Thereās no point to trying to buy out and reset the football staff until the BOV, President, and other power brokers commit to a heavy culture shift, looking at schools like Vanderbilt and SMU as an example, which includes tapping into the endowment.
Anything short of that is a half measure that wonāt get us out of the rut, so changing coaches or modestly upping NIL are pointless.
The others extreme is we just gut football, truly resource it at a bare minimum level, accept weāre a mid tier G5 equivalent, and take any excess revenue we get from the ACC for having football and putting it towards other programs we care about and have a chance in. Pay the HC $2mm, coordinators $500k, lesser assistants $200k. Give kids the same pre-NIL level of scholarships and support, hell even focus on in-State kids to minimize the tuition burden. Keep the costs below what we get as an ACC distribution, maybe we can even cut the mandatory student fees to broke, over-leverages students that prop football up.
Doing something is far more preferable than retaining a staff that can neither coach nor recruit nor develop talent, meanwhile burning bridges with Richmond-area coaches w/r/t promises made to and actual usage of guys like Tyree and Greene.
Make the change, and make it now.
Iām not the only season-ticket-holder and VAF Captains Club member who is threatening to withdraw all support for the football program without significant changes, No. 1 among them Tony Elliott. Iāve had it.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I prefer the SEC model. Hammer home the point this year to every donor if you invest in football (and it goes well) the ROI for the money available through the athletic department to spend to make basketball and all other sports even better. I mean Iād prefer to do it without blatant disregard for rules which I think can be done to a certain extent of success.
Yeah thatās the unpopular part. I donāt understand the issue people have saying to be an academic institution you canāt be successful on the gridiron like am I crazy or are UVA academic peers considered to be schools like Michigan, Stanford, Dukeā¦ you see where Iām going with this haha they all have (varying) levels of success almost yearly that are certainly higher than us. Why is this?
VPI had a significant rise in applications, and, therefore were accepting better students, because of the Michael Vick years. Theyāre not an academic (or football) powerhouse but have become a better school and among the better land-grants and research institutions because of, not in spite of, football success.
As an aside, the How Things Work plagiarism scandal reinforced negative stereotypes about football athletes (even though a small percentage of those who had Judiciary or Honor trials resulting from said scandal were football players), and I believe that, although we had turned a corner on embracing football, that singular scandal set us back ā and, in a way, weāre still recovering from it.
Yeah, I mean, achieving national prominence in athletics was a core part of Stanfordās branding strategy from the get-go. Iāve read SMU has seen a noteworthy uptick in admissions since joining the ACC.
Honestly hurt with the real $$ sports. But for the Olympic sports and sports with no real pro venues theyāre huge. A lot of why UVA and Stanford are so successful in all those sportsā¦ if youāre good enough for a scholarship in something you canāt go pro in why not get a great free education to compete?
Agree completely though that a good education matters but again would any employer look at a Stanford and a UVA degree with a slight towards the one that is a little lighter on athletes? Haha the whole thing is kind of crazy when thereās no rule against it AND the peer institutions do it.
Finance? Consulting? Target schools for the big firms are a real thing.
Regardless we should absolutely relax admission standards for athletes, theyāre probably adding more value to the university than the average academic admit.