Trapping us with a coach that is financially nearly impossible to fire when that hired coach was a coordinator being pushed out of his job as the wheels were coming off of his former program and he had very little to negotiate that?? Pretty shitty negotiating.
There were lots of candidates for the job! There is no reason a first time HC should be given that level of job security.
Usually I can use delusion, a powerful drug, to get me through the hardship of stupidity when it comes to UVa sports but itâs not good enough for this situation.
Elliott has won 11 games in three years, has a -269 point differential in those seasons, has had a negative affect on developing quarterbacks here, has constantly held his players under the bus (see the Ben Smiley-Tristan Leigh stomp), and weâre bringing him back for a fourth year because we gave a first time head coach an ironclad level contract.
I canât even be reasonably delusional about this. I hate it here.
Brent Pry got a 70% guarantee. Duke gave Elliott an offer as well and remember Elliott left Charlottesville without signing a contract. No idea what Duke offered, but say it was a 70% guarantee. If Elliottâs your top choice are you sweating the guarantee of a mil a year in the out years of a 7 year deal, especially if, since heâs your top candidate you expect him to succeed making the 70% or 100% guarantee irrelevant. Maybe we were protecting more against the downside of him leaving for another job that the buyout on that side is much larger than Pryâs and the tradeoff was increasing the guarantee percentage.
Sure, plenty of people wanted the job. Maybe? Probably? Were any of them good candidates? Literally have no idea. After Dex struck out, who were the candidates after Elliott? Iâm not sure Elko was ever on our radar and if he was, we hadnât interviewed him yet. I think we mightâve been linked with Josh Gattis briefly after he struck out everywhere else.
I donât think it was a good idea to give a first time HC that big a guarantee either and I wasnât thrilled with the hire in the first place, but Iâm not in the room negotiating and have no idea of all the factors going into it. Weâre not exactly considered one of the plum jobs in P4 or even the ACC.
Not interviewing Elko is part of the problem. Reporting at the time indicated he was interested in the job. We were a much more compelling job than Duke then. That is probably not true now. Great job everyone.
The entire process was a shitshow and every supposedly serious candidate was a coordinator with massive red flags. Carla owns that, and giving one of those red flagged candidates a rock we canât get out from is a massive mistake. If youâre going to act like the money doesnât matter up front, you need to be prepared to spend it when the time comes.
If a mid OC is demanding that much, move on to the next guy. Letâs not pretend Elliott was a once in a lifetime candidate in 2021, and our job wasnât the dumpster fire it is now then either.
So there really isnât a UVA-induced buyout in the contract. He is owed what he is owed.
The caveat is the clause requiring that he must in good faith search for gainful employment and if/when he gets a job, his compensation (the market value of such compensation) will be deducted from what UVA owes him.
So in reality, does Tony A) not want to work until 2028, which would effectively destroy his ability to realistically return to coaching; and B) pay legal expenses to help prove that he is legitimately searching for gainful employment.
I think what likely happens is there would be some sort of settlement for a lower amount than what he is owned that removes the employment restrictions. That probably doesnât happen until next offseason though.
All the contracts have those offset clauses. Fired coaches end up working for free or for peanuts as analysts at various big schools to stay in the network. Why do you think all those former coaches ended working as analysts for Saban at Alabama between higher level jobs?
Elliott wasnât my top choice, but letâs not pretend that everyone knew that Elko would be a slam dunk hire. Neither guy had proven anything as a head coach.
But seriously, if youâre hiring a coach, but your concern is how to protect yourself if the hire goes down in flames, then youâre not hiring the right coach. I donât question the belief in the way the contract was written. I question the judgment used in making that hiring decision.
Then again, which of these coaches that changed jobs in 2021 would 1) go to Virginia as a better job than the one they took and 2) we shouldâve hired with a better resume and fit than Tony Elliott and not making too big a jump in level.
In hindsight maybe just Elko, Sumrall and maybe Lashlee?
This contract basically says UVA can determine what Elliottâs market value is and if heâs making less than that they take it out of what they owe him.
The big money donors are not going to keep throwing money at athletics unless there is a clear path to success (however the University wants to define success). We can be great in other sports but football covers virtually ALL the costs of the athletic programs. UVAâs facilities are top-notch but if the University were serious about competing in revenue sports, the BOV / administration would find a way to use the endowment to support athletics (e.g. covering scholarships so VAF $$$ could go towards NIL in Football & Basketball). The tone needs to start from the top (e.g. Board of Visitors) for real change.
Yeah, that language seems pretty clear that we would owe him the remainder of the contract (less whatever he made at his next job). I read through it as well.
The offer sheet that @tonyburnertt provided shows the amount that Tony would owe if he were to leave within those windows on his own - not if he was terminated. Norvellâs buyout is also $64 million so not sure where he got the other numbers.
So we would owe Tony around $4M per each remaining year. I donât think his job prospects are great if he leaves so would expect not much is shaved off.
