Demonstrated SUCCESS in football and basketball is the most inportant thing for conference expansion.
Carla has done an excellent job with fundraising which is the most important input into success. But she has absolutely failed at the rest (hiring, retaining your best coaches, PR, etc).
And the results are extremely poor years in football and MBB. And many of the other sports people care about seem to be going backwards.
It’s like one group is yelling “look at all the money she has raised” while completely ignoring that she hasn’t been able to translate that into acceptable success on the field, which we need to be attractive to the SEC or BIG.
Weighing strongly in on things where we can only see the outcome and not the process is the lifeblood of sports (and non-sports) forums. We’re not dreaming big enough though with being armchair ADs (boring), I wanna see us go bigger and talk about things with stakes. Like, how about some armchair Genghis Khan takes? “Ogedei over Tolui for heir, really?” Or maybe we can re-litigate the Council of Chalcedon?
Not really. I’d argue where football and basketball are right now is more attractive to those conferences than 5-7 years ago with more “successful” seasons. Facility upgrades, NIL funding, donor activity, etc
I went to a moderated panel this weekend and this was mentioned. Apparently Miss St fields 16 programs to our 27(ish, can’t recall precisely). That plus the disparity in TV money is tough to overcome.
Paraphrasing, but the central theme was that the next 3-5 years will determine the next 30-50. We can adapt to compete in the new environment, opt to flounder by changing nothing, or walk away. Virginia is choosing to adapt, but there are a lot of headwinds.
It was plainly a call for development (read $$$), and they have priorities focused on the revenue engine sports. So, they have the right plan; let’s hope the execution matches.
The speakers reiterated that the plan is to focus on football, men’s and women’s hoops, then baseball. Non-revs will focus on endowing scholarships through targeted gifts.
Unrelated, but Parkill really likes the age/maturity of the guys Odom’s brought in. Also said he thinks Malik is gonna be special.
no one is calling her doctor to “increase her qualifications” lol. She’s a Dr. because she has a doctorate. It’s as simple as that. It’s a ridiculously hard thing to get one so she’s earned that title. I don’t see how it’s any different than calling Tony Elliott “Coach Elliott” for example.
Also, it’s not a “non-UVA” thing to be pretentious, that’s literally as UVA as it gets. Learn more about your school dude, this will be on the test later
This definitely jibes with everything I’ve seen with the AD’s approach. That’s not to say it doesn’t suck and a lot of us are going to lose some things we loved about our non-rev programs. It’s a different world and I think a lot of the anger and frustration can be tied to that.
Agree to disagree then. I think we have to be above .500 in those sports and have some positive energy just to be eligible for consideration. Even then, we probably only get picked if we are adding something to their tv deals or if UNC makes them take us.
Above all else, they will look at tv ratings and impact to media revenue. Facilities and NIL don’t bring eyeballs to their TV partners. You may need those as precursors to success. But giving Tony Elliott a blank NIL check and great facilities only for him to win 4 games isn’t going to make us attractive to the SEC. Losing our HOF basketball coach and one of the faces of the sport absolutely hurts our appeal, even if our NIL is better now.
But in totality your original point doesn’t really hold up to close scrutiny. She’s proactively fundraised for WBB. She proactively fundraised for MBB. It’s not her fault our previous coach didn’t want to use it.
I don’t really know what people expect with football funding. She needed to fundraise for both a massive capital campaign and for NIL and other operating expenses. Like that money wasn’t coming in under Littlepage. But she should have been able to open that spigot immediately I guess? I work in the non profit space and funding doesn’t really work like that
I don’t really know how to judge the baseball issue. Worst case, feels more like we’ve pivoted to the important sports and baseball got burned. But that’s a good strategic move unfortunately
Football and basketball have to be great! end of story! They produce revenue for sports like baseball (loses money every year). Lastly, this hire will only help/hurt Carla.
Football being good is definitely helpful, but really all we need to do is demonstrate that we won’t be an albatross from an on-field product perspective. Conferences aren’t adding long term partners based on short term results, which is why resourcing (which is more predictive in the long run) is more important than current success
Baseball is/was number 4 in terms of the priority sport pecking order. That is not how O’Connor felt his program should be resourced or viewed, thus the disconnect. Was almost certainly some resentment towards the other 3.
I think you may be overrating the intelligence and patience of the decision makers. Every expansion move made thus far has been motivated by increasing tv revenues in the next/near term contract. Very few conferences have benefited in the long term from their expansion decisions in the past - that’s why you’ve had relatively poorly resourced teams like Nebraska, Maryland, Rutgers, Missouri, etc. getting BIG or SEC invites. All about maximizing ratings, market access, and thus revenue in the next contract.