Latest / Boundary Corner Podcast / New Beginnings

Transcript

New Beginnings · Boundary Corner Podcast

• 1:20
  And welcome back to the Boundary Corner Podcast.
• 1:23
  Along with my partners, Brian Siegler and Jonathan Hannibans,
• 1:28
  I am Curtis Wilson and we are brought to you by Moments on the
• 1:32
  Mari. Looking for a weekend getaway
• 1:35
  this summer or fall? Then Moments on the Mari might
• 1:38
  be exactly what you are looking for.
• 1:40
  Owned by a very proud Hokie and located just outside Lexington,
• 1:46
  VA, this place gives you everything you can think of for
• 1:49
  a great mountain experience. Fishing, kayaking, just relaxing
• 1:53
  by or in the river right outside the back door.
• 1:57
  Check it out in our links or visit moments on the memorial on
• 2:02
  their Instagram page. Gentlemen.
• 2:07
  Gentlemen. What's happening, man?
• 2:09
  How are you all tonight? Tell me you on mute.
• 2:11
  Like telling people, telling me on calls all the time.
• 2:13
  You're on mute. You want me to get off mute?
• 2:16
  You got to talk you off mute. Can you hear us?
• 2:21
  I think I'm off. I think I'm off now.
• 2:27
  He is off. Mute.
• 2:30
  We got you. What's been up, guys?
• 2:33
  We have been running around in circles this spring since the
• 2:37
  spring game. It felt like.
• 2:40
  How was life? We we had a little false start
• 2:43
  last week. We, we, we, we got the same same
• 2:46
  structure this week. But, you know, it's fun because,
• 2:48
  you know, we had a couple more commits come through since then.
• 2:51
  So we got a little little bit more to kind of, you know, pad
• 2:54
  the, the end of this episode a little bit.
• 2:56
  But yeah, we had a, you know, a couple couple snafus here or
• 3:00
  there last week that caused us to punt.
• 3:02
  But hey, we're back here. We're we're doing it live as we
• 3:05
  normally do. And we got a a fun special guest
• 3:07
  we're going to introduce here shortly.
• 3:12
  Tally what you want. We punt it, man.
• 3:13
  We didn't have two zeros. Yeah, we punt it.
• 3:16
  We didn't have two zeros on the field.
• 3:18
  So we, I, we made it. We didn't get called for a
• 3:22
  penalty, we just punted the ball.
• 3:25
  This is. This is what I'm going to say a
• 3:28
  little bit off off topic before we get our guest on here because
• 3:33
  I think most of our chat is probably right around the same
• 3:38
  age we are. You know you get into those
• 3:41
  golden ages. I understand.
• 3:46
  I want to know man y'all put in the chat what is the best bio
• 3:50
  pic that you've seen the best you know movie about somebody's
• 3:56
  life? The reason I'm asking that is
• 3:58
  because I watch Michael. I mean, everybody got to see
• 4:04
  Michael, right? You know what I'm saying?
• 4:05
  Like you got to watch it. Go ahead, Curtis.
• 4:08
  What you going to say I'm. Going to say but what I'm going
• 4:11
  to say is 2 weekends ago my mother came into town gave me a
• 4:15
  wife date night and we went into a local steakhouse and I said we
• 4:18
  should go we should go see Michael and she's like I just I
• 4:21
  just don't feel like going She's like it's it's a 730 start it's
• 4:24
  like a 2 1/2 hour movie, right She's like I'm gonna fall asleep
• 4:28
  and now she's looking at me mad everybody's.
• 4:31
  Saying it's so. Good.
• 4:32
  We should have went. I'm like.
• 4:34
  I'm just saying. Laid it out there.
• 4:36
  I literally said we should go. I think everybody, our age at
• 4:41
  least, should watch it, you know what I'm saying?
• 4:43
  But me being a huge Michael Jackson fan and knowing a lot
• 4:48
  about him and watching a lot of movies about him, they made a
• 4:51
  movie way back when. I think it's called The American
• 4:53
  Dream. Oh yeah.
• 4:56
  It just had more in that movie than this one had.
• 4:59
  If you really want to know about his life, you know what I'm
• 5:01
  saying. But not not a bad movie.
• 5:05
  So I did come here to advocate everybody go see it or do like I
• 5:11
  did and just be able to watch it, if you know what I mean.
• 5:14
  Got you. Because I didn't go to the
• 5:16
  theater. Yeah, I feel like American Dream
• 5:18
  had like it had so much of the Jackson 5 stuff and like.
• 5:23
  Off the wall. And it was everything else was
• 5:26
  kind of rushed through. Yeah, it was like a, it was like
• 5:29
  a origin story or a villain or something, you know what I'm
• 5:33
  saying? And then it was just at the end
• 5:36
  anyway. I mean, I just feel like it was
• 5:39
  a lot left lacking. Yes, Jason, that is a good
• 5:44
  biopic. Lincoln, if y'all haven't seen
• 5:47
  that, is a good biopic. That's not my favorite.
• 5:49
  My favorite biopic is probably The Temptations.
• 5:52
  But again, I didn't want to throw a whole segment about
• 5:57
  movies, but I did have to shout out my boy Michael Jackson, the
• 6:01
  greatest of all times. Man, I'm I'm gonna throw Ray out
• 6:03
  there. Ray is probably my.
• 6:04
  Favorite Ray is a that's that's a close second.
• 6:07
  Ali. That's another one like I'll
• 6:10
  throw. One, and this is old and I, I
• 6:11
  mean well before, I mean a couple years before we were
• 6:14
  born. You ever watch Raging Bull?
• 6:17
  Oh yeah. Boxing about Jake.
• 6:19
  Lemada Yeah, Yeah. That's fine.
• 6:23
  Bryan Song with with James Caan. Bryan Song with James Caan.
• 6:26
  Oh yeah. Oh man.
• 6:29
  Lot of good ones, lot of good ones.
• 6:31
  Well, you know what? We got a lot of fun to talk
• 6:33
  about and believe it or not, now he's in the backroom like
• 6:36
  thinking, oh man, I know what's going to happen the second I get
• 6:39
  on. But tonight we have a very
• 6:41
  special guest, another one of our good friends from 247.
• 6:45
  Long time writer, contributor to 247 Sports.
• 6:48
  Tonight we have Doug Bowman joining us and we'll get him on
• 6:51
  stage, make sure he's off mute and Doug Tally let it off.
• 6:56
  What is your favorite biopic? I was thinking about this while
• 7:00
  you guys were talking and thanks for stalling because I had to
• 7:02
  pull up a list of like, all right, I need some like
• 7:06
  something to trigger my memory. It's walk the line.
• 7:10
  I was going to say Walk the Line.
• 7:12
  Walk the Line's a good movie too.
• 7:13
  I was hoping somebody said that, Chad.
• 7:15
  Hey, we got some. We got some good ones coming in.
• 7:18
  Doug just came with a another banger.
• 7:20
  I need to know what's y'all's best biopic?
• 7:23
  Doug, keep going, buddy. I was going to say walk the line
• 7:25
  with Johnny Cash. It's it's on the list of movies
• 7:29
  that you whenever it's on, you know, you're flipping through.
• 7:33
  Not that many people flip through the channels anymore,
• 7:36
  but you see it and you just watch it no matter where you are
• 7:39
  in the movie, pick it up right where it left off.
• 7:41
  So I probably, I don't know how many times I've seen it, but
• 7:44
  it's good. Nice.
• 7:45
  Well, it's it's always funny because you talk about like the
• 7:48
  biopics and some people don't think of certain movies as
• 7:50
  biopics because like American gangster people wouldn't think
• 7:56
  that. But that's basically Frank
• 7:57
  Lucas's life. Like not it, not his whole life,
• 8:00
  but a good portion of his life. And then there's so many other
• 8:03
  ones like like Catch Me if you can again, that's that.
• 8:08
  Like you don't think of them as biopics, but they are.
• 8:11
  Is Walt Wolf of all straight? Line, then yes, absolutely.
• 8:15
  Wolf of Wall Street, I. Didn't even think about that,
• 8:17
  but yeah. I mean.
• 8:19
  We just go ahead and call, I mean, Goodfellas.
• 8:22
  Yes, yes. Scorsese like half his half his
• 8:29
  repertoire is is technically biopic.
• 8:31
  So well did y'all see the tweet yesterday?
• 8:33
  It was like the the March 11th was in like 5:00 AM was the day
• 8:40
  he got busted. Like that whole scene in the
• 8:43
  movie The day like. Doing all the crazy.
• 8:45
  Stuff it was 5/11/1980 is when it happened.
• 8:49
  Like started at 5:00 AM because he was off like the cocaine
• 8:52
  Bender. Yeah, and he was like paranoid
• 8:54
  as hell, like. We've been got down a road that
• 8:59
  we could be. Be like 12:00.
• 9:03
  Hokey football and hokey sports. Everybody was Doug Moment after
• 9:05
  14 hours of talking about biopics.
• 9:09
  I bad Curtis, I didn't mean I didn't mean to get you started
• 9:12
  today, man. I was just trying to get the
• 9:13
  creative juices flowing. And we got we got an idea for
• 9:17
  for a spin off podcast now. So yeah, the.
• 9:19
  Biopic Well Doug, first of all, how you been doing man?
• 9:23
  This is your first time with us. Obviously we followed you for
• 9:27
  years with your writings and stuff on 247.
• 9:30
  So how you doing? And then how did you stumble
• 9:33
  upon 247? Because like you have a day job
• 9:37
  like us three, dude. Like how did that happen?
• 9:39
  How did your relationship start with 247 back about I guess a
• 9:42
  decade ago? God, it's been, I think it's
• 9:46
  been, it was definitely before COVID, which is now like
• 9:48
  suddenly six years ago. So we're close to a decade.
• 9:53
  I started writing about Virginia Tech actually back in O7 Tyron's
• 9:58
  first year. I was at Hoagie Haven with Brian
• 10:01
  Moore and that kind of during that era, there's been so many
• 10:05
  like kind of like eras of the regime tech recruiting sites.
• 10:09
  And then Jason Stam came on, came on and took him over there,
• 10:12
  took over there and then went to the Vt Scout site at the time.
• 10:17
  So I was over there for a little bit and I think I jumped on the
• 10:21
  Vt Scoop. Must have been 2018 ish
• 10:26
  somewhere around there. Yeah.
• 10:29
  But just knowing I had done it for a while, I'm at Hoagie Haven
• 10:33
  and Scout and and kind of taken a couple years off and wanted to
• 10:37
  get back into it. So I reached out and happened to
• 10:39
  be the right time. Nice man, What's what what was
• 10:46
  that journey like? I know you said you were writing
• 10:48
  for for Hoagie Haven and doing all that.
• 10:49
  Have you, Is that just been like a passion project for you or
• 10:52
  just being in the, in the Virginia Tech sports realm and
• 10:57
  just loving that so much That's kind of been, you know, what's
• 11:00
  kind of kept that that drive for.
• 11:02
  You yeah, a little bit of both, I'd say probably I was the, I
• 11:05
  started right in there when I was in 8th grade.
• 11:07
  Probably nobody reading knew that at the time, but when I was
• 11:14
  2007 tie rods first year. So I was always the the kid that
• 11:19
  wanted to be on ESPN growing up and all that stuff.
• 11:23
  Got to got to college, got to sit in the press box and, and do
• 11:26
  that during school and realized I didn't want to do that for my
• 11:31
  job. I enjoy, I enjoy the fandom, I
• 11:34
  enjoy being in the stands. I enjoy all that stuff that you
• 11:36
  don't get to do when you're covering the games and stuff.
• 11:39
  So that was a great lesson. But I I, like you said, kind of
• 11:43
  like a passion project of just something I enjoy doing on the
• 11:46
  side. That's very nice.
• 11:49
  So I've been so many people that it's part of it.
• 11:51
  And obviously, what year did you graduate from tech?
• 11:54
  2015. 2015 OK. That sounds like a one good year
• 11:59
  with Logan Thomas when he was good and then after that it
• 12:03
  went, you know, to six. What was it?
• 12:05
  No it. Was no Never sixes, 6 never
• 12:11
  losing during Frank's time. 7 and 6-8 and five, seven and six.
• 12:15
  Yep. After So your first year was
• 12:19
  Sugar Bowl youth, correct? You caught the ball.
• 12:22
  Yep. Exactly.