On top of that we would owe whatever buyout if we poached another head coach (unlikely). Barry Odomâs buyout would be another $3M if signed this year. (Heâs one of the highest paid coach in the Mountain West - think he would be an extreme for non-P4).
TLDR - yeah we owe Tony Elliott a lot of money. Would make it tough to move him this year and lure a good candidate to replace him.
Thatâs just the Al Groh clause where he back loaded his DC contract with GT instead of level salaries so that he was subject to less offset of his Virginia pay. Thatâs an easily determined figure.
Football analysts can be paid such varying amounts that itâs hard to prove what a guy should be making. Or if heâs making 20k and the school says it should be 80k, is that worth the litigation and PR hit? Or if heâs volunteering while he applies to D1 head coaching jobs that no one will hire him for is the school gonna say he should be working one of those jobs and heâs not trying hard enough to get one even though the school determined that it didnât want to employ him and fired him? Try making that argument in court and proving heâs not trying hard enough.
Apartment leases have offset clauses too. If a lessee breaks a lease early, theyâre still liable for the full amount of the lease less any rent the landlord collects from another lessee and the landlord shall make reasonable efforts to release the property. How successful do you think former tenants are at reducing their liability under that clause if the property isnât relet before the end of the broken lease? Reasonable efforts is a squishy legal term thatâs hard to disprove.
Youâve got a good point in your post I want to highlight.
"a clear path to success (however the University wants to define success.)
Does anyone really know how UVA defines success in football? Uncompromised Excellence was basically retired as a slogan years ago for the overall department. And even that was left to the beholder to define in their own vision outside of goal of a certain number of conference and national titles that werenât always front and center.
Iâm sure the AD and head coach have some metrics and an understanding. But UVA doesnât publicly define success in football that Iâm aware of (most athletic departments probably donât either because why seek out accountability from the masses when you donât need to). Is it defined at a certain donor level?
Anyone have a real idea what UVA considers a success in football?
Cignetti, Sean Lewis, Bill OâBrien, ChadwellâŚ
All from Feldmanâs write up at the athletic- Virginia football coaching job profile with Bronco Mendenhall out: Pluses, minuses, candidates and more - The Athletic
There were a lot of good candidates. We interviewed some of the worst of the group imo.
Hiring the guy running the dated offense from the program that didnât use the transfer portal and giving him a no outs contract is insane. Carla needs to go, sooner rather than later.
But none of those guys changed jobs in 2021 so they were either content with where they were or no one else wanted to hire them either. Hindsightâs 20/20. I wouldâve been happy with any of them except probably Sean Lewis who has had a grand total of 1 winning season (at 7-6).
Cignetti looks great now but at the time he was a 60 year old FCS coach and weâd been through the Mike London from FCS dance too recently.
Chadwellâs still not a P4 coach despite his success at Coastal and Liberty, so that probably says something.
Defer to you on this stuff generally, but just want to add that UConn settled with Ollie for multiple millions and a few months later won a natty and a year later won another one, so the reputational loss will basically depend on other stuff
IIRC there was more discussion among fans about Mike Houston than Cignetti. I know I had concerns that Cignetti merely inherited a championship winning program.
I maintain that in the moment, UVA hiring Tony Elliott was a very solid hire. I will readily admit that it has not worked out (and will not ever work out) but I bet if you polled a lot of UVA fans during that process, the top two names on that list would have been Tony or Dex. In hindsight, maybe Dex would have actually made more sense even though it seems like he was never really considered (and appropriately so using the logic of what makes a qualified hire that has applied before the current era). Hell I thought Fran Brown was a TERRIBLE hire for Cuse but obviously that looks wrong at the moment.
I donât think it helped that the Dex contingent was so vocally out on Tony before he even step foot on Grounds. Doesnât make a difference now as Tony has earned his criticism, but I do think going forward we need to support the next coach and staff rather than acting bitter about our guy not getting the job. We all want the same thing. Sh** talking the guys responsible for turning things around before theyâve even coached a game isnât helpful.
I was reading an article on TA about the WVU job and a lot of these guys were mentioned. But what caught my attention was one of the comments that said âThereâs a segment of Memphis fans and boosters hoping West Virginia goes for Silverfield. Dig deeper on his time there and youâll see why.â
I have no idea what that commentâs implying but wondering if anyone else has heard anything. He would be one of my top targets.
@UVApride7 not that it matters, because TE is coming back, but you can probably for sure not worry about ChadwellâŚlooks like heâs UCF bound
Would be a little surprised if he took it as I figured he was holding out for an SEC job, heâs got a pretty comfy situation at Liberty as it stands and could just wait there until the right opportunity came like Hugh Freeze did.
I will say though that UCF on paper is a pretty good fit for him. They like offensive minded coaches who run funky college sets, and heâd be able to recruit some serious speed from the state of Florida to play in his spread option. Would also be interesting to see how his Xâs and Oâs translate to the step up in competition.
God if Purdue moves on from a bad coach after 2 years and hires Monken to run a modified option offense Iâm going to be so jealous.