The First Bank & Trust Friday Q&A: Bowl Game And NCAA Tournament Chances

22 Comments

1. 

   jims May 31, 2023 at 3:59 PM

   Are we just ceding the Pittsburgh game? :) Or were you just silently designating it the most unlikely win?
2. 

   VTBuck20 May 30, 2023 at 8:37 PM

   "Texas State Fighting Armadillos." I see what you did there.
3. 

   SarahVTHokie24 May 30, 2023 at 1:36 PM

   Someone needs to contact Aaron Rouse, Hokie alum football player and current member of the Virginia General assembly and bring this topic up
4. 

   bcrystal May 28, 2023 at 2:08 PM

   CC, have you considered leading the Hokie Club?
5. 

   hokiees May 28, 2023 at 11:06 AM

   I'm really surprised that the large schools in Virginia have not gotten together and had a legislator carry a cost of tuition bill for them. I have trouble believing this wouldn't pass and they may just need to hire a firm to give them enough horsepower to get it over the line.
6. 

   lazarus1 May 27, 2023 at 5:48 PM

   you may want to see the following story. The Commonwealth of Va. had better get serious about NIL (and by the way the in-state tuition for out of state athletes) issues if Virginia colleges, including V.T. are not going to fall further behind. Isn't it Whit's responsibility to get with the state legislators on these issues? www.on3.com/nil/news/oklahoma-legislature-nil-bill-name-image-likeness-senate-bill-840-governor-kevin-stitt/
7. 

   Mercury May 27, 2023 at 1:09 PM

   I think you are seeing merger of vt athletics fund raising with vt development and the alumni association! Charlie team is amazing: Also interesting that the recent kickoff events were organized by vt development not athletics and the Hokie club. Another interesting item is Charlie got a promotion like associate president to Tim sands. You do that for increased responsibilities , also vt athletics advertised for 2 positions for director of major gifts . I think when vt established the football fund that was when the university decided to combined staffs and work together ! If development is helping leading the raising money effort it helps Brad, For the university that commitment is amazing but it probably change the way Hokie clubs work or even exist . Change to meet current market,
   1. 

      UpperQuad June 1, 2023 at 1:25 AM

      The potential problem is the loss of leverage from all of the alumni volunteers that Hokie Club used to have. VT's advancement group is understaffed and relying on it alone for fundraising will spread Mr. Phlegar's people very thin. For example, Engineering currently has less than 10 fundraisers for more than 70,000 alumni. Using similar staffing levels for athletics without the additional manpower of the Hokie Clubs could result in a lot of missed opportunities.
8. 

   74hokie May 27, 2023 at 11:11 AM

   When NIL was announced and everyone was guessing how it might work, I got grilled for posting this made-up scenario but except for the top 250 part, it isn’t that far from how it turned out from what I am seeing. “ NIL contracts for the top 250 composite HS recruits So I had this vision that the star rating system for high school FB recruits will lead to guaranteed NIL contracts for the top 250 rated recruits. Those NILs would be limited only by the top bidders ability to compete. Those rated outside the 250 would not get a guarantee but could receive a NIL. Then, now this is funny, there were options to break the NIL contract so that players could be lured away in their future yrs. LOL...Strange vision, right?”
9. 

   HokieRob May 27, 2023 at 10:13 AM

   It was nice to hire James Johnson for what is essentially a duplicate of an existing job, but wouldn't it have made more sense to hire someone to handle some of Brad Wurthman's ridiculous job description?
10. 

    VTVOICE May 27, 2023 at 9:15 AM

    CC are you basing the following statement you made on last season's records alone? Is there any account for the previous season's critical injuries that may be returning healthy and/or portal success? "The simple fact of the matter is that the football team could go 6-6 with wins over such stalwarts as ODU (3-9 in 2022), Rutgers (4-8), UVA (3-7) and Boston College (3-9) and would qualify for a minor bowl game."
    1. 

