Sunday’s news that Brent Pry had been dismissed as Virginia Tech’s head football coach was not a surprise. Nearly all of the fan base had opened its eyes to the situation after the Vanderbilt game. It was not a matter of if; it was only a matter of when. Whenever that’s the case, it’s nearly always better to go ahead and take care of the problem as quickly as possible, and that’s what the Board of Visitors and President Tim Sands did.
We heard that there was a meeting — or multiple meetings — in Sands’ office on Sunday. Those meetings weren’t held to decide what to do. They were held so powers that be could decide exactly what messaging they wanted to get out there when they made the announcement.
As it turned out, they went with a simple message from Sands, with no comment at all from athletic director Whit Babcock, who we understand is no longer a part of the decision-making process. He’s still running the day-to-day operations of the athletic department and will help out in the coaching search by doing some behind-the-scenes stuff that he’s quite good at. But when it comes to deciding upon Tech’s next coach, he’s not going to get a vote. Board of Visitors rector John Rocovich has taken the bull by the horns. He, along with some key assistants, will decide Tech’s athletics future.
It’s a big task, but it’s something Rocovich is capable of handling. The Pry announcement was made shortly after my Sunday column got posted, so I’m afraid some of what I wrote got lost in the weeds. I’m going to copy and paste my section on Rocovich into today’s article.
“I want to talk a little bit more about Rocovich today. He’s a lawyer from Roanoke, but he’s so much more than that. His wife served on the Board of Visitors back in the late 80s and early 90s. He’s a pilot who flies himself to games, and somebody told me he hasn’t missed a Hokie game in something like 30 years. He is a massive supporter of Tech athletics. I know that he’s also personally flown at least one Governor of Virginia to Virginia Tech games in the past.
Rocovich is the Chairman of the VCOM Board of Directors. He actually founded VCOM, which I didn’t realize until last week. He orchestrated a $4.7 million gift to the chemistry department at Tech way back in 1986. The very next year he organized two separate $5 million donations to the College of Engineering. He served as member and president of the Virginia Tech Foundation, was president of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association and on the board of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets Alumni Foundation. He’s already served on the BOV once — from 1997 through 2005, back when the Hokies were good at football — and he was also the rector from 2002-04 when Tech got into the ACC.