By sapping the resources from every other program.
Did you not see the Poverty Program theme with their baseball turf fail last week?
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Get rid of turf period!!! Iād imagine Tech will be bankrupt or disband programs with the current football spending
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they are literally involved with a ton of big time prospects, there class is 2 in the conference. We are at the bottom again
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A class is not just made of HS kids
VT will burn everything to be good at football given they believe in their guy. Football has and always will be their engine, when theyāre good at something else itās just a fling to forget about a bad football year. Not saying itās good or bad, just clear priorities in Blacksburg
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Itās a version of Clemson in that regard. If football is weak, the whole school suffers financially and emotionally.
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Which is funny, because over the last decade have they been much better than us in football?
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Theyāve pushed all their chips into the center on FB (really had no other choice unless they wanted all sports to be mid). Will see what kind of hand they have in 2-3 years
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Yeah Iām not exactly surprised nor concerned about what theyāre doing. Franklin has always been a recruiter and nothing makes a desperate fanbase feel good about themselves than seeing their team ranked highly in recruiting class rankings. I honestly think some staffs recruit specifically to the rankings because itās basically job security because thatās what fans care about (maybe even more than winning). Overspending on HS kids right out of the gate is a great way to extend the honeymoon period, especially when your current roster isnāt all that great and youāre not going to actually win games on the field immediately.
The question will be can they actually either develop and/or retain the guys they are signing. We wonāt know that for a few years.
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Yeah all of these guys will presumably want raises if they hit, and if youāre spending all your money on youth and only win 6-8 games when the fanbase is expecting a lot moreā¦ you might struggle to fundraise to give these guys raises when youāre ready to really compete.
6 posts were merged into an existing topic: 
2026 ACC Basketball Off-Season
I would like to have the problem of having a highly recruited incoming high school class. Or at least have our high school recruiting not suck.
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I care more about our ability to get players who help us win on the field. I think we have been doing that through a combination of the portal and HS recruiting. I donāt care about our HS recruiting class rankings (for many reasons). So much of that is driven by class size. Our class sizes have been intentionally small so weāre never going to have a top 25 class, even if we do land everyone we want to.
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How much of our budget are you willing to give to those high schoolers, especially knowing most of them youāll have to pay two years for minimal production because the bulk wonāt really contribute until their third year? And how will you feel about the high percentage of those well -paid recruits that are busts or get hurt or transfer out before ever getting a return on those first couple years of investment?
Obviously it matters, but businesses have to make business decisions. And the staff deciding the Portal, guys youāll get a Year 1 contribution from, is the better value use of dollars is a defensible position.
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I mean, thereās lots of middle ground here. I didnāt say I want us to splash out massive cash for a top recruiting class and forgo the portal. I said Iād like for our high school recruiting to not be abysmal. I think thereās plenty of room for our high school recruiting to be better without it meaningfully impacting our approach to the portal. Low four stars and high three stars arenāt commanding massive money as freshmen.
For 2027 our class is ranked 14th in the ACC, but as noted by @EmbracePaceUVA, that accounts for class size. If you look at average recruit grade, weāre rankedā¦ also 14th. We donāt have a single 4 star. Our 2026 class was overall dead last in the conference, and by recruit grade wasā¦ also dead last.
Iām not saying we should be top 5 in conference or something. Go with the portal strategy if we think itās a more efficient way for us to win. But I think thereās still a lot of room for improvement just to be mediocre.
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Definitely annoyed Elliot didnāt make room for Fontel Mines. Bringing him home during VTs coaching change shouldāve been a top priority.
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Yeah this is the issue with Elliottās recruiting to me. If youāre going for a small class, you should be pursuing quality. Weāre getting cannon fodder.
Your margin for error building through the portal every year is just very small and getting contributors from high school is how you make it wider.
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I just donāt put a ton of stock into HS football recruit rankings. I think they are very accurate and predictive for the top 300-400 players or so (and most of the data used by people supporting the correlation between ratings and wins is skewed towards the top 25 programs) but beyond that, you are never going to convince me that the 575th ranked 3 star recruit is necessarily materially better than the 900th ranked kid.
There are just way too many damn players to effectively scout and evaluate. This isnāt basketball where scouts can spend 3 weekends at the right AAU events and see literally the 150 best prospects play head to head for multiple games. Weāve seen how many examples of kids getting a rating AFTER theyāve made a commitment (aka the paid scouts literally never saw the kid and are just watching tape for the first time).
The majority of the kids we have been signing have had strong offer lists, good tape, and solid physical attributes. Iām not going to fret because some guy at 247 who may have never seen them play in person says they might be a slightly weaker 3 star than some other guys. Not saying the rankings are irrelevant, I just donāt think theyāre as relevant for the non-football factories recruiting mostly 3 stars who arenāt evaluated as seriously.
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I donāt think itās incorrect to say weāve gotten probably better than expected return from the classes weāve signed if youāre just going by their high school ratings.
Getting highly rated high school kids is nice - winning is nicer. Iām just not that convinced 1 is a pre requisite for 2 like it used to be.
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I do think itās notable that the highest ranked recruit of Elliottās tenure has been our best player in Kam. Donāt think thatās a coincidence. Iād personally like more Kamās!
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