Time for a New Direction at Virginia Tech

The title of this story likely is a clear hint of what I’m about to discuss here. Before I get to that, I want to say that if I ever am going to call for a change, I want to be careful with how I go about that and be sure of that knowing the magnitude of the platform that I hold and the impact that a firing can have on not only the individual but also the family. The case has to be strong and if I jump to that conclusion,

I have a lot of respect for Whit Babcock. I don’t know him personally but I have learned a lot about his character from afar including the way he and his family have been involved in the community and using his position to support lots of good charity work happening in and around the New River Valley.

It’s also in my view that Babcock has achieved lots of success and shown some of the overall athletic potential that Virginia Tech has beyond football.

His hires outside of football have been strong headlined by Kenny Brooks leading VT to a Women’s Final Four but also great achievements by Buzz Williams, Tony Robie, Pete D’Amour, and Mike Young. Additionally, his hire of Megan Duffy looks strong while John Szefc has had success, track & field continues to be an ACC powerhouse, and soccer has had a decent amount of success. Even women’s lacrosse has gone from a dumpster fire to a relevant, respectable ACC program.

There’s also some significant infrastructure success he’s had, mostly early in his tenure with the English Field transformation, the athletic nutrition facility, the football players lounge, and Rector Fieldhouse renovations among other projects. The NIL era has stalled out most facility renovations with ADs who have done facility upgrades recently expressing regret about not having that money available for NIL.

The Metallica concert this summer is also a big win for Babcock and his tenure at the helm of Virginia Tech Athletics.

Sometimes though, things run their course and the time comes for a new direction.

In my view, that time is now and I believe that Virginia Tech needs new athletic leadership.

While Babcock’s early tenure saw Virginia Tech rise overall, but the past few years have seen a sharp decline with VT finishing in the fifties in the Director’s Cup the past two years.

The Women’s Soccer success this year provides a boost, but WBB not being as good will wipe out many of those gains. VT is currently 30th in the Director’s Cup and a solid baseball season plus softball’s continued success should mean a slight boost, but the failure to consistency be a top 30-40 athletic department at worse should be seen as unacceptable at Virginia Tech.

Babcock has talked about turning Virginia Tech from a challenger brand to a championship brand. However, it’s hard to say that VT is currently a championship brand outside of wrestling and track & field in the ACC. Softball is arguably right there too while women’s basketball was at that level, but has taken a big step back even with the strong hire of Megan Duffy to replace Kenny Brooks.

As a whole, Virginia Tech remains mired in being a challenger brand and not turning the page towards being a championship brand. The continued failure to win a team national title despite how even schools like Vermont in men's soccer have won one, remains a reasonable frustration.

The football piece is obvious. Babcock saw some initial success with his hire of Justin Fuente, but by the end of Fuente’s tenure, the football program was in the worst spot it had been in a long time with a coach who was a bad fit culturally and regionally in hindsight. However, the Deep South and Texas ties without much East Coast connection should have probably raised more concerns at the beginning. Those struggles have continued with Brent Pry, whose best record in three year is 7-6 in 2023 in what has been mediocrity on the field at best, despite the talent Pry’s teams have had.

For being a football school, VT having only one 10+ win season under Babcock and not a single season with more than seven wins since COVID is not acceptable. If Brent Pry can’t elevate VT past that soon, Babcock will be 0-3 as an AD at hiring head coaches having done so with the three traditional archetypes: veteran head coach with past success (Tommy Tuberville at Cincinnati), young up-and-coming G5 head coach (Fuente), and successful P4 coordinator (Pry).

For as much success as Babcock has had hiring coaches for every other sport, it’s easy to see why donors may not want Babcock to make another football hire, especially given how important that singular hire is to the success of an athletic department and even more so in this era where there is a threat of a Power 2 forming.

And if you feel a change may be needed in football after this season, then you need to have the AD you want to make the hire in place by the start of the fall. If not, you’re asking for a messy search that may produce another failed tenure or you may end up gambling on Babcock to not become 0-4 in making football hires.

Amidst this downturn, the vision for how Virginia Tech is going to turn this around seems to be lacking greatly. This has included some uninspired, odd moves including Kelly Woolwine, a donor with no college sports experience outside of his Triumph NIL role, becoming the de facto general manager as Babcock shared in an interview this past fall. In talking with a national CFB reporter and sharing that with him, he said that he doesn’t think that is normal for the rest of the sport which raises a red flag, especially given some of the retention issues that the Hokies have had and the funding questions that have been raised.

