a box and can go no further than the limits Sands/BOV set. I think Sands/BOV are reading the tea leaves on where VT is and is most likely to end up wrt "entertainment industry," And have not made the decision that going all in is a good move.

have some latitude when it comes to important decisions. Given Sands views on athletics at a college/university, do you think he would like VT to leave the ACC and have VT athletics participate at a level that better suites the academic missions? I guess I am trying to figure out why Sands would want VT athletics to compete at the highest level if he isn't willing to fully support it. It seems like it would be a huge contradiction.

either approached VT or were more inviting of a VT sales pitch, Sands and the BOV know the score. And the score is we could chase what Baltimore called "entertainment industry" but without essentially an annointing by the SEC or B10, it would be a total waste of money. Should an academic institution put the kind of money it would take to try to be an intertainment industry at risk?

playing "big time college athletics," then shouldn't VT be willing to pay the price in order to ride that train? Now if VT no longer wants to ride this train, then get off at the next stop so fans can recalibrate to align with the new direction VT leadership wants athletics to go in. For too long the leadership has wanted (or allowed) VT athletics to have its cake and eat it too even though VT may not have been fully committed to the price tag that comes with it. I do think it is starting to get to a place where at some point schools, including VT, have to public decide just how committed they are to participating in "big time college athletics."

You win the post of the year!!!!!!!!!!!’

absolutely no reason to reply to 2000's post when you publicly want VT to drop the only sports that make money.

It is just that big media has chosen only 2 conferences as "big time college athletics." And the ACC is not one of the two.

dynamics of FBS Playoffs LLC (aka the non-profit organization the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame formed which is basically a rebrand of the organization created during the BCS era), then you will see the ACC, Big XII, and even the Pac-12 have the power equated to "big time college athletics."

Big Media wants to promote and televise. Yes, the conferences may have the same language but Big Media is not obligated to pay equally, They pay who they want and there is nothing that a school they don't want can do about it. The question here is how much money VT should throw into the pot hoping to make big media want us when they have all the name teams ahead of us.

We let them down over and over again, so they gave up on us... as they should. But they'd welcome back in if we could get act together, as evidenced by the love we got in the preseason last year, until I coaches screwed it up... like usual.

regularly throughout the fiscal year. That is where the real change occurs. If the ACC (and Big XII) want to maintain their status and the influence that comes with it in those meetings, then they probably will need to act like they are still a power conference. Otherwise, the P2s will have an easier time gaining enough support to make their desired changes even if it as the expense of the ACC and Big XII. Remember the only way the P2s can their desired changes to the FBS Playoffs is if the motion is passed by the FBS Playoffs LLC.

The advantages you say the P2 might get they already have

FBS Playoffs been passed already?

But mine would be that Big media has just about all the contol needed to bring about what they want the top (P2) to look like. But they know they need more than just the national games and the SEC vs the B10 although that is exactly what they want at the end of the season. What I don't think they have under the control that want is what the "feeder" system to the P2 looks like and exactly how that what I call the little p, will function. I still believe they are working toward a Big P2 and a little p3 with a little p eastern, central and western most likely called the ACC, B12 and PAC.

currently structured with the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame having an equal stake in the "company." I agree with you that Big Media is trying to move the pieces on the chess board to end up with the desired outcome. Regardless of what Big Media has under control or doesn't have under control, it still has to work within the current structure of the non-profit organization. At least until it can bless the P2s to form their own non-profit organization. At this point, I am not sure how much influence the politics (federal and state) really have to block that move (if it is desired) by Big Media. If Big Media cares about the feeder system, then you are probably right they don't have a clue what that looks like. I'm not sure Big Media cares because financially the feeder system may be viewed as an afterthought. Particularly when you consider the gambling industry and how much money Big Media can make from it involving P2 League games. One reason I think Big Media may not care about the feeder system is because I do think the public at some point will view the feeder system as being "DII" compared to the P2 League. Once that happens then Big Media won't be as committed to providing the feeder system with the same level of exposure they currently experience now because historically people have not been interested in watching minor league games on TV. Will the feeder system generate enough gambling action to justify maintaining current broadcasting levels?

the little p and lower will have some spots just like the low conference guarantees in March Madness. The path in for little p and lower teams will be there but advancement will be very difficult for the underfunded and undermanned little guys.

not sure how feasible it will be to achieve it. I do think there is a possibility that at some point the P2s could be forced to do their own thing for a number of reasons. Once that happens, then the risk of being stuck with the "DII" label goes up for all the non-P2 schools.

Its very nieve' for a major institution who want BIG time power 2 football and not change the business processes

to try and chase a place that does not want or need you and waste a lot of money in the process. Your post is based on "want BIG time power 2 football" that assumes there is some earning path for lots of schools to get there. I think this whole re alignment is for big media to weed out maybe 3/4s of D1 football. The question is not whether VT wants big time football but whether big time football decides VT can add enough to big time football to give us a shot. We have little power, they have just about all the power.

Particularly if Sands isn't willing to fully support athletics operating like a big business. He may like the big checks the Athletic Department brings in, but he may not be willing to pay the tab that is required to sustain success at that level. He may be content to see VT have its cake and eat it too until the ACC is escorted to the guillotine in 2036. Then cross whatever bridge exists at that time. I am curious to know if the BOV shares that same viewpoint or not. If Sands and BOV are not on the same page regarding this issue, then what does that mean for VT going forward?

Athletics (and particularly football) has to be more autonomous,and not micro- managed by the BOV. their is history back with Dooley and the issue over institutional control... But damn that was 1986 not 2025. Missouri and Nebraska is having some problems in this area. their Board of Trustees (elected), want to manage how many office supplies for their program, and AD has been squashed on autority to run independently

the same. At one time VT's culture could have been described as a family atmosphere/vibe and/or having a small town way of doing business. Now it is possible VT has transitioned from it or is in the process of transitioning from it. Likewise, I don't see anything wrong with a school having that for a culture. However, an organization with that culture may be less successful in "Corporate America" (assuming the P2s have embraced that culture).

If vt does not release its attachment to the past proudly or not. The athletic program will lose significance. While most of their peers will move on the vt of the world will be left far and far back think riice tulane bc cal