• 12:24
  Did you go to New Orleans? Did not got tickets, couldn't
• 12:29
  couldn't figure out how to get there if it was broke all that
• 12:32
  stuff. So, but I mean, the peak was
• 12:37
  definitely beating Ohio State and Columbus and 14 that was
• 12:41
  that was, I guess that was technically this fall of senior
• 12:45
  year. So I mean, that was that was the
• 12:47
  peak of of the football experience during my time there.
• 12:52
  We were all seniors went up, you know, there's probably 100 of us
• 12:55
  there. Just a classic like college
• 12:58
  experience of being up there with all of your college buddies
• 13:02
  and then you actually win the game.
• 13:04
  Stopped at the casino, and where's the casino in West
• 13:08
  Virginia? Charleston.
• 13:10
  Charleston. Yeah, the, the Mardi Gras
• 13:12
  stopped there on the way. I mean, it was just, you know,
• 13:14
  22 with nothing else to worry about.
• 13:17
  Tally, you've been to that one. You've.
• 13:19
  Been to any Charleston casino? I never want to go to West
• 13:21
  Virginia. I don't care what kind of casino
• 13:23
  to have. I don't, I just, I don't want to
• 13:26
  be there. So anything in West Virginia,
• 13:29
  there's definitely don't need me in it.
• 13:32
  But no, I haven't, I haven't been there.
• 13:33
  I went to, I went to the one in Bristol, but I haven't been to
• 13:37
  the one in West Virginia. Nice.
• 13:40
  Well, I was going to ask you what was like your game.
• 13:42
  Clearly you, you, you laid it right out there with the visit
• 13:45
  to the Horseshoe with the win back in 2014 Miami.
• 13:49
  The Logan Thomas Miami game was my freshman year and it was
• 13:52
  probably the best home game, yeah.
• 13:56
  Dave Wilson lost two games that year to the same team.
• 14:03
  Yep. Clemson.
• 14:04
  Twice Clemson. Twice, unfortunately.
• 14:07
  All right, well, let's get into it.
• 14:08
  We got a lot of stuff to unload and talk with Doug about.
• 14:11
  We are going to get kind of the biggest topics we're going to
• 14:13
  talk with Doug as we get later into the program is the retiring
• 14:17
  of Tim Sands, retiring with Babcock and how that's kind of
• 14:19
  all going to shake out. If y'all never followed Doug,
• 14:22
  first of all, give him a follow at Doug Bowman 247.
• 14:26
  Doug somehow knows how to navigate certain things in the
• 14:30
  stratosphere of governments and contracts.
• 14:32
  And the next thing you know, Doug puts it out, here's what's
• 14:35
  going to happen. And you're like, Oh my God, that
• 14:38
  that that three days later it happens.
• 14:40
  So give him a follow if you don't do anything tonight.
• 14:43
  Also if you are a 247 or check out his writings.
• 14:47
  Obviously a lot of good stuff, but we're going to start non
• 14:49
  football 1st. And when this popped up just a
• 14:52
  few days ago, I was a little bit of.
• 14:55
  In. A little bit of disbelief
• 14:58
  because you don't hear about Non Rev Sports getting this kind of
• 15:04
  donation. At Virginia Tech.
• 15:06
  And what the Jester family from Virginia Beach did by giving a
• 15:10
  million dollars, $1 million to the wrestling program.
• 15:15
  And now it's left open as $1,000,000 match out there now
• 15:19
  that what's they're asking for is wild.
• 15:22
  So Doug, I'll start with you being a a tech alum, knowing how
• 15:27
  good the wrestling program it was, was that did that color you
• 15:30
  shocked or had there been buzzings that like this was
• 15:32
  going to happen soon? Yeah, I hadn't heard anything
• 15:35
  about about that kind of donation to wrestling, as you
• 15:40
  said, like a non revenue sport. That's I mean it's been the
• 15:43
  sport that Virginia Tech's probably closest to winning a
• 15:46
  national championship in for several years now.
• 15:50
  They have a really loyal following and donor base and all
• 15:55
  that stuff, which has allowed them to be really successful for
• 15:57
  a really long time. So you know, it's not all that
• 16:00
  surprising to get kind of a unique donation to a sport with
• 16:04
  that kind of support and community and kind of long time
• 16:07
  success that they've had. But like, like you kind of said,
• 16:11
  like $1,000,000 in in that kind of sport is especially in
• 16:15
  today's kind of Rev share. I don't know how much or if,
• 16:19
  what the plans are for that kind of money, but I'm sure they'll
• 16:22
  they'll put it to good use to try and get over the hump.
• 16:26
  And I don't, I don't, I don't really understand wrestling,
• 16:29
  college wrestling, to be honest. The whole like watch, I watch
• 16:32
  them when there's a big match on or something and like try and
• 16:36
  understand what's happening, but I just can't, I can't figure it
• 16:39
  out. But like, it's it's definitely
• 16:44
  the sport where it seems like they're gearing up to make that
• 16:47
  push next year. And Tony Roby's done a great job
• 16:51
  of, like, building probably the most sustainable program at
• 16:56
  Virginia Tech for the last 15 years.
• 16:59
  Yeah. A.
• 17:00
  Lot. Brian.
• 17:01
  I mean, what did? You think about, yeah, it's just
• 17:04
  you keep starting stacking these, these wins.
• 17:07
  I mean, you had a bunch of recruiting wins, you know,
• 17:10
  behind this and all of a sudden you've got this influx.
• 17:14
  And I don't know if one began the other or, or what was going
• 17:16
  on there, but this really puts you in a really good spot
• 17:20
  heading into a season where you feel, I think really good about
• 17:24
  your roster top to bottom and kind of how you match up across
• 17:27
  the board. I don't know if it's enough to
• 17:31
  to get us into the the national championship conversation, but
• 17:34
  you know, you're certainly going to be at least in the probably
• 17:38
  the top of the heap of that, that that next group there kind
• 17:42
  of puts you firmly in in a in a top five category and you get
• 17:46
  that close. So you can, you know, have a
• 17:47
  couple things go your way. You might put yourself in a
• 17:49
  really good spot as you as you kind of move through the the
• 17:53
  season coming up here. It's just going to be exciting
• 17:56
  because, you know, I think you're going to see, you know,
• 17:59
  this is the team that's already, you know, consistently, you
• 18:03
  know, tops of the ACC. You know, there's really only a
• 18:06
  handful of other schools that have similar caliber or better
• 18:10
  caliber programs of Virginia Tech at this point.
• 18:12
  So if if this is the the thing that gets them over the hump, it
• 18:16
  could be really huge. Tally anything on this when you
• 18:19
  read the news and saw those things.
• 18:21
  Yeah, no, I'm kind of like, like Doug said, when it comes to
• 18:24
  wrestling. Like I know when they say
• 18:26
  somebody wins or somebody loses, but I never know what's going
• 18:30
  on. Like all I know is when NWO
• 18:33
  comes out with steam and Hulk Hogan and The Rock, stuff like
• 18:38
  that. Like, I know that kind of
• 18:39
  wrestling, but I don't know nothing about the rules and
• 18:43
  stuff. But I do know I will say this,
• 18:47
  we need football to be good. We need football to be good.
• 18:51
  And I think James Franklin being at Virginia Tech definitely
• 18:55
  plays a part in what some of the other sports are able to do.
• 18:59
  Again, wrestling, this is the own thing and they've been doing
• 19:02
  a great job. But I do feel like when you do
• 19:07
  have a lot of buzz around your program that it creates
• 19:10
  excitement. So I'm not saying that that
• 19:14
  $1,000,000 gift wasn't already in the works, but I think
• 19:17
  getting a serious, you know, football coach and then all of
• 19:21
  the changes that are coming from up top probably had somebody
• 19:25
  said, oh, they're looking at being serious about it.
• 19:27
  Yeah, I want to. I'd like to get in on that.
• 19:29
  So keep doing that, everybody. We need everybody to be good.
• 19:35
  We do, but I get what you're saying, Tally.
• 19:37
  Sometimes that stuff is the springboard, right?
• 19:39
  Like everything from last August with the the focus back pointing
• 19:44
  a lot of money back towards football.
• 19:46
  Hired a big name coach, making some serious moves.
• 19:49
  Maybe there is that donor out there that loads the wrestling
• 19:51
  program that says, you know what, if I write $1,000,000,
• 19:54
  some of the other money can funnel back into football.
• 19:57
  By the way, Doug, you, you just need to sign somebody who likes
• 20:00
  wrestling and wrestled in college.
• 20:02
  We, we've had, we've had, obviously we've had Joe Rogers
• 20:05
  on here, believe it or not. As as much shenanigans as Joe
• 20:08
  causes, Joe knows wrestling. Really.
• 20:10
  Knows wrestling. He knows.
• 20:12
  Wrestling. The other guy is one of my
• 20:14
  fraternity brothers from Longwood named David Fuqua.
• 20:17
  He wrestled in college. I text him all the time and he
• 20:19
  can tell me what happened in this guy right here, who's our
• 20:22
  music man, Wrestled in high school, coached middle school.
• 20:28
  Like if you somebody who understands wrestling and you
• 20:31
  sit with them, they can tell you what's happening and then it
• 20:33
  makes sense. Now what's?
• 20:34
  The issue is the next time there's a match you're
• 20:36
  launching. I forgot everything he told me
• 20:38
  while we were sitting. It's gone.
• 20:40
  I just I just sit there when it you know, it'll be on ACC
• 20:43
  network or one of those big one of those big matches they have
• 20:47
  and like people start screaming and saying too, too, too.
• 20:51
  And I'm like, I don't know what's happening.
• 20:53
  I don't know why that, but good job.
• 20:55
  Good job, Rogers, if you're out there listening, make it AI chat
• 20:58
  agent Joe Rogers that we can just, you know, queue up anytime
• 21:03
  a match is on so we'll know what's up matches.
• 21:05
  On. Please.
• 21:06
  Explain to us do a do a live stream of what's going on with
• 21:11
  wrestling. It's like when the NFL does like
• 21:12
  a Nickelodeon cat cast down a little bit.
• 21:16
  We need the simpler version. I need the overlay give me the.
• 21:18
  Overlay. What's happening here I.
• 21:20
  Need type of video for this wrestling match.
• 21:23
  One more non Rev talk discussion.
• 21:25
  Yeah, I know you said we should talk about it, but I am going to
• 21:28
  talk about it. First of all, big kudos to
• 21:31
  women's softball. Again, what, seven straight
• 21:34
  regionals, seven straight NCAA terms appearance.
• 21:37
  That's that's you. I don't care what your program
• 21:40
  is, where you are making seven times to the NCAA tournament is
• 21:45
  huge. They get basically the 17 seed
• 21:51
  and basically a lot of chaos that happened because there was
• 21:55
  well, it was because you're having graduation.
• 21:58
  You can't you can't host. There's not enough, there's not
• 22:00
  enough. People say, first of all, that
• 22:02
  stadium is only like what, 2300? It's not a massive 10,000 seat
• 22:07
  stadium. So that's the first thing.
• 22:11
  Then it's like, well, your record kind of hurts you.
• 22:13
  You know, LSU is better. Like we played like some of the
• 22:16
  same teams that LSU did and we beat them six.
• 22:19
  You know, I don't think they had a six and a record.
• 22:22
  So you got mutual competition. I just and then and you know,
• 22:26
  Doug, you made such a fairpoint on Twitter.
• 22:29
  How? Are we going to host some of
• 22:30
  these games in the fall with football?
• 22:33
  I mean, are are we going to be able to have enough hotels?
• 22:38
  Yeah, I I put out a snarky tweet, you know, and and I got
• 22:42
  to give credit to Sam Mostel hope I said that right at tech
• 22:47
  sideline who did actual reporting to figure out what the
• 22:49
  deal was. I mean, it makes sense on like
• 22:53
  it makes sense once you here at like it's a quick turn
• 22:57
  graduation weekend. All the hotels are booked up for
• 23:01
  for the Georgia Tech football game in the fall.
• 23:04
  Virginia Tech will have secured that hotel for Georgia Tech well
• 23:07
  in advance and there's nothing no problem with that.
• 23:09
  Like it all the reasoning makes sense.
• 23:11
  What didn't make sense was why they even why the selection
• 23:14
  committee chair even like LED with that like if if they're not
• 23:19
  a top 16, see then it doesn't there's no reason to mention the
• 23:23
  hotels or anything like it's that's the reason they didn't
• 23:28
  they're not hosting is because they're not a top six team.
• 23:30
  But to even like bring that into the conversation was felt like
• 23:35
  an own goal and they kind of asked for that reaction.
• 23:40
  So I could there be could that really be the real reason?