Kelly Woolwine seems like a good guy, though I don’t know much about him. However, Tech could use a proper GM who has been in the pro sports world or worked in the college sports business outside of being a donor who runs the NIL collective. Part of the new leadership should include bringing in a proper general manager with proper credentials. Babcock is right to consult VT alum like Tampa Bay Rays GM Erik Neander about how to build a front office structure out and new leadership should consult successful alums like Neander too.

In the interim, it’s on Babcock for making the strange move of having Woolwine serve as the de facto general manager rather than bringing in a professional. There was no reason why Babcock should have felt he had to basically promote the collective guy into that role when that individual has no sports experience, college or pros.

Woolwine’s Triumph also doesn’t seem to be that good at raising NIL effectively outside of having enough for football. Both basketball programs continue to lag in the NIL world while the other sports are much more on their own from what I’ve been told, including the Hokies’ leading Olympic sports, which are delivering results in spite of Babcock and Woolwine.

It goes beyond the results though to even little things that just seem out of alignment. For example, Virginia Tech’s annual Spring Game was scheduled for 3pm, bringing a crowd of likely 15-20k to Lane Stadium at least for the event. Tech also has home baseball and softball this weekend but instead of spreading these events out, VT had baseball scheduled for 1pm and softball for 2pm, guaranteeing that neither would be finished before a 3pm spring football game, hurting the ability for fans to engage with the entire athletic product. Of course, this has now changed to doubleheaders that will run partly during the Spring Game, an unavoidable consequence of Friday rainouts.

This also isn’t because having these games start later in the day wasn’t an option since softball will play at 6pm on Sunday. Tech could have easily started softball at 12 or 1pm to have it wrap up beforehand and then had baseball start around 6pm or so after, creating a way for fans coming into town to see all three games and make a day of it.

Another example of this is how Tech’s NIL collective lacks a direct way for fans to give to the program they want to support, allocating all to the general fund. You also are limited to buying a subscription based on what I could dig into during a quick look at their website, rather than having a direct giving page.

This is in contrast to other schools’ NIL collective like Auburn where in two seconds, I can click on the ‘On To Victory’ NIL collective’s giving link and it gives the donor options for where they want to give their money. Kansas State’s ‘Wildcat NIL’ has a link at the top left where you can make a one-time donation and choose the sport to donate it to. The same is true for Wake Forest’s collective and Penn State’s collective and almost certainly most major collectives, yet if you want to designate a donation to a specific sport or make a one-time donation for VT, good luck figuring that out on their site.

Imagine how much more MBB, WBB, and Wrestling might have available for the transfer portal if fans could do that. Given the basketball passion that is still there along with the diehard wrestling fan base, there’s no doubt that VT’s NIL could get a significant boost for those programs if the option was made public for that.

It also creates greater trust among diehards who want to see the entire athletic offering succeed and increases confidence that the athletic department will have some accountability in how they allocate funds, rather than Babcock simply saying that a football-heavy allocation was social media fodder rather than partly reality whether Babcock and Woolwine like to hear that or not.

On that note, to miss by 70% compared to Clemson in men’s basketball NIL, as Babcock said, is a massive failure if it was a missed estimate rather than a prioritization of football. Honestly, that’s probably a worse look for Babcock and Woolwine than just saying there was a greater focus on building up the football war chest first.

It seems like Babcock has allowed Woolwine and Triumph to focus on being a subscription business that can do as they please, rather than simply a NIL collective charged with raising as much money as possible for all of Tech’s athletic departments. Their website suggests that it’s mostly trying to be a business rather than a collective.

That’s on Woolwine for not prioritizing the collective’s ultimate role and Babcock for not ensuring that to be the case.

Virginia Tech had a big surge in the first half of Babcock’s tenure, but this is a declining athletics operation that has landed straight in mediocrity despite what is available in terms of potential resources and the massive fan support that still has largely avoided apathy despite immense struggles in football and a men’s basketball decline built on a resource issue, not a coaching issue.

It would be one thing if there was a clear vision of some sort from athletic leadership regarding how to get VT turned around in the biggest sports and elevate VT to at least pushing for a collective championship athletics brand status and not just being stuck as a challenger. However, that type of vision is lacking from the top currently, with a de facto general manager whose top credential is that he is a VT donor and founded a NIL firm.

As Virginia Tech Athletics goes through one of the highest-stakes moments in the history of collegiate athletics, it’s become that Virginia Tech must pursue new athletic leadership to reach the rightful goal set by Babcock of becoming a championship athletics brand. That starts with a change at the top with a new athletic director along with a proper, experienced sports executive to be a true general manager.

The time for a new direction and therefore a change in athletic leadership at Virginia Tech has arrived.

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