       No Wake May 27, 2023 at 8:55 PM

       Ill take beating ODU
11. 

    nvpbrown May 26, 2023 at 10:06 PM

    The last time this was discussed on the boards, someone with knowledge of the situation in NC claimed that it was only for athletes with FULL scholarships. That seems to be consistent with this article: https://www.wral.com/story/house-approves-in-state-tuition-rates-for-athletic-scholarship-students/18729987/ Assuming that's the case, it's not a big deal for athletes in partial scholarship sports like baseball and wrestling. A 20% baseball athlete from Virginia would presumably still be paying out-of-state tuition at UNC. It's a bigger deal for UNC football. If half of your 85 scholarships are for out-of-state students, UNC athletics is saving $20K each (courtesy of the taxpayers of NC) for a savings of nearly $1M/year. But it doesn't matter at all to football athletes since their cost would be zero whether in-state or out.
12. 

    VAHokie89 May 26, 2023 at 8:50 PM

    Question about the in-state / out-state tuition thing.... when does a non-athletic sue a state for prerential treatment given to athletes?
    1. 

       VTVOICE May 27, 2023 at 8:45 AM

       A very good question especially now with NIL availabilities for athletes.
13. 

    1hokies1 May 26, 2023 at 8:24 PM

    We will make a bowl this year.Basketball will be lucky to win 16 games.
14. 

    Novahokie`99 May 26, 2023 at 3:45 PM

    Again, I'm really impressed with Chris' understanding of how NIL is actually working. Look at it this way, as of now there are 4 main ways that players can be paid under NIL. Way number 1 is what we like to think of as the original intent. A player at a school is paid by a business to do something that promotes that brand. This could be the VT O-Line getting free meals at a BBQ place in exchange for wearing their t-shirts or it could be individual athletes doing autograph signings at a local car dealership or it could be a huge contract with a huge brand. This way works out well as the athletes get something and the businesses get a tax write-off. Way number 2 is the Wild West model that Chris mentioned above. Someone not associated directly with the university just basically throws a bunch of money at a player or recruit because they did something cool for their school, or because they want to entice them to come to their school. The player/recruit has no obligation to "do" anything but they get paid as long as they play for the school. This method is neither a valid tax write-off nor a charitable donation. It is only paying for a service. Way number 3 is the same as way number 2 but is through a collective. As Chris mentioned above, a collective just collects the money. Collectives are run by people outside of the University, but with a great working relationship with the coaches. In most instances the coaches actually connect the prospective donors with the collective managers. In this case a basketball coach might call a booster and ask them to give to the collective with the understanding that the coach will have final say in directing where the money in the collective goes. There can be conditions on the donation like that it's repeatable over a couple of years if the coach remains there, etc. The current downside with collectives are that the collectives themselves take about 10-15% of the money for "management fees". This is what most universities are doing right now and where most coaches turn into a combination of fundraiser and GM. Donating to a collective is also neither a business tax write-off nor a personal write-off. It's just paying for a service. Way number 4 is through a charitable collective. Charitable collectives, which VT has, means that a donor makes a charitable contribution to the collective and gets a write-off for that, but the collective doesn't pay athletes - it connects athletes with charitable activities so the athlete has to perform some type of service. That's the landscape right now, but it's totally subject to change as there are few rules. I think that eventually we'll see non school specific collectives formed as investment opportunities and also a stronger focus on the charitable collectives as people will only pay money into these things when they're getting a perceived return on investment. I don't think most people will pay tens of thousands of dollars year to year for 6-6 football teams or 18-18 basketball teams. They'd rather just donate to the Hokie Club and take the write-off. Just my opinion.
    1. 

       cdogvt May 27, 2023 at 8:43 AM

       Excellent summary, thank you for that explanation
15. 

    TomTurkey May 26, 2023 at 2:57 PM

    How do collectives "use" either the name, image or likeness of individual players or subgroups of players? Or is that provision pretty much DODA, dead on non-arrival?
    1. 

       Chris Coleman May 26, 2023 at 5:38 PM

       I don't know. From my point of view, they really don't, but I'm sure there is some technicality that allows them to tie it all together, otherwise they couldn't exist.
       1. 

          RTFC May 29, 2023 at 9:47 PM

          Uhmmmm...I heard some provide/arrange the athletes an outlet for some media interviews.....
    2. 

       VTVOICE May 27, 2023 at 9:04 AM

       I have Googled some collective sites that work nationally and are not specific to a singular school's athletes. It appears they have a clientele or database of corporate and commercial sponsors they refer NIL athletes to for a fee.