• 23:44
  Perhaps, But you know, you look at it on the kind of, if you
• 23:48
  just look at the facts of trying to turn around in a week and
• 23:52
  host four teams in Blacksburg, Sure, it makes sense with
• 23:58
  graduation going on and having all the all the hotels booked
• 24:01
  up. I guess there's you could argue
• 24:05
  like can we extend the radius a little bit to to fit some more
• 24:09
  hotels in there? But I guess the rules are the
• 24:12
  rules. Yeah.
• 24:14
  And I guess that radius only included like I guess like most
• 24:18
  of Salem and kind of that area didn't like quite extend all the
• 24:21
  way through the better part of Roanoke and all that stuff.
• 24:25
  So like a good a good portion of the the hotels in Roanoke were
• 24:28
  kind of out of play and all this other stuff with that.
• 24:32
  Which is interesting because, like, for years, I know they
• 24:35
  stopped doing it in the last couple years, but like, Tech
• 24:37
  would stay in Roanoke before football games.
• 24:40
  Yeah, no problem. Just get a police escort.
• 24:42
  You're in Blacksburg pretty quickly.
• 24:44
  Like there was never a concern about or too far.
• 24:48
  I know there was stuff about like recruiting that made it
• 24:50
  inconvenient, but it wasn't a problem when you have some
• 24:54
  resources to help, right, To help you figure it out.
• 24:57
  Yeah, yeah. And I know they like having, you
• 25:00
  know, guys on campus so you can do stuff with the hosting and
• 25:03
  recruiting and that that makes more sense from a being in in
• 25:08
  Blacksburg versus in Roanoke. But yeah, I know what's what's
• 25:13
  the rule like 30 mile, 50 minute drive?
• 25:16
  Or may or it might have been the other way, 30 minutes or 45
• 25:20
  miles or something like that. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:23
  And. I know that based on what they
• 25:25
  were saying, it put like a a good majority of the Roanoke
• 25:28
  area area out of play from a hotel standpoint.
• 25:30
  So like I get, I get that part of it.
• 25:33
  But like to your point, why even go down that road if you're
• 25:37
  saying they're not a top 16 seed anyway?
• 25:40
  If. It weren't in play then why we.
• 25:44
  Were I think that's I. Think we were.
• 25:48
  I think we were. And then it was just like, well,
• 25:50
  we can't really make this happen, So what can we do?
• 25:52
  We'll put them at 17. And, and if you want to say that
• 25:55
  was the, you know, we can't decide between these two teams,
• 25:58
  but they can accommodate everybody.
• 25:59
  So that's where we're going. You know that I'm fine if that,
• 26:02
  if that's the the qualifying factor there, but like just to
• 26:06
  come out and say, well, they weren't a 16 anyway.
• 26:07
  Well, they went down that road that far.
• 26:10
  They probably worked. They probably worked.
• 26:13
  Tally, I know you lost softball, so I mean what you got.
• 26:17
  I ain't got nothing, man. I I got nothing to I I you know
• 26:21
  what? I do have something to say.
• 26:22
  Oh, he. Got something?
• 26:23
  I see. He got to give him a second
• 26:24
  here. He's got to wind the money.
• 26:25
  Every time I I I looked at hotels in Blacksburg to come up
• 26:31
  for I just looked at hotels for the VMI game.
• 26:36
  Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Why is it so high?
• 26:44
  Why does every boy around this cost so much?
• 26:47
  I looked at Airbnb. I looked at Airbnb's.
• 26:50
  Somebody was charging $1400 for I think they said you could walk
• 26:55
  to the stadium from this Airbnb. I was like, no, I don't think I
• 26:58
  want to walk big. I have $1400 for a night.
• 27:03
  It may have been two nights, but whatever the case is and I'm not
• 27:06
  doing it, man. So hey, y'all got to get that
• 27:08
  hotel stuff taken care of. Cause see, anytime I've come up
• 27:12
  for a game, we've stayed. I think we stayed in like what's
• 27:14
  called Withville, Christiansburg.
• 27:20
  Where's Radford? Radford sometimes.
• 27:22
  Radford Yeah. So I was driven.
• 27:26
  In the nose. Before, yeah, so that's what I'm
• 27:29
  saying. There's been plenty of times
• 27:31
  that we've come up and we just had to stay.
• 27:33
  Like I've never stayed in Blacksburg when I went up there.
• 27:36
  So yeah, it's, it's state fault, man.
• 27:39
  Y'all got them, y'all no hotels too, too high and you got them
• 27:43
  booked up and stuff, man. They wanted to let, they wanted
• 27:46
  to let Virginia Tech host it, but the hotels is the problem.
• 27:52
  You know what, we got a friend. Can you get some money together?
• 27:55
  I bet you he would build a hotel up there if he knew it was going
• 27:58
  to be a problem. You get to well.
• 28:00
  The well, the, the probability is not the, the the problem,
• 28:03
  it's it's getting all the permits and the land and
• 28:07
  everything by the the Blacksburg Council and all that stuff that
• 28:13
  I think is hindering some of some of that, that front.
• 28:16
  And I don't know a shortcut around that.
• 28:21
  You know, we, we know Blacksburg local politics is what it is so.
• 28:29
  We'll we'll give you his name later, Tally, we'll let you give
• 28:31
  him a call. I thought we can, I thought.
• 28:33
  Jerry on here and talk a little bit about the the black man.
• 28:36
  On here, Yeah. I thought.
• 28:37
  I thought y'all was going to say Phil.
• 28:38
  That's the only reason. I asked who it was.
• 28:40
  No, not Phil. It's another one of our buddies.
• 28:42
  But he's also actually, you know what, Brian, I might actually
• 28:45
  talk to Robbie about his new purchase if he wants to sponsor
• 28:49
  it on here. Yeah, that that's a good idea.
• 28:52
  Seriously, I think that'd be a good idea.
• 28:55
  We'll let y'all know about it after the show.
• 28:57
  The guy too. All right, let's get to what we
• 29:00
  really want to talk about. Let's talk some football.
• 29:02
  Let's start with the recruiting aspect first, because since we
• 29:07
  last came on here, the recruiting has been absolutely
• 29:12
  on fire. It is something that I can say I
• 29:17
  don't remember every. I can't recall.
• 29:20
  I can't personally recall the last time we sat in the teens.
• 29:25
  Yes, I know it's. Made.
• 29:28
  I don't remember. The last time we were in the
• 29:29
  teens and right now per the site that Doug writes 4247, we are
• 29:35
  17th in the country. And this isn't with like 3 or 4
• 29:40
  recruits. This is with 11 recruits.
• 29:43
  And if you look around, nobody around us has like 5 or 6.
• 29:47
  Everybody's in that same boat. 10111213 And so Doug, I want to
• 29:52
  start there and just you know, I know you do different writings,
• 29:55
  but obviously it's the site you're right for.
• 29:58
  But what are what is your just initial thoughts of this wave
• 30:04
  right out of the gate with James Franklin and and just the amount
• 30:09
  of the commits and the quality of the commits?
• 30:12
  Yeah, I think the latter part is the big piece of it, the quality
• 30:17
  of the commence. I feel like every year around
• 30:20
  this time you get a run on commits in May and June.
• 30:25
  People have taken their official visits in this decision time
• 30:28
  spots. You know, you start to see the
• 30:30
  puzzle pieces play out of the spots getting taken out, taken
• 30:33
  up and stuff. But I think the big difference
• 30:35
  this year is, is really why you hired James Franklin.
• 30:38
  It's his recruiting ability you look at.
• 30:42
  I think there's been a noticeable difference in the
• 30:45
  competition that Virginia Tech is winning these battles against
• 30:49
  compared to previous years. I started just jotting these
• 30:52
  down. This was last week, but so I've
• 30:56
  only got a handful of them. But like Alex Taylor, they just
• 31:01
  going based off the 247 article that says he chose Virginia Tech
• 31:04
  over these these schools, you know, A&M, Tennessee, Auburn,
• 31:10
  Xavier Perkins, Miami, Louisville, Joseph Buchanan, NC
• 31:13
  State, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kelvin Morrison, Penn State,
• 31:16
  Miami, Braxton Solster, the tight end from Ole Miss, Auburn,
• 31:21
  Baylor. Like it just feels like a
• 31:25
  different level of competition that Virginia Tech is recruiting
• 31:29
  and winning recruiting battles against.
• 31:31
  And that's solely because of James Franklin and his
• 31:35
  recruiting ability, how his track record sells itself, which
• 31:38
  helps when you're recruiting to a new place like Virginia Tech.
• 31:41
  But you see them just like it's definitely feels different
• 31:46
  immediately in terms of just the quality of prospect they're
• 31:51
  getting in terms of like the the other schools also recruiting
• 31:55
  these players. Yeah.
• 31:57
  And you talk about the quality of the thing that I'd like to
• 31:59
  look at. You know, I love the overall
• 32:02
  ranking, you see it in the teams, but when you start
• 32:04
  looking at that average recruit rank, that that's that's where I
• 32:08
  always look as far as a class in terms of, you know, how good is
• 32:12
  this class and, and making those comparisons to kind of other
• 32:16
  schools in that same area. And you know, that checks out
• 32:19
  just as well, if not better than than just looking at that
• 32:23
  overall range, just because you know, volume a lot of times
• 32:26
  plays a factor in that and things like that.
• 32:28
  Where is that average recruit rank?
• 32:30
  You know, that's that's going to be there, you know, regardless
• 32:32
  of the the the size of the class that you're taking in.
• 32:36
  And and that's continued to trick trickle up and up and up.
• 32:39
  And now we're, you know, looking at kind of the mid 80 eights,
• 32:43
  you know, pretty consistently looking at how Franklin wrapped
• 32:46
  up last class and kind of where this class is standing right
• 32:48
  now. And and you got some some heavy
• 32:51
  hitters, you know, on the clock here coming up.
• 32:55
  So you know that that could that could go way up here, you know,
• 33:00
  potentially in a couple days. So excited for the quality,
• 33:05
  excited to see us flip DeMarcus Brown.
• 33:08
  I think that was, you know, it's always good when you can eat off
• 33:11
  of little brother's plate a little bit in the process of
• 33:15
  getting a quality prospect. And then, you know, Chase
• 33:19
  Johnson sneaking in there. And you hadn't really heard a
• 33:21
  whole lot about, you know, Virginia Tech being, you know,
• 33:25
  super in play there. And then, you know, he he
• 33:26
  commits. And I thought that was a big
• 33:29
  one, you know, beating out Florida State for that one.
• 33:31
  So I mean, there's just so many good things that are happening
• 33:34
  with this class so far. That's got to be excited.
• 33:36
  The recruiting, the average recruiting ranking is notable.
• 33:40
  I think for what where we are kind of in the, the cycle of
• 33:44
  like you want that to be pretty high at this point, because that
• 33:46
  means you're, you're hitting at the top of your board or close
• 33:50
  to the top of the board versus having to kind of go down
• 33:54
  further the you miss on your top targets.
• 33:56
  And then you're you're kind of going down the board for a
• 33:59
  lower, lower ranked guy. So that's exactly what you want
• 34:03
  to see. I think the other thing that's
• 34:04
  notable, you talked about Chase Johnson, you can throw Salster
• 34:08
  in there from, from Alabama, but Stanley's smart from Georgia.
• 34:12
  They're they're, they're stretching the footprint down
• 34:15
  into the Southeast. Right off the bat, you knew
• 34:18
  James Franklin was going to recruit Pennsylvania, Maryland
• 34:21
  and Northern Virginia. Like it's the back of his hand.
• 34:24
  You knew he was going to go, he's going to be able to go into
• 34:26
  Charlotte and around the state of Virginia and kind of within
• 34:30
  that like 3 hour radius of Virginia Tech is probably going
• 34:33
  to sell itself with James Franklin where he didn't have as
• 34:37
  much experience as going further South into Georgia specifically.
• 34:42
  I think Norval McKenzie probably was a strategic hire for that.
• 34:48
  But when you can kind of everyone talks about the six
• 34:50
  hour radius and when you can start to really push those
• 34:53
  boundaries and take full advantage of the of that of the
• 34:58
  of the radius or footprint or whatever you want to call it.
• 35:01
  I think that's, it's especially notable right off the bat.
• 35:04
  You know, we're only five months into this tenure, basically.
• 35:07
  Yeah, yeah, Stretching into that more, more of a 10 hour radius,
• 35:11
  you know, reaching down into, you know, parts of Florida,
• 35:14
  getting into Georgia, getting, you know, all those states
• 35:17
  where, you know, the, the depth of, of the classes coming out of
• 35:22
  those states is so much greater than what you see in Virginia.
