⚾ 2025 Baseball Offseason

I think the most helpful fact is that it costs the schools and the state literally nothing to change what the academic side charges the athletic side for tuition.

It’s changing how much money you’re taking out of one pocket to put in the other.

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Is that correct? The athletic side isn’t paying for those scholarships. Athletic donors are.

It’s the VAF. Macro view kind of all the same money though.

It does not cost the school anything additional for an out of state athlete vs an in state one, it’s just milking the VAF (and Hokie Club) for more money when we’re already at a financial disadvantage to other conferences. No need to make it even harder on ourselves.

Once the donors give the money to the VAF, it’s VAF paying Caruthers (is the business office still at Caruthers?). If you’re worried that this may decrease donations, that’s possible, but the AD has to message it properly to prevent that. If someone’s donating specifically for the cost of one scholarship athlete per year or something, a good salesperson will be able to retain that level of giving in some way.

I think the original intent was to have out of state/foreign non-scholarship athletes pay as much tuition as possible, but when everyone’s on scholarship, that doesn’t matter anymore. Or even if some athletes are still non-scholarship, there has to be some language that would still have them pay regular tuition prices instead of AD tuition prices.

I know you can’t lie to them but why even change the price of a named scholarship lol? Keep it where it is and divert the excess elsewhere. The cost of a named scholarship is the cost! The backend cost to VAF can be irrelevant

Even if VAF donations stay even, that’s a win for the athletic side, but that’s extra outside money that is no longer flowing into the academic side. So it works out to an academic cut for an athletics boost. I think it will take some persuading to get that through the legislature.

RJ Holmes has committed. Draft risk, but he’s the real deal.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DK46VNiJllW/?igsh=N3p2ajNhNDdieGt0

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I think the pitch is that it’s an investment now to try and compete and get ourselves into a power conference and the amount of money from that would dwarf the very small amount given up in revenue here and rising tides lift all boats and all that. We’re talking about a couple hundred kids here.

My friend is on the politics side of this stuff and seems bullish on it moving through fine after the election. There will be several things in the same bill it sounds like. I think JMU and Tech are pushing for this far more than we are.

Jazz maybe move these to the AD or NIL thread? sorry!

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You could reduce/eliminate the amount of direct funding the athletic side receives from the university, that was a bit under 2 mil in school year 23-24.

Also could reduce the amount of student fees that goes to athletics and increase the amount that goes to academic.

It really is all accounting entries from one pocket to another.

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What exactly was the direct funding for? It was my understanding that athletics had to be self sufficient except there was some temporary shenanigans done with the endowment to get the new football and Olympic sports buildings built.

I was going to bring up the student activities fees as a point of persuasion, although I believe UVA’s are already much cheaper than JMU and Tech.

I was under that same impression until I looked at the actual P&L. I don’t know the items contained in the direct support line, but maybe someone else might have an idea. Open up the full report on this page. University of Virginia Intercollegiate Athletics Programs for the year ended June 30, 2024 | Auditor of Public Accounts

Edit: my bad, direct institutional support was about 7.5 mil.

Hmm, interesting. I also looked at 2023 and direct support was 6.6 million with 600 grand specifically listed for football. Football got 0 direct support in 2024. Hard to say what this stuff is for.

Pro tip that I discovered a while ago on accident:

If you want to get to the top of a long thread to view the first couple posts or whatever, you don’t have to scroll. Just hit the title of the thread at the top of your screen and it will jump you up to the first post.

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You can also click the post count in the lower right and the slider that shows up there can scroll much faster and to a specific post number.

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Hard to say, each guys situation is different - playing time, $$, proximity to parents/home, academics, etc. He probably felt he had a core that would come come, especially the younger guys - another factor could be the relationship (if any) with Pollard and his staff - as well who they are bringing with them. At the end of the day, players want to play - and seek the best opportunity for that. Coaches want to get to Omaha …

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Would be his sixth season, so he must need some kind of waiver.

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Was really wondering how he would be eligible. Thought it would be his COVID year for '21 but that would’ve been this year in theory.

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Jack Bauer committed to State.

Will be interesting to see if they are wasting their time or if they can drop the mother of all bags.

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We should know in 24 hours

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Griff got $2.7M for his signing bonus at No. 32.

Miss St has bags, but that’s a lot for a college baseball player — and they’d have to do it for three years!

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