re: VT about to get real competitive in the ACC

Here is my take with my orange and maroon glasses.

Our athletic dept has ignored football for way too long. Example, we have the highest spend in the ACC on womens basketball by some margin. Example 2, when Odom was fired from Mizzu back in the day, Fuente tried to bring him in but the AD would not pay for him and we ended up with a 1st time DC and essentially helped sink Fuente.

So earlier this year, VT essentially committed money to be the same as Clemson and FSU. Yes, lots of wasted money right now in the ACC

VT then made a sneaky good hire by bringing in a guy from the Univ of Tennessee who is great at fundraising. Our HOkie Club has been a joke for decades on talking to the big donors, finding new donors, etc

Anyways, Pry gets fired and they start pursuing coaches, but when Franklin became available Bud Foster reached out and the dance started.

One of the key items was our NIL from Franklin. Well that has been resolved as donors started stepping up. For example, one guy who never gave money to football gave 10-15 million and said that would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Stated many times, we are not Ohio St, LSU, etc...but we have many rich alumni that have never been tapped so if we can just get close to our potential we can be constant contenders for the ACC each year.

Lastly, Frankly also had demands on staff (from NIL to social media) that schools like LSU, Ole Miss would laugh at to even need to discuss but our AD needed it.

So, I am happy that we will finally invest into the sport that is the most important to VT. And oh, Franklin does not win big games, hell I just want to get back to being angry about losing big games. I get nervous playing teams like ODU and that is not acceptable.

My hope for next year is 7 wins or more, as there is a lot to fix. And by 2027 start competing for the ACC champ game.

Anyways, it is great to have hope and a plan again.