• 35:26
  And, you know, there's a lot of factors that play into that.
• 35:30
  And you still have to, you know, I think you still have to
• 35:33
  Virginia still needs to be a focus.
• 35:36
  But at the same time, once you're out of the, you know, top
• 35:39
  15, top 20 of the state, you can probably reach in some of those
• 35:43
  other States and get a comparable, you know, comparable
• 35:46
  talent. Chase Johnson.
• 35:49
  You know, much, much further down, much further down there in
• 35:52
  state list. But as far as their overall
• 35:55
  ranking is concerned, would be would you know, they'd be a a
• 35:58
  top ten player if they were, you know, simply ranked in Virginia,
• 36:01
  So 100. Percent talent, you've been
• 36:02
  quiet. What do you what do you want to
• 36:04
  say on this matter? No, man, I'm just listening.
• 36:06
  I mean, I kind of hit on what I was going to say.
• 36:10
  I'm glad of course they're putting a, you know, emphasis on
• 36:14
  trying to recruit the state and the footprint.
• 36:17
  But the footprint is you got to get talent as well now, not no
• 36:20
  stupid ass shit like Texas, the Vt and let's forget about
• 36:24
  Virginia. You know, of course we're not
• 36:26
  thinking that. But just like you were saying, I
• 36:30
  think Curtis was saying, or maybe Brian, when you look at
• 36:35
  some of the caliber of recruits, just the depth that some of the
• 36:40
  some of the recruits or states have for the recruits, you
• 36:44
  might, you may be looking at a 50th in the state, but he's
• 36:48
  ranked at 89. You know, it's just different.
• 36:52
  Sometimes at the end, listening to what some of the recruits
• 36:55
  say, I can't remember which was I think it was the running back
• 36:58
  from Georgia when Kobe did an interview with him and he just
• 37:02
  talked about, you know, why now what, what was the time?
• 37:05
  Why was it the time to to commit?
• 37:07
  And he's saying, you know, I got to get in.
• 37:09
  I don't want to lose my spot. You know what I'm saying?
• 37:12
  Like who it is me, you know what I'm saying?
• 37:15
  And you got you got kids already saying that about Virginia Tech
• 37:19
  when we were begging people to to come in at some points, not
• 37:22
  all the time, but you know, sometimes in our recruiting
• 37:26
  Fuente Aras, we had people that we was just trying to get a kid
• 37:29
  in, you know, just trying to get anybody to.
• 37:31
  And and now you got kids saying, you know, I'm just I got to get
• 37:36
  in early so I don't lose my spot because I would hate for
• 37:39
  somebody to take my spot and I not have that spot.
• 37:41
  I know that building something up there.
• 37:43
  So kudos to the to the staff and James Franklin, you know, like
• 37:49
  you said, stretching that that footprint.
• 37:53
  I don't know did we I I looked at the I was look, when you
• 37:55
  asked me what I was doing. I was looking at the the
• 37:58
  rundown. Curtis, did we talk about the
• 38:01
  big recruit on Thursday in the rundown in it we're.
• 38:04
  Going to get. There, we don't get there.
• 38:05
  Hold. On We're going to get there.
• 38:07
  I was trying to see it. I didn't know if we, I didn't
• 38:09
  know if it was on there, so I didn't want to that was.
• 38:11
  I was not on there, I missed it, but Brian brought.
• 38:13
  It up. I'll say this, I'll say this,
• 38:16
  I'll say this. What?
• 38:17
  Because Doug brought him up. The kid from Alabama is good.
• 38:21
  The kid from Alabama is good. He's a phenomenal athlete at a
• 38:26
  very, he's a big fish in a small pond right now.
• 38:30
  He goes to one of the smaller schools in Alabama.
• 38:33
  I think it's a two way school and he is dominating people in
• 38:38
  that until they get to the playoffs, there's nobody who can
• 38:41
  do what he's doing that he plays against.
• 38:44
  All of the schools are going to be similar to to him or to his
• 38:47
  school. I think they may have went like
• 38:49
  10 and two last year. You know, they may have been not
• 38:53
  one lost one game in the regular season.
• 38:56
  But just thinking about like that is a usually that's a
• 39:02
  Auburn type of player. I wouldn't say Alabama caliber
• 39:06
  for how Alabama recruits, but most of the time Auburn comes in
• 39:11
  and didn't even you know, schools like you know, South
• 39:14
  Alabama, but even when we stay in the SEC like Ole Miss was
• 39:18
  hard on this kid. So for them to sneak in, you
• 39:22
  know, down in Pleasant Valley, Alabama, which is Jacksonville.
• 39:26
  I went to Jacksonville State his his his school is in
• 39:29
  Jacksonville, AL for them to sneak in and be like, hey, we
• 39:31
  need you to come here for a athlete like that. 65 he plays
• 39:35
  basketball. It just lets me know like the
• 39:38
  recruiting, you know, prowess that they have that they're
• 39:43
  they're going after it man. And I, I, it's interesting to
• 39:46
  see it makes it fun again. You know what I'm saying?
• 39:48
  Like now I got to put Doug on. I got to turn my notices on for
• 39:52
  Doug and Kobe and Evan so I can know what's going on because for
• 39:57
  years I was just like, man, it don't matter.
• 39:59
  I don't care. You know what I'm saying?
• 40:00
  That you going to give me what, 858482?
• 40:04
  No disrespect to the kids, man, you know, but I'm just being
• 40:08
  real now. I got a now I'm getting excited
• 40:11
  about it a little bit more because I mean, when you start
• 40:14
  saying, I know sometimes when people write the articles, they
• 40:18
  may say, oh, he chose Virginia take over this school, right?
• 40:23
  But if you really look at it and you go back, because I go follow
• 40:27
  visits and things like that and I'm like, oh, this coach was in
• 40:30
  to see this kid. Oh, this he's got pictures.
• 40:33
  He just went there. OK, we doing something, Curtis,
• 40:37
  I ain't mean I ain't mean to step in front of you, man.
• 40:39
  What you had to say you. Didn't step in front of me, but
• 40:41
  obviously I was going to kind of let us go around and talk about
• 40:44
  the recent wave of commits, and I expected you to talk about
• 40:47
  Braxton. He's from Alabama, you know
• 40:49
  about him. But I'm going to flip it to our
• 40:51
  guest, Doug, of all these recent commits of this big groundswell
• 40:55
  that's been happening in the last about 3 weeks here.
• 40:58
  Is there a certain 1 you point out just like that kid right
• 41:02
  there, whether it's Tate, his offer list, maybe things you
• 41:05
  read about him. Is there one that just pops out
• 41:07
  to you? That's like, that's my guy,
• 41:09
  That's who? I'm glad we got them in the
• 41:12
  boat. I I'm going to go with Brian's
• 41:14
  guy, but DeMarcus Brown, I think a wide receiver, I think
• 41:18
  Virginia Tech has recruited with Fontel Mines has recruited the
• 41:22
  wide receiver position extremely well on paper for the last
• 41:26
  several years. It hasn't quite yet paid off on
• 41:29
  the field. So like continuing to stock that
• 41:32
  position is a big one for me. I know they got Roberts too of
• 41:35
  that's at that spot, but taking up he's a composite 4 star from
• 41:41
  your in state rival at this point of the process, like
• 41:47
  pretty pretty solid job. You know, not like a late in the
• 41:50
  cycle type flip. So they did a really good job
• 41:53
  recruiting him and he's he's one of those that's one of those
• 41:56
  premium positions. One of James Franklin's like go
• 41:58
  to quotes these days. Is that like, what does he say?
• 42:01
  He says running backs have to make like 3 people or four
• 42:05
  people miss before they're gone, whereas receivers like they make
• 42:10
  one guy miss and they're gone. So he's trying to put a a big
• 42:13
  premium on on the wide receiver position, maybe more so than he
• 42:16
  did at Penn State. But I think Brown in particular
• 42:20
  at, you know, the 247 has him at six, 3 1/2 is a four-star wide
• 42:26
  receiver. That's the kind of like high
• 42:28
  level talent that you just need to stock at that position.
• 42:31
  So you have like 3 really good ones at the top of your depth
• 42:35
  chart. Brian is George.
• 42:37
  DeMarcus, is that your guy right now?
• 42:39
  Do you have another one? It it's between him and Chase
• 42:41
  Johnson and I mean, just look at looking at both of those.
• 42:46
  Yeah, those are areas that you need to get some bodies in
• 42:49
  there, you know, outside of the trenches, you know, you want to
• 42:52
  get as many cornerbacks and and wide receivers in the room.
• 42:56
  It it's a position that, you know, if, if things go well,
• 43:01
  they can play quickly and I think that that's important as
• 43:04
  we're trying to level up the talent in this roster is, is
• 43:07
  getting those, you know, high caliber, high, high profile
• 43:11
  players in the building and, and see what they can do right away.
• 43:14
  Probably cornerback, even more so than wide receiver, you know,
• 43:18
  if, if, if a cornerback has a skill set, you know, you can get
• 43:23
  them out there pretty quick. So you get more bodies in the
• 43:26
  building like a, like a Chase Johnson.
• 43:27
  I think it's going to be be real important to continue to keep
• 43:31
  the, the trajectory of that room moving forward because you know,
• 43:34
  when we look back, just, you know, just to last year, man,
• 43:39
  that room was in complete shambles.
• 43:42
  And, and, and what Franklin has been able to do with wrapping up
• 43:46
  the 26th cycle in the transfer portal and now what he's
• 43:50
  starting to do in the 27th cycle.
• 43:52
  I mean, this is really turning something that was an absolute
• 43:57
  negative in 2025 into, you know, you're looking at A at a pretty
• 44:02
  good plus room heading into this year and it's only going to get
• 44:04
  better as this class grows up all.
• 44:07
  Right. I'm, I'm going to throw mine out
• 44:09
  there before we hit that topic that's happening on Thursday
• 44:11
  that Tally wants to talk about, but I want to go Kelvin
• 44:16
  Morrison. Well, first of all, we've been
• 44:18
  talking about James Franklin starting to create a further
• 44:21
  footprint down South. Doug, I'm with you.
• 44:24
  The reason Norville was, the reason Norville was hired was
• 44:28
  for that. Georgia, South Carolina,
• 44:29
  Alabama, The reason Fontell was kept on because of that.
• 44:32
  The reason Matt Moore was kept on was because of the Ohio, New
• 44:35
  Jersey type connections that he's always made.
• 44:38
  So he made a very conscientious effort to make sure we've got to
• 44:42
  go further South because to what Tally said, what we're all
• 44:45
  agreeing to here is some of those states, the 50th ranked
• 44:48
  player is as good as the top ten, top 15 in other states.
• 44:53
  And when you snatch one of them, that's how you start building
• 44:55
  depth. But the Morrison pick, for me,
• 44:57
  it's more of he is that borderline 4 star running back
• 45:00
  out of Pennsylvania. But it shows that he is not
• 45:03
  going to forget that area. Doug, you said he should have a
• 45:07
  problem recruiting, but he's proven I'm not going to forget
• 45:09
  about y'all. Yes, I moved down to Virginia.
• 45:11
  Virginia's still our home base, but I'm going to keep coming
• 45:13
  back up north. I'm going to keep looking for
• 45:15
  players in this area to come in. We lost Brian.
• 45:18
  That's very strange. I don't know what's going on
• 45:20
  there. So hopefully we'll jump back on
• 45:22
  in a second. Here my Internet.
• 45:24
  He stole your Internet, You stole his Internet.
• 45:25
  That's when it went on there. But when you see that, I think
• 45:31
  that's what happened last week. But when you see that, when you
• 45:34
  see him continuously pulling a four-star out of there and then
• 45:37
  like the Saint Francis Academy guys out of Maryland, it's like
• 45:40
  he's not forgetting about what he built Penn State into.
• 45:44
  But now he's winding that base and he's getting into the Deep
• 45:47
  South. And obviously we expect probably
• 45:49
  Florida kids to start hopping on.
• 45:51
  And I think that's the piece because if you tell Doug we're a
• 45:56
  little bit older than you, like what made Virginia Tech,
• 45:58
  Virginia Tech back in the day it was Pennsylvania, Maryland,
• 46:01
  Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
• 46:04
  Georgia, and then some Florida kids, those eight states Duvall
• 46:09
  in the Fort. Lauderdale area in Fort
• 46:11
  Lauderdale area and if you say. He's getting that back and it's
• 46:15
  not just he's just going in there getting a player.
