Iâm picking up what youâre putting down.
This is a good discussion. Like a lot of Hoo fans, I had season tickets during the Welsh and Groh eras, then we got reseated away from our longtime football friends (it was wonderful seeing how their kids had grown from the prior fall). Our new seats were around indifferent strangers, Groh was becoming more annoying, and we decided to check out. My interest in U.Va. football is now at an all time low.
But I am rooting for Tony E. The new football digs should help. Iâm not so much looking for a winning season against a very tough schedule, but Iâd like to see positive trends and competence in coaching and execution. If I can see some green shoots, I may start to take interest again.
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Weâve had 8+ wins 15 times in the past 70 years. Welsh had 8 of them, over 19 seasons.
Not sure our expectation should be something that our greatest coach did just 42% of the time.
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From 1990-2005 we did it 8/16 seasons. If you wanna go down a little bit to seven wins, which was mentioned in this thread by someone and is probably the most common goal among our fanbase, it goes up to 14/16 times if that makes you more happy.
Again the point is if you canât do better than two winning seasons in the past decade while playing in a conference where the majority of teams are mediocre as fuck then something is going horribly wrong. Winning IS possible here, maybe not at the highest level of college football but acting like weâre incapable of consistently fielding an average/above average team by P5 standards is in my opinion a gross underestimation that excuses a lot of the poor decision making that has gone on with regards to our football program.
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Until admission standards are somewhat adjusted to also recognize credit for studends devotion to hard work on the high-school gridiron like most other competitive Div 1 schools we will continue to be Va Techs bitch. Al Groh could not get great marginal students in. He gave up.
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Admissions has been this schools problem. Why would any top level coach want to come here? Historically its been the graveyard of coaches except for Welsh and the early Groh years. Either play football or join the Ivy and stop embarrassing yourselves.
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Definitely. I think we just saw them bounce a basketball transfer who had no trouble getting into another school. Canât remember the dudes name.
Admissions and athletics marketing are still in the dinosaur age.
Just to be pedantic on the details (because I think thatâs important, esp. in this case, where people are complaining about the details), I believe what we learned is that a bunch of his credits wouldnât transfer, putting him in a position where he needed to take summer school for some reason or another. But he decided to go somewhere else where he didnât have to deal with that.
Iâve been of the opinion that the transfer restrictions hurt us because ours are more restrictive than most other state universities. But they also hurt places like Duke and Michigan and Stanford and ND and and even UNC, I think.
But thatâs not an admissions department issue, right?
Now maybe UVa should change its various transfer restrictions and graduation criteria. I donât really have a well formed opinion on that. But those are impactful decisions that should probably be undertaken carefully, and not because we lost out on random PF whose name we canât even remember a couple months later.
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I think this nails it. Winning 7-8 games/season shouldnât be all that challenging a goal when A) Youâre in a mediocre league, and B) You get to pick 4 of your opponents each year. Weâre not playing against the varsity, here.
If we play VMI-grade teams 4 times/year, then the team needs to go 2-6 against the not especially intimidating ACC to make a bowl game every year, and 4-4 to win 8 games on a regular basis. This isnât rocket science, winning 6-8 games most years could be a layup.
This also isnât basketball where making the NCAA tournament is the goal so thereâs pressure to play a tough OOC schedule. You just have to win 6 games and, within reason, no one cares who those opponents are. Bama traditionally plays 1 OOC game against a real team and then crushes 3 local nunneries and everyone is fine with it.
Ok, sure, playing Tenn or GA will bring in a better crowd than Randolph Macon, along with better preparing the team for bowl games against tough teams. But you know whatâs ever better for attendance than playing GA? Going 8-4 instead of 4-8 on a regular basis.
And, again, thereâs no NCAA tournament out there, just a bowl game. And the incentives are totally different. With the NCAA tournament, making the tournament in the first place is a big deal, but once you get there you desperately want to win as many games as possible before youâre eliminated. But a bowl game is not only a one-off, they arenât all made the same. Getting into the best possible bowl is much more important than how you do in the bowl (barring utter embarrassment). Iâd rather go to the Orange Bowl and lose to a a good SEC team than beat some MAC team in the Gasparilla Bowl or whatever.
So, yes, there are benefits to scheduling better teams, but none of those benefits are particularly important to the program right now compared to simply winning more games every year. The program keeps shooting itself in the foot every year with scheduling and it frustrates me.
We arenât playing against the elite, being a consistently good (and borderline top 25 team) isnât out of reach. We just keep overthinking things and blow it.
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also we had only 11 regular season games for all but one of Welshâs tenure. his 12th game was, by default, a bowl game.
so i think the 7 win mark is more relevant there, as current coaches have a more realistic option to play at least 13 games (i.e., 6-6 plus a bowl game)
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Itâs amazing to me that the football conversation is all about how we shouldnât expect to have winning seasons too often, and the basketball season is about how we should be in the Final Four every year.
Are there different admissions requirements for different sports? Because weâve somehow been able to recruit good enough players to win national championships in basketball, baseball, lacrosse, swimming and tennis (and probably some other sports Iâm forgetting). Are we just assuming that football players are dumber than other athletes?
Especially now that weâre investing money, thereâs no institutional reason that we canât field a competitive football program. If we fail, itâs not because you canât expect to win at Virginia. Itâs because our coaches werenât good enough.
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Its one thing to make an exeption here and there for olympic sports. The issue is not as glaring for basketball because you are looking to fill limited roster spots.
But in football where you probably need 40 or 50 players who have to at least have a good possibility of developing into D1 caliber players makes it a different beast. Because of that it demands a different approach. You either make those adjustmemts or you get the privilege of being percieved as perennial losers. Changing that for UVA means reevaluating football admissions.
While admissions are a thing the assumption that football players are dumb is an easy scapegoat at best and coded at worst.
The issues that have affected UVa recruiting had far more to do with coaching facilities and lack of success than someone not qualifying academically.
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Arenât offensive linemen supposed to be the brainiacs? So if admissions were the issue, youd think weâd at least be able to count on getting a great O line. And you can see how thatâs worked out.
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I and many others respectfully disagree
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I donât follow it closely - so take what I have to say with a grain of salt - but I just havenât heard much chatter about admissions being an issue in recent years. Havenât seen many of the insiders note it. Hasnât seemingly been a big theme on boards very much that I saw.
It certainly was an issue for Groh, but from the sounds of it he also pushed the envelope pretty hard and potentially irresponsibly and burned some good will in the process. Didnât really hear anything about admissions during London and Bronco that I recall, and havenât heard rumblings under Elliott. If it were a big issue, usually youâd think youâd hear rumblings - coaching staffs usually find a way to leak that narrative out there I feel like.
But again, I donât track it that closely. Could be, I just think itâs an easy scapegoat when people are trying to look for a quick fix. Like Duke and Wake have been outperforming us for years - somehow doubt weâre crazy stricter than them (although they are private so I donât know).
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Admissions is just a gatekeeper for keeping guys academically eligible. Admissions could drop all standards and let anyone in, but if guys canât keep up their grades in a school that doesnât have easy majors thatâs no help at all.
And youâre right, we havenât had guys who couldnât keep up in class in the past decade plus.
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Having lived in a house with someone responsible for making sure those guys find the right classes majors etc. and actually graduate on time with a degree, I will say that UVA does plenty to coach kids up in the classroom to make sure they are able to remain eligible and in good standings. The ones who fail to do that itâs not due to lack of resources.
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Since itâs July, could we kill the âpostseasonâ thread and go for a preseason one?
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Ask and you shall receive.
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