• 46:17
  He is getting, you know, in the world's of Chase Johnson, a top
• 46:21
  50 player of the state. And he's.
• 46:25
  Topped like 400 in the country. It's like way zone.
• 46:27
  That's where it changes so. I think another thing.
• 46:31
  Too, Curtis, just to kind of piggyback on what you're saying,
• 46:35
  it's like, you know, of course when you're talking recruiting
• 46:37
  this, the next recruit, the next class, the current class, we
• 46:42
  still have people from the 26th class that hadn't come in yet.
• 46:46
  And the reason I'm saying that is because they're going to be
• 46:48
  very pivotal parts of what we're looking at doing.
• 46:52
  Pierce, what Peterson, I think his name is very because I'm
• 46:55
  talking about the tight end from Alabama, you know, that that
• 46:59
  they, they that they've got to commit.
• 47:02
  But this kid is supposed to be there, you know, here in just a
• 47:05
  little bit. He's he's a very talented tight
• 47:07
  end. You know what I'm saying?
• 47:08
  Did you think about some of the recruiting that we've done in
• 47:11
  the past? We would, you know, maybe get a
• 47:14
  four-star here or, you know, get a four-star here and then we
• 47:17
  forget the position for two or three years.
• 47:20
  Tommy Wilder. Tommy Wilder is not even on
• 47:23
  campus yet. He's a four-star, you know,
• 47:26
  lineman that that we're still wearing the fat rat Brown.
• 47:29
  You know, when you talk about those kids coming in and then
• 47:33
  you already are stacking other kids behind them.
• 47:37
  That's how you build the depth. You know what I'm saying?
• 47:39
  Every it seems like it's just been, you know, that last
• 47:43
  recruiting cycle. Now we're moving into this one
• 47:46
  and you can see the depth starting to build with some of
• 47:50
  the positions that they're doing.
• 47:51
  So we talk about like DeMarcus Brown and then Fat Rat Brown
• 47:55
  both getting in there and being in that wide receiver room.
• 47:59
  Because how many times at Tech have we been like, oh man, we're
• 48:01
  going to have a great year and this one player gets injured and
• 48:05
  it's like it throws everything in disarray, You know what I'm
• 48:08
  saying? And I get it, star players are
• 48:11
  star players for a reason. But how many times does that
• 48:14
  happen at other schools? Somebody gets injured and being
• 48:17
  a star is born. You know what I'm saying?
• 48:19
  This person gets injured and somebody else steps up and you
• 48:22
  know, they have a great year for that team.
• 48:25
  I don't wish for anybody to get injured by no means.
• 48:27
  That's not what I'm saying. But I'm just saying you got to
• 48:29
  have depth in football. And I think that's one of the
• 48:31
  big things that we have lacked in the past.
• 48:34
  And I can see with the recruiting and the people that
• 48:37
  they brought in through the transport portal that it's it's
• 48:41
  getting a lot better. So yeah, that's the big thing
• 48:45
  with. The blue chip ratio is something
• 48:48
  I follow pretty closely the the ratio of four stars and five
• 48:51
  stars you get compared to everyone else.
• 48:54
  Indiana finally broke it from the national championship
• 48:57
  perspective, but I but it's still like a good metric in
• 49:00
  terms of do you have enough talent on the roster to survive
• 49:05
  the injury, to survive the portal guide, to survive that.
• 49:09
  Like it's a measure of kind of the margin for error you've
• 49:12
  given yourself for all the roster shenanigans that happened
• 49:16
  these days in college football. If you're like it's a you see
• 49:21
  that the NFL draft now all the time, but like if you recruit 4
• 49:24
  stars and five stars more often, like you're going to be fine the
• 49:28
  vast majority of the time. 1% Tex at 11.
• 49:31
  Go ahead, you. Go ahead.
• 49:33
  Finish off. I didn't.
• 49:35
  I was. Just going to say Tex at 11.
• 49:36
  Blue chips since Franklin took over, which is class and a half,
• 49:43
  I guess class and a quarter, that's the most in a two class
• 49:47
  period or that's the third most in a two class period. 2526 and
• 49:55
  then going back that 2017, 2018-2019 run that Fuente was on
• 50:01
  before it went sour. And that's basically it for the
• 50:04
  last 25 years of machine tech football.
• 50:06
  So like he's already, he's already approaching like the
• 50:09
  most talent that has ever been brought in in such a short
• 50:12
  period of time. Yeah.
• 50:14
  And and. The problem with you.
• 50:16
  When you look at the the Fuente situation is that talent came in
• 50:19
  the building, but it most of it quickly went out of the
• 50:22
  building. And I think that that's that's
• 50:25
  where someone like James Franklin, who has even in the
• 50:28
  transfer portal in NIL time frame, has done a really good
• 50:32
  job of retaining the talent that he recruits.
• 50:36
  So that that's where that comes into play as well.
• 50:39
  And we've you talk about the pillars that he has for the
• 50:41
  program, you know, recruiting your current roster and keeping
• 50:45
  those guys in the building, making sure that they're they're
• 50:49
  locked in. They understand what their role
• 50:51
  in the team is and taking care of those guys.
• 50:53
  That's been a priority for him. It was a priority at Penn State.
• 50:56
  And he's doubled down on that commitment, it sounds like at
• 51:00
  Virginia Tech so far. So that's going to be important
• 51:04
  moving forward as well. And you know, it's good to have
• 51:06
  someone like Franklin that has a history of navigating not only
• 51:12
  getting talent in the building, but keeping that talent in the
• 51:15
  building. I think I think it's history is.
• 51:18
  Probably what drives a lot of that, it's like, yeah, you can
• 51:21
  leave, but you're not like you're not guaranteed to find
• 51:24
  somebody better. You're taking a pretty.
• 51:27
  Sizable risk. To leave a James Franklin coach
• 51:30
  program, maybe that maybe that ends up being more true at a
• 51:33
  Penn State type program than Virginia Tech, but it's still
• 51:35
  that kind of like trust and track record that sells itself
• 51:39
  of like, I'm already here and I'm close if you're not close.
• 51:44
  You're probably going to leave. Anyway, but for those guys that
• 51:46
  are close and could go either way, it feels like with a little
• 51:50
  bit more track record, a little bit more winning, it becomes
• 51:54
  harder and harder to leave. Yeah, and to Tally's point, I.
• 51:59
  Mean, you know. You talk about the injuries, you
• 52:01
  know, when we looked at that last year, I mean, we had really
• 52:04
  three position groups that were, you know, an injury or an opt
• 52:08
  out from being OK. We we can, we can live with,
• 52:12
  with the talent that we have to all right, this room is a
• 52:15
  problem and that, you know, with this cornerback, it's offensive
• 52:17
  line. It was defensive line,
• 52:19
  particularly defensive end. We couldn't rush the passer.
• 52:21
  We already had a cornerback room in shambles and that's that's a
• 52:25
  recipe to to not have a very good defense.
• 52:29
  And if you can't protect your quarterback, then you've got all
• 52:32
  sorts of other problems on the other side of the football.
• 52:34
  So that that's that's how you that's how a season that wasn't
• 52:38
  going to be good to begin with went off the runs pretty quick
• 52:41
  last year and and then. To your point.
• 52:45
  Doug with like, Franklin and his track record, well, when
• 52:48
  literally after the NFL draft, they start popping up, oh, what
• 52:52
  schools have the most NFL talent?
• 52:55
  And it's like Penn State is 6. And it's just like we get to
• 52:58
  raise our hand and be like, hey, that head coach is here now that
• 53:01
  head coach is here. He's not up there anymore.
• 53:03
  He's down here. It's like they're literally
• 53:06
  doing a sales pitch for the new coach to a new program, which is
• 53:10
  unbelievable, All right? Speaking.
• 53:13
  Of blue. Chips.
• 53:15
  Speaking of blue chips, that. Ratio.
• 53:18
  Has a potential chance to get even better on Thursday with
• 53:23
  Peter Fort if y'all. I have a feeling everybody
• 53:27
  snows, but if y'all have not looked up Peter Bork.
• 53:29
  This is 247. This is Doug's site.
• 53:32
  He is the 7th ranked quarterback in the country.
• 53:34
  He is the 80th ranked player in the country.
• 53:37
  He is the top player in Massachusetts.
• 53:39
  He is 6 foot 4. He is 220 lbs.
• 53:42
  His offer list is long and it seems like it's down to Georgia.
• 53:50
  His offer list is insanely long with a lot of really good teams.
• 53:54
  It seems like it's down to Georgia and us.
• 53:56
  Doug, whatever you can tell us how you're feeling about this,
• 54:01
  let us know because we are right at 36 hours or so the way you
• 54:06
  think he's announcing in the morning I.
• 54:10
  Do not, I do not know when he's. Announcing exactly.
• 54:12
  I think last I saw it was still TBD.
• 54:15
  It's Thursday sometime right? Thursday.
• 54:17
  Sometime I'm not sure what when. Exactly.
• 54:20
  Thursday, 12:00 PM. They got it up, Yeah.
• 54:22
  All right. So we are right at 36 hours.
• 54:26
  This this is. Really a fascinating kind of
• 54:29
  when you think about where, where, where Virgin Tech was in
• 54:31
  the fall and now they're recruiting one of the top
• 54:34
  quarterbacks in the country against Georgia and Penn State.
• 54:37
  Pretty ridiculous, but it's just a fascinating, like, this level
• 54:42
  of recruiting is something Virginia Tech has not done and
• 54:45
  like, has not competed for this level of recruiting.
• 54:49
  Who knows how long maybe. Josh.
• 54:50
  Josh Wet was the last one way back when.
• 54:55
  But like today, they just you know, the story just came out of
• 54:59
  his high school or I think hosted a camp of sorts of
• 55:03
  showcase and Georgia, Penn State, Virginia, this guy's
• 55:06
  deciding less than 48 hours and all three Staffs are right there
• 55:10
  on the sideline watching them. So it's just like this is the
• 55:15
  level of this is the recruiting that you do at the top of the
• 55:18
  SEC and the top of the Big 10 and for for his level of
• 55:24
  quarterback at the most important position on the field.
• 55:27
  But it's it's a big one. I have no idea where it's going
• 55:31
  to go. I think, I think you get down as
• 55:34
  tight as this has been and with all the dominoes, you know, you
• 55:37
  start following the wood kid that Penn State is supposedly
• 55:42
  like, I don't know whether he's their number one choice or he's
• 55:46
  their fall back option. Apparently George's been
• 55:50
  recruiting other quarterbacks. So you start to try and follow
• 55:53
  the musical chairs of what's happening.
• 55:57
  So we'll see. The other thing that is that
• 56:00
  I'll say at the like, at this level of recruit, it's been
• 56:03
  crazy things happen at the last second programs.
• 56:07
  Decide to go for it. When they decide to spend that
• 56:12
  extra resource to make it happen if that's what they need to get
• 56:15
  it across the finish line. So I think the next 48 hours or
• 56:20
  less than 48 hours at this point will probably generate one of
• 56:24
  those great post signing day stories of like what it was like
• 56:27
  going back and forth, especially in today's age with all the
• 56:30
  agents and stuff. But it like getting him on the
• 56:35
  heels of getting, you know, Troy Hoon last year, another
• 56:38
  four-star quarterback really sets up Tech's quarterback room
• 56:43
  with a lot of high level talent. And I mean, that's what you need
• 56:47
  to do at the quarterback position is laying one of those
• 56:49
  guys every year. Eventually you hit a home run on
• 56:52
  them and you you'll you'll have a higher hit rate when you're
• 56:55
  recruiting at the Bork level than Keldon Ryan.
• 56:59
  No disrect, disrect to him, but Knox Kadem, all the all the guys
• 57:03
  that tech was trying to do that with Pop Watson, like good
• 57:08
  strategy. It's just going to take a while
• 57:10
  to find the diamond in the rough kind of thing at that level of
• 57:13
  quarterback recruiting. But Hoon and followed by Bork
• 57:17
  like would be quite impressive and like kind of set up the the
• 57:20
  next probably phase two of the Franklin era if you think about
• 57:23
  Grunk Meyer being phase one. Yeah, I mean, I think.
• 57:27
  You know, if you're able. To land Bork, I think that would
• 57:28
  be the highest composite quarterback commit since Logan
• 57:33
  Thomas. So it wasn't really a
• 57:35
  quarterback. For.
• 57:36
  Commit at the time. All right, I saw.
• 57:38
  Somebody was discussing. It today on our board about like
• 57:42
  Brian Randall was probably the late like he's the best since
• 57:46
  Brian Randall, which was O2 O three yeah in terms of
• 57:51
  quarterback prospect. Yeah, I mean.
• 57:57
  It's wild, man. It's it's going to be
• 57:59
  interesting to see how the next 30 to 6 hours shake out because
• 58:02
  you know that that's something that can you know that, that.
• 58:07
  Has a ripple effect. Across the rest of the class,
• 58:10
  you know, getting somebody like that in the building, so excited
• 58:13
  to see how that shakes out for the Hokies and what sort of
• 58:17
  ripples it causes for the rest of the class.
• 58:19
  And, you know, whether it has that that coattails effect that
• 58:23
  you you sometimes see with a recruit like that.
• 58:25
  Yeah, so. Tally anything y'all want to.
• 58:29
  Put a cap on it. Scared to death, scared to.
• 58:32
  Death, I ain't going to lie to you.
• 58:35
  Scared to death. He going to be Tally.
• 58:37
  Ain't getting nothing done at work on on on Thursday until
• 58:41
  that commitment. So he going to be refreshed,
• 58:44
  refreshed going on the boards, following Doug, following Evan,
• 58:48
  following the take because I've been I've been on the.
• 58:51
  Boards too much. There's been all kind of stuff
• 58:54
  going on. You know, that's a paywall.
• 58:57
  So I ain't going to tell y'all if y'all want it, they give good
• 58:59
  deals. Go on there, get your
• 59:00
  subscription. But I can say, man, it is still
• 59:04
  is exciting just to see. But I don't know man.
• 59:07
  It's just usually me being a Virginia Tech fan.
• 59:10
  This doesn't end well for us speaking.
• 59:13
  It don't end well for us. Why did the office of lineman
• 59:16
  had to throw our hat? Oh yeah.
• 59:20
  Yeah. Why did he have to?
• 59:23
  Throw our hat. Like what did we do to it?
• 59:26
  What did we do to it? We didn't.
• 59:28
  Do anything to it? I don't know.
• 59:31
  He said that kid, he said that kid if he ever, if he fails at
• 59:34
  life. He got to come back to rolling
• 59:36
  up. I need a job.
• 59:39
  No. You ain't getting a job here.
• 59:41
  No one else would, don't you? Don't you have nothing on?
• 59:45
  You head on back to Janesville, brother.
• 59:47
  Head back to the ain't ain't going in Gainesville.
• 59:49
  All right, so. We're going to kind of put a
• 59:51
  wrap on recruiting. Again, great spots.
• 59:54
  Thanks Doug for all the info there, the insights and just
• 59:58
  your thoughts on that because we do respect them significantly.
• 1:00:02
  Let's flip up to where we said we were going to talk about
• 1:00:04
  initially because you know we want to bring these things up
• 1:00:07
  because we have not talked about them and obviously over the last
• 1:00:11
  few weeks couple things have happened.
• 1:00:13
  Within the realm of Virginia Tech, that may not directly
• 1:00:16
  affect the football program, but the, the, the, the strategies
• 1:00:21
  and all that stuff are going to be affected significantly.
• 1:00:24
  And that is Tim Sands announces his retirement.
• 1:00:29
  So Doug, you know, obviously you were there as an undergrad when
• 1:00:33
  Sands first came on, correct? And obviously you've seen the
• 1:00:36
  last decade plus of, you know, everything that's happened.
• 1:00:39
  But what's just your two? Thoughts.
• 1:00:44
  Thoughts on him in general? For what he did at the school
• 1:00:47
  and then the thought on how this retirement and when this
• 1:00:50
  retirement happened. I think.
• 1:00:53
  It's hard to not being in tune with what makes a truly
• 1:00:59
  successful president of university on the academic side.
• 1:01:04
  It's a little hard to, for me to like pass a grade on on him
• 1:01:07
  overall. I think, you know, I, I know the
• 1:01:11
  Amazon thing up in Northern Virginia is going to be a long
• 1:01:13
  term like, like great, great long term play for Virginia
• 1:01:19
  Tech. He, I know he also hired Charlie
• 1:01:22
  Fleeger, who's Virginia Tech's advancement director of advanced
• 1:01:27
  advancement. I guess who if you look at their
• 1:01:30
  like university side fundraising numbers over the last 10 years.
• 1:01:34
  He retired last summer. I guess end of last summer
• 1:01:39
  Fleeger did. But like that was a smashing
• 1:01:42
  success as well. So like you, you, you can point
• 1:01:45
  to some stuff that sounds good. I'm sure other people who are
• 1:01:48
  way more in tune with University Rankings and all that stuff.
• 1:01:51
  I know AAU membership has been a big goal.
• 1:01:55
  That's been something that was like frequently in board of
• 1:02:02
  visitors meetings, discussions in terms of like where, where,
• 1:02:06
  where's Virginia? Tech in terms of.
• 1:02:07
  Its peers that are a member of the AU so that you can you can
• 1:02:12
  tell they want to get in there and it didn't happen under his
• 1:02:15
  watch. So maybe that's something that
• 1:02:17
  you Ding him for, but I don't know.
• 1:02:19
  I think I think overall then you.
• 1:02:23
  Then you bring in the athletics. Discussion which was just a
• 1:02:26
  fail, but just there's no other way to the to look at that.
• 1:02:31
  He was the president. Virginia Tech was not successful
• 1:02:35
  in football except you can give him 2016 and 2019.
• 1:02:40
  The athletic director who was in charge of athletics was still
• 1:02:43
  the athletic director until the very end.
• 1:02:46
  Like it's just that that that will be a big part of his
• 1:02:50
  legacy, just like it's a big part of Stevens legacy in terms
• 1:02:55
  of like what Virginia Tech was able to do in athletics during
• 1:02:58
  his tenure. So that's that's notable as far
• 1:03:02
  as the departure going back. To athletics, it definitely
• 1:03:06
  speed. It up you know the rumors for
• 1:03:10
  for a long time were that he was going to wrap up in 27 and and
• 1:03:13
  ride off in the sunset retire then was probably going to give
• 1:03:17
  Virginia Tech a nice patient presidential presidential search
• 1:03:23
  on that timeline. But like the just lack of
• 1:03:25
  success on the football side eventually led this board of
• 1:03:29
  visitors to take the action that they have taken over the last
• 1:03:33
  you know since that August August presentation and speed
• 1:03:37
  all of this up. You know Sands is writing
• 1:03:41
  editorials and like inside higher Ed about the future of
• 1:03:45
  college sports like a month before his announcement.
• 1:03:49
  So, you know, I think I think he still probably wanted to retire
• 1:03:53
  in 27 as planned, but when like the timeline just got out of
• 1:03:58
  whack when Tech was not successful in athletics and they
• 1:04:02
  they could not wait to to replace him and try and hire a
• 1:04:08
  new. Athletic.
• 1:04:09
  Director and all that stuff like that.
• 1:04:11
  It had to flow in that sense. So they had to, they had to push
• 1:04:15
  him, push him out a little earlier than I think the
• 1:04:18
  intended plan would have been. I'm, I'm going to say this,
• 1:04:21
  Brian, I know. You're going to kind of jump
• 1:04:23
  into the next thing. His statement still, I think it
• 1:04:26
  was 18. Eventually this.
• 1:04:29
  College Sports. Bubble is going to burst eight
• 1:04:32
  years later, Timmy. It ain't burst buddy.
• 1:04:35
  It's just gotten bigger. In your thought, his thought
• 1:04:38
  process on it has been completely incorrect.
• 1:04:42
  It's gotten bigger. It's got even stronger with some
• 1:04:45
  of the TV deals and to me, again, not from a higher
• 1:04:49
  education because I think from an education point of view and
• 1:04:51
  what he did for that wonderful. But when he said that that
• 1:04:55
  irritated a lot of people. We we didn't get there.
• 1:04:59
  Me, me and Brian. Tyler didn't go there.
• 1:05:01
  Like, you know, me and Brian got in.
• 1:05:02
  Tyler played football down at Jacksonville State, but it's
• 1:05:06
  like. We didn't go here.
• 1:05:08
  But this is our team. This is our team from when we
• 1:05:10
  were, you know, ten, 11-12 years old and then you say that like
• 1:05:16
  it it kind. Of irks you because.
• 1:05:17
  It's kind of like there the reason why this?
• 1:05:20
  University. Built so big was the late 1990s
• 1:05:23
  in the in the boom of football and when Michael Vick played and
• 1:05:28
  how much the enrollments. Our friend Robbie, who was in
• 1:05:30
  the chat earlier, he was like, basically, I'm going to get into
• 1:05:34
  tech and then Michael Vick happened and then it was I'm not
• 1:05:37
  going to get into tech anymore. So I just, I want to say that
• 1:05:41
  because I will never forget him saying that and that coming out
• 1:05:44
  because it was like, dude, you don't know how crazy college
• 1:05:47
  football fans are. We spend lots of money.
• 1:05:49
  We're stupid. I think, well, that was an. 18
• 1:05:54
  you said, right, I think it was 18 it was well.
• 1:05:57
  Well then, like I mentioned, the.
• 1:05:58
  Inside Higher Ed editorial rights.
• 1:06:00
  And then he signed on. This all happened in the last
• 1:06:03
  like four months, but he signed on to another letter with three
• 1:06:07
  other university presidents, his last two big like public
• 1:06:12
  leadership. Attempts were.
• 1:06:15
  A let the letter that signed where they basically said
• 1:06:19
  please, please follow the rules guys.
• 1:06:22
  And then the set and then the the the inside higher Ed one,
• 1:06:25
  which he said where he tried to like tried to pitch the reality
• 1:06:30
  that athletic department should be, should take.
• 1:06:33
  I forget what the exact wordage wordage was, but it was like,
• 1:06:37
  you should be OK with having less, less success.
• 1:06:40
  So so that we can figure this out, Like winning is you should
• 1:06:43
  you should be OK with winning less competing less.
• 1:06:47
  Like it's like LSU literally just spent $150 million to lure
• 1:06:51
  Lane Kiffin away and now you're telling them that they should
• 1:06:54
  like care a little less about their athletic program.
• 1:06:58
  Those were the two moments where I was just like, it's it's
• 1:07:02
  coming to an end soon. And I and I'd love to know if if
• 1:07:05
  those him signing off of that and doing that like speed up,
• 1:07:10
  speed up the process a little bit, because at that point, like
• 1:07:13
  it just was like that kind of. And I, I think we'll get into
• 1:07:17
  what Virginia Tech needs in the next president from an athletic
• 1:07:21
  standpoint. But it's just like that, that
• 1:07:23
  that can't be the opinion of the president of Virginia Tech,
• 1:07:27
  especially after you just put $230 million in the athletic
• 1:07:30
  department. 2 words that. James Franklin likes
• 1:07:34
  institutional alignment and, and the other thing that that I'll
• 1:07:39
  talk about a little bit before we get to the next thing is that
• 1:07:43
  the the problem that I had with Sands from an athletic
• 1:07:47
  department standpoint and just an athletics and general
• 1:07:49
  standpoint is that you can either be proactive or reactive.
• 1:07:55
  And at our best, we were always reactive, meaning that we had to
• 1:08:02
  show that it wasn't working before we made any changes.
• 1:08:07
  And I think. That that's where you.
• 1:08:09
  Know Virginia Tech for a long time coasted on the fact that
• 1:08:15
  Frank Beamer was able to do a lot with what he was given.
• 1:08:21
  And we never modernized from an operational standpoint, from a
• 1:08:27
  funding standpoint to still maintain a competitive program
• 1:08:33
  with our peers. And I'm not just talking about
• 1:08:35
  competing for a national championship or winning the AC.
• 1:08:37
  I'm talking about just to be competitive in the ACC and we
• 1:08:42
  were not. Doing.
• 1:08:43
  That. And part of that comes from
• 1:08:44
  leadership, like if you're if you're not recognizing that
• 1:08:48
  that's a problem, you've got to have a solution for that.
• 1:08:52
  And you've got to look at where things are going and take some
• 1:08:56
  risk on there in the process. And I feel like we were so risk
• 1:09:00
  averse and chasing our tail for the majority of his tenure that,
• 1:09:05
  you know, you get to a point where you finally get the BOV
• 1:09:09
  that recognizes the issue and makes this investment.
• 1:09:12
  But you've got to have leadership that are bought in.
• 1:09:15
  So you got to have a president that's bought into that vision.
• 1:09:18
  You got to have an athletic director, which we'll talk about
• 1:09:20
  a little bit that's bought into that vision.
• 1:09:22
  So it's an exciting time from an athletic standpoint because you
• 1:09:27
  you get to get some some new blood in here.
• 1:09:29
  And hopefully someone that sees how athletics drives everything
• 1:09:35
  else that happens at Virginia Tech Athletics is such a big
• 1:09:39
  part of what makes Virginia Tech a great place to go to school, a
• 1:09:44
  great place to go to a game, a great place to go visit.
• 1:09:47
  If you're not putting that as a big piece of the overall
• 1:09:52
  university experience, then you're missing the point.
• 1:09:57
  Let's. Let's pivot a little bit though.
• 1:09:59
  Let's talk about like what with the new president, what do you
• 1:10:03
  know about kind of the process of of what's happening next on
• 1:10:07
  that front and what that timeline looks like timeline?
• 1:10:12
  'S going to be. Interesting because most of
• 1:10:14
  these searches take a long time. I think that was the plan.
• 1:10:20
  Like if Sands was able to retire in 27 to give a nice long drawn
• 1:10:24
  out search. You know, it's one of those,
• 1:10:28
  like I was saying on the academia side, like candidates
• 1:10:32
  who knows who's interested in this job, all that stuff.
• 1:10:36
  They had a board of visitors meeting yesterday where the
• 1:10:41
  search for search firm they hired, Isaacson Miller, gave a
• 1:10:47
  little presentation. They had a meeting earlier in
• 1:10:51
  the week, I think for like faculty and students to weigh
• 1:10:56
  in, which I'm not sure how much that is just a required thing or
• 1:11:01
  whether they're actually taking the opinions of those people
• 1:11:05
  into the search. So I, I think the first thing
• 1:11:08
  has been done. They've, they've hired the
• 1:11:10
  search firm Isaacson Miller to, to run it and to start kind of
• 1:11:16
  vetting pros, vetting potential candidates.
• 1:11:19
  I don't know where they'll go. It's pretty similar.
• 1:11:23
  It's kind of similar in terms of like where they're going with
• 1:11:26
  the athletic director search of do you do you take somebody
• 1:11:29
  who's come up, come up in the traditional administration of
• 1:11:34
  universities or do you go outside and kind of hire an
• 1:11:38
  outsider from the. Business, world or politics?
• 1:11:44
  Or something like that. Who's not just like kind of like
• 1:11:47
  Sans was the Provost of Purdue before he became the president
• 1:11:51
  of Virginia Tech. So like that's going to be an
• 1:11:54
  interesting decision on where where they want to go in that
• 1:11:58
  direction. But I think, I think it's going
• 1:12:00
  to, it's going to take months because these searches, even if
• 1:12:06
  you wanted to do them in in a hurry, like if that takes months
• 1:12:11
  and, and then, you know, you get into all the political appointee
• 1:12:14
  stuff and the board of visitors stuff and like getting all
• 1:12:18
  those, all that lined up and improved and all that.
• 1:12:21
  I think you, I think you're looking into the summer at the
• 1:12:25
  very earliest, like in the even that feels fast to me.
• 1:12:30
  So, and, and I think I don't, I don't know, like the leaks of
• 1:12:36
  names and how frequent that'll be and like how, how, how you
• 1:12:40
  can really kind of grasp who the true candidates are because I
• 1:12:44
  don't, I don't know how you would have identified Tim Sands,
• 1:12:46
  the Provost of Purdue, as the top candidate almost.
• 1:12:51
  We'll almost say this, but I think.
• 1:12:52
  With like how you research, I do think if if you're not.
• 1:12:57
  If you're wondering who the next.
• 1:12:58
  Virginia Tech president is you better be following Doug and you
• 1:13:01
  better be out the 247 because like the BOV, you've been so
• 1:13:05
  good at getting those minutes and getting them out there
• 1:13:08
  quickly to folks and saying this is what was being said.
• 1:13:11
  You've done a great job of analyzing it.
• 1:13:13
  I mean, no, kudos to you, man. Because a lot of those like when
• 1:13:16
  that stuff was going on in August, like I'm trying to read
• 1:13:19
  and I'm like, OK, I understand some of this.
• 1:13:21
  And some of it's like, where's Doug?
• 1:13:23
  Like where Doug's going to do something good.
• 1:13:25
  I'm going to be able to like consume it.
• 1:13:27
  So again, I, I, I'll give you your props, but let me ask this.
• 1:13:31
  And we talk about sports, but like, if you had to choose like
• 1:13:38
  like a perfect candidate, like like I want them from like this
• 1:13:41
  type of school, this type background.
• 1:13:43
  Do you have like 3 or 4 things? Like if they check a couple of
• 1:13:47
  those boxes where as you're reading like about a candidate
• 1:13:49
  like this guy, please pick this guy like University of Georgia
• 1:13:55
  deeper S like what's your what's your reality on that?
• 1:13:58
  I mean, I think, I think he kind of.
• 1:14:00
  Went in that direction of it's got to be somebody who is from a
• 1:14:04
  football school that understands the importance of football too
• 1:14:08
  at school. I think it.
• 1:14:12
  Also needs to be somebody. That the school has been at the
• 1:14:17
  forefront towards the forefront of the the changes in college
• 1:14:22
  college athletics over the last 10 to 15 years or even the last
• 1:14:26
  five years since COVID. Like if you haven't been, if
• 1:14:29
  your school hasn't been and you were in a leadership, assuming
• 1:14:32
  you were in a leadership position there, like hasn't been
• 1:14:36
  successful in navigating the new world.
• 1:14:39
  I don't think you're going to be a candidate for this role,
• 1:14:41
  especially with this current board of visitors and $230
• 1:14:44
  million that they want to invest in the right way and
• 1:14:48
  successfully turn that into wins and a sustainable business
• 1:14:52
  model. Like there's got to be some re
• 1:14:55
  not only like understanding of the importance of football to
• 1:14:58
  the university, but also some like recent track record of this
• 1:15:03
  is what that university did to, to achieve success there.
• 1:15:07
  So I think those are the two biggest things.
• 1:15:11
  I think if you wanted to go outside and like like I said
• 1:15:14
  earlier, you could have the same discussions about the athletic
• 1:15:17
  director role. But if you wanted to go outside
• 1:15:19
  of the traditional athletics role, it's like do you have
• 1:15:24
  success? Have you had success kind of
• 1:15:25
  innovating in a business model and building something
• 1:15:29
  essentially from scratch in a in a new environment?
• 1:15:33
  No, that's perfect it kind. Of leads into the next thing
• 1:15:36
  that we talked about when you said you know the AD because
• 1:15:39
  we're going to talk about Mr. Mr. Wit Babcock here but I'll
• 1:15:43
  start by saying I'm working doing my thing today and I get a
• 1:15:48
  ESPN little tidbit that comes. Through and I'm.
• 1:15:52
  Thinking for sure it's going to say LeBron is coming back to the
• 1:15:56
  Lakers next year, something like that.
• 1:15:58
  But instead I get I get a story that says James Franklin says
• 1:16:04
  Virginia Tech's next AD must be aggressive with football.
• 1:16:08
  So that is what that is what James Franklin had to say.
• 1:16:14
  Doug, what say you about with Babcock and kind of what his
• 1:16:18
  status is and where Virginia Tech is moving forward with
• 1:16:25
  with? Babcock I think the writing.
• 1:16:28
  Was on the wall for him. Right from the time the football
• 1:16:33
  search got taken from him, you know, when you're the athletic
• 1:16:38
  at the university and you don't have control over who the next
• 1:16:41
  head football coach is going to be.
• 1:16:43
  It's I think the clock is ticking at that point.
• 1:16:46
  It was just a matter of time. They, they, they did a great job
• 1:16:50
  of alignment of saying, you know, James Franklin credited
• 1:16:53
  with during the search and his work with the agents and all
• 1:16:55
  that stuff. But I, I don't, I think this
• 1:16:58
  was, was, was pretty, pretty planned right around the time
• 1:17:03
  that they decided they needed a committee instead of the
• 1:17:05
  athletic director to find the next head coach.
• 1:17:11
  I think in general. Babcock was just not going back
• 1:17:17
  to what Brian was talking about, proactive versus reactive, which
• 1:17:20
  is not proactive enough, and in improving the athletic
• 1:17:24
  department. I think I know John.
• 1:17:27
  I know John Boleyn takes a lot of heat for how long he stuck
• 1:17:30
  around, but there's a lot of that in the athletic department.
• 1:17:34
  No disrespect to them. That has been there a long time.
• 1:17:37
  And if you look at over the last 5-10 years of college athletics,
• 1:17:41
  like there's been so much change and not much change at Virginia
• 1:17:45
  Tech. And, and I think you saw a lot
• 1:17:47
  of that play out on the field. I know maybe that presentation
• 1:17:54
  ends up being Babcock's defining legacy.
• 1:17:57
  I think the board members, Peterson and McCarthy were
• 1:18:02
  influential in even getting that on the agenda.
• 1:18:05
  But like though I guess the you could see if that investment
• 1:18:11
  pays off, the Babcock's legacy becomes that essentially,
• 1:18:15
  because I don't know that there's much else there.
• 1:18:19
  He hired Buzz Williams worked out for the five years there,
• 1:18:24
  but they they haven't made an NCAA tournament in men's
• 1:18:26
  basketball in the last Four Seasons.
• 1:18:28
  They've only had two good football years during his
• 1:18:30
  tenure. Like the on field success just
• 1:18:33
  wasn't there to to warrant how long he was the athletic
• 1:18:36
  director. Well, I think then to.
• 1:18:38
  With where if sometimes he he couldn't hit a layup, he
• 1:18:42
  couldn't read the room and that that goes back.
• 1:18:45
  Everybody in Hokie nation can remember 2020 when there is a
• 1:18:51
  you probably got notification. We start hearing, oh, Wit's
• 1:18:54
  doing a press conference today and it literally is everybody's
• 1:18:57
  reading the tea leaves, oh, this is the day Justin Puente's
• 1:18:59
  buyout is like $1,000,000. And it's like, oh, he's firing
• 1:19:03
  him. Good for what?
• 1:19:04
  You know, make that strong move in that interview and doing it
• 1:19:09
  that day it it's like you got to have a sense of what's going on
• 1:19:14
  inside your community, inside the walls of the athletic
• 1:19:18
  department. And in my opinion, just from
• 1:19:21
  what I saw was 12 years, right, because he was 2014 that right.
• 1:19:28
  Like in the beginning it was. OK, because football was still
• 1:19:31
  OK. And then he made the Fuente
• 1:19:33
  higher where it looked like oh wow, he got one of the hottest
• 1:19:35
  main coaches, he knew what he's doing.
• 1:19:38
  And then after like 2019, it was just like fallacy after.
• 1:19:44
  Fallacy. After falling on your face after
• 1:19:46
  doing something dumb over and over again.
• 1:19:50
  And it was just like, Oh my God, I, I, this is terrible.
• 1:19:57
  In in. 2020 is just the cap. That's just the cap.
• 1:20:00
  No one will ever forget that because most people, most
• 1:20:04
  universities, most athletic directors would see, yeah, if
• 1:20:07
  we're going to keep them, I definitely shouldn't do it that
• 1:20:10
  day because every single person in the world are going to think
• 1:20:13
  of fine. Yeah, I I was thinking about
• 1:20:17
  that when. Brian was talking about Sands,
• 1:20:19
  but like that that decision and you can and I think Sands and
• 1:20:24
  Babcock both have the same amount of blame for that
• 1:20:28
  decision of at that point of Fuente's tenure.
• 1:20:31
  And I know it was right after COVID, so everything was wonky.
• 1:20:36
  I think at that point of Fuente's tenure, it should have
• 1:20:38
  been pretty clear that he was not as interested in recruiting
• 1:20:41
  as you were going to need to be to be successful.
• 1:20:46
  That was what, 2016171819? So five seasons in, if you're
• 1:20:51
  as, if you're as proactive and like engaged in the program as
• 1:20:56
  you need to be, I think as an athletic director these days,
• 1:20:59
  that or a president that should have been a lot clearer that
• 1:21:04
  giving him another year isn't probably not going to change
• 1:21:07
  much. And so that just ended up being
• 1:21:11
  essentially a wasted year there in 2021 at at during a time when
• 1:21:15
  Tech's roster was pretty well stocked too, like those two
• 1:21:19
  seasons were. The 2020 roster was fantastic.
• 1:21:22
  It just got wrecked by COVID. And then the 2021 was projected
• 1:21:27
  to be. Pretty good.
• 1:21:28
  If they could, could have gotten the quarterback position right,
• 1:21:31
  yeah. And and you know when we look
• 1:21:35
  at. Win and you know, to Curtis to
• 1:21:37
  your point that that presser was like a double whammy because
• 1:21:41
  it's like you, you expect to get fired and instead, you know wit
• 1:21:45
  comes. Out there and it's.
• 1:21:47
  Like double down, baby. Doubling down.
• 1:21:51
  On the choice and then like pointing the fingers when you
• 1:21:55
  started pointing the fingers at at fans of like, OK, well, what?
• 1:22:02
  We're we're not going to pay. Attention to fans.
• 1:22:04
  They're probably not giving that much anyway to the program and
• 1:22:07
  we're like what we're going to we're.
• 1:22:09
  Going to we're going to go there.
• 1:22:11
  We're. Going to hit there at the end of
• 1:22:14
  the day and I know like you can't make all.
• 1:22:18
  Of your decisions. Based on fan sentiment and I get
• 1:22:21
  that like but the writing was on the wall.
• 1:22:25
  Fuente was at best going to be a lame duck coach heading into the
• 1:22:29
  2021 season, barring A9 plus win season.
• 1:22:35
  And when you when you aren't able to recruit, you don't do a
• 1:22:39
  good job of recruiting where you need to be recruiting, it was
• 1:22:44
  just a recipe for disaster. And, you know, you ended up in
• 1:22:47
  the same place that you were going to be anyway one year
• 1:22:50
  later and. I think you know when you talk
• 1:22:56
  about the. You know this like parting.
• 1:22:58
  Shot being kind. Of part of that legacy for me,
• 1:23:02
  it, it, it's, it's great that it's happening, but it's
• 1:23:05
  absolutely too little too late in a lot of ways.
• 1:23:08
  Because, you know, if you had been this proactive
• 1:23:13
  incrementally, you wouldn't have to have this huge influx of cash
• 1:23:19
  into the athletic department all at once and have to completely
• 1:23:24
  restructure what you're doing. And this goes back to his
• 1:23:27
  leadership starting in 2014. I mean, this is something where,
• 1:23:31
  you know, Fuente comes in and recruiting wise was kind of just
• 1:23:35
  handed the playbook that that Beamer had and, you know, had
• 1:23:38
  had had some decent success with that.
• 1:23:42
  But instead of incrementally working more staffers into that
• 1:23:47
  recruiting program, more money into the ability to to recruit
• 1:23:51
  more money into the into the staff and to the the the
• 1:23:58
  coaching staff itself, we just didn't.
• 1:24:01
  Do the the little. Things incrementally along the
• 1:24:04
  way to set ourselves up for success and a lot of that falls
• 1:24:09
  back on wit you know the. The the coach.
• 1:24:12
  Can only work with what he's been given and that's not to say
• 1:24:17
  that Fuente or Pride maximize that necessarily, but at the
• 1:24:22
  same time you. Were kind of playing with 11.
• 1:24:27
  Hand behind your back from jump street because of the way the
• 1:24:30
  athletic department was structured in in the amount of
• 1:24:32
  investment and overall. Plan.
• 1:24:37
  That that wit had for the program, Sally, what you got, I
• 1:24:44
  mean, when you think. About a DS, I mean, it's kind of
• 1:24:47
  like 4 key factors that you're going to look at like their
• 1:24:52
  adaptability, So what they're going to do in the landscape of
• 1:24:57
  sports facility upgrades, coaching hires and generating
• 1:25:04
  revenue. Like when we just look at.
• 1:25:08
  It what did. Wit do did he do any of that
• 1:25:10
  good? How did he, how did he grade on
• 1:25:12
  that stuff? And he didn't do a good job.
• 1:25:16
  You know what I'm saying? Like, no disrespect to him.
• 1:25:19
  He didn't look like he had a good time.
• 1:25:22
  He always looked like somebody pissed in his oatmeal, you know,
• 1:25:26
  and I would probably too with Joe Rogers and the crew on my
• 1:25:30
  head every every day on Twitter. But he just, you know, he didn't
• 1:25:34
  he didn't do a lot of those things good.
• 1:25:36
  So and then the things that he may have tried to do was a
• 1:25:39
  little bit too late. And some people said, well, it
• 1:25:41
  starts at the top. It starts with, you know, saying
• 1:25:44
  so it starts with Valentina, whoever, all of them.
• 1:25:48
  So perfect, let's just start fresh because to think about
• 1:25:53
  some of the things that some of the leaders would have to
• 1:25:56
  navigate now, like who would ever thought that?
• 1:26:00
  You know, you got to know about AI, you know, you got to do
• 1:26:05
  social media stuff with recruits, you got to be able to
• 1:26:09
  talk to the people about video games.
• 1:26:12
  This is all things that are important.
• 1:26:14
  You know what I'm saying? What was the year 2 years ago
• 1:26:19
  the, the leaking of the Virginia Tech uniforms on college
• 1:26:23
  football, the, the video game, just little stuff like that that
• 1:26:28
  probably don't make the biggest difference on if you're a good
• 1:26:31
  AD or not. But those little details can
• 1:26:35
  definitely be, you know, play a part in you being good to great
• 1:26:39
  or average to good. So, so long Whit go and find you
• 1:26:45
  something else to do, Man. I I hope you go and well, no, he
• 1:26:48
  he's hanging around. He's he going to hang around and
• 1:26:53
  go ahead and go. I want him to go ahead and get
• 1:26:55
  all right. Doug, we we kind of got to this.
• 1:26:59
  Spot and back if y'all check out April 25th.
• 1:27:03
  Doug, you wrote again a great article about the nine Names to
• 1:27:06
  know. Go read it.
• 1:27:10
  He's not going to give all nine names right now, but give me a
• 1:27:13
  couple of your like who do you like?
• 1:27:16
  You've been doing the research, you've been reviewing what
• 1:27:18
  they've been doing elsewhere. Give me 2-3 guys that you like.
• 1:27:23
  And then if you had to say right now, and I know it's not going
• 1:27:27
  to be next month or the month after we got to get the
• 1:27:30
  president in flight square. So it's going to be even longer
• 1:27:32
  than waiting for the president. Who would you who would be your
• 1:27:35
  choice? I'll be curious to see if they
• 1:27:37
  actually. Do wait for the president and if
• 1:27:39
  the timeline has still, because it's I don't know if the
• 1:27:42
  president's going to, I feel like you could hire AAD or
• 1:27:46
  whatever they want to call this role that much faster than you
• 1:27:51
  can hire a university president. So that's one of the big
• 1:27:54
  questions of can you like, can you truly do it?
• 1:27:58
  It's kind of the same question that we had back when they first
• 1:28:00
  fired fired pry of like, all right, well, if you're going to
• 1:28:04
  if you're going to fire a wit, can you can you hire an AD in
• 1:28:07
  time to hire the football coach or so it's the same kind of
• 1:28:10
  timeline like nonsense that Virginia Tech's been dealing
• 1:28:13
  with for the last several months.
• 1:28:16
  I read that article. It's a mix of names I've
• 1:28:19
  definitely heard and names that I kind of like.
• 1:28:22
  I think they will be involved with any major opening at this
• 1:28:26
  point of their careers in college athletics.
• 1:28:29
  And then I tried to identify some of the people in college
• 1:28:33
  athletics that fit that kind of. Outsider business.
• 1:28:37
  Experience I I wrote in that article.
• 1:28:40
  Like trying to identify an actual business outsider who's
• 1:28:45
  interested in becoming an athletic director in college
• 1:28:47
  athletics. Right now I don't know how to do
• 1:28:50
  that, but like I, I would love to be able to tell you that the,
• 1:28:55
  the vice president of brand strategy for fanatics wants to
• 1:28:59
  get into college athletics or, you know, something like that,
• 1:29:02
  but who knows? So, you know, you look at the,
• 1:29:05
  the trend that people identify with that is like North North
• 1:29:08
  Carolina hired a NASCAR person, Stanford hired a former Nike
• 1:29:13
  executive. So you get those like adjacent.
• 1:29:17
  Sports. Executive type positions, so I
• 1:29:21
  was trying to identify because some people have hired them as
• 1:29:24
  like deputies in their athletic department.
• 1:29:26
  So I was trying to identify some of those types of people.
• 1:29:30
  Jared Dinko at Auburn, Julie Cromer at LSU, those two are on
• 1:29:35
  my list. I think they're those those
• 1:29:37
  would be more of the traditional hire.
• 1:29:40
  They're up and comers in the industry that are probably
• 1:29:43
  interested in just about like I said, every major job.
• 1:29:47
  I think the notable thing and one of the things on my criteria
• 1:29:52
  list is that they so Banco was the athletic director at Georgia
• 1:29:56
  Southern for four years and Cromer was the athletic director
• 1:30:01
  at Ohio University. So not before experience, but
• 1:30:04
  you were the top dog, you were the person calling the shots
• 1:30:08
  much in the same way that like I think that pays off for James
• 1:30:12
  Franklin with all his experience.
• 1:30:14
  I think having experience in the number one role of a huge
• 1:30:18
  enterprise is prerequisite must have.
• 1:30:21
  So like they left those jobs to take deputy roles at Auburn and
• 1:30:26
  LSU to advance their careers. So I think they make sense if
• 1:30:31
  they're going to go to the traditional route.
• 1:30:34
  I had another guy on the list, Joe Lebieu, who's at Maryland
• 1:30:38
  fit what I was looking for from like a yes, he's in college
• 1:30:43
  athletics right now, but he's got plenty of outside
• 1:30:46
  experience. He was the president of
• 1:30:47
  Charlotte FC, the MLS franchise down in Charlotte.
• 1:30:52
  Before that, he worked at Monumental Sports, the parent
• 1:30:55
  company for the Wizards and Capitals.
• 1:30:59
  So I was like, I was like, that's outside business
• 1:31:02
  experience. Still in the sports world,
• 1:31:05
  Running, which is essentially what Virginia Tech's athletics
• 1:31:09
  is becoming, is a mini pro sports franchise with with what
• 1:31:14
  I assume to be plenty of business connections in the DMV
• 1:31:18
  and Charlotte, which are two of Virginia Tech's biggest metro,
• 1:31:21
  most important metro areas. So like when I when I saw his
• 1:31:25
  resume, I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.
• 1:31:27
  So I put him on the list. Those are the three I think
• 1:31:31
  probably stand out the most from that list I wrote.
• 1:31:35
  I was glad to see David Thiel came out with an article shortly
• 1:31:39
  thereafter or maybe before. I don't I, I didn't see it till
• 1:31:41
  after if he was first on it, but that that had some of the same
• 1:31:45
  names, which I was like, all right, that's a good sign that
• 1:31:48
  we're on the right track here. So we'll see what happens.
• 1:31:51
  I know that there is interest in the completely outside candidate
• 1:31:56
  from, from business or from not college athletics, basically to,
• 1:32:02
  to become ACEO of athletics or general manager athletics,
• 1:32:07
  whatever they want to call it. Given that, given that being the
• 1:32:11
  trend, I just don't know that that's the direction they end up
• 1:32:15
  going once they start interviewing these people.
• 1:32:17
  Like one of these more traditional candidates could
• 1:32:20
  crush the interview and be like, actually, they could do the job
• 1:32:23
  that we're looking for completely.
• 1:32:26
  You know, I, I remember back when they were trying to hire a
• 1:32:30
  head football coach that they thought they were going to hire
• 1:32:32
  a general manager 1st. And then they backed off that
• 1:32:35
  plan when they realized that it wasn't feasible.
• 1:32:38
  So we'll see what happens overall.
• 1:32:40
  But you know, I think, I think, I think those are the three
• 1:32:42
  buckets that you can look at of like up and Comer traditional
• 1:32:46
  somebody that was like recently hired at a flagged athletic
• 1:32:50
  department that fits that outside model, outsider model or
• 1:32:54
  somebody completely out of left field.
• 1:32:56
  But like I said, I don't know how you identify those people
• 1:32:59
  because I, I, I don't know how to project people's interest in
• 1:33:03
  becoming an athletic director in, in college sports today.
• 1:33:07
  That was one. That's one of the kind of
• 1:33:10
  storylines I'm watching. Like Babcock gave some
• 1:33:13
  interviews to to media this week and and they asked him if he was
• 1:33:16
  ever going to work in college athletics again.
• 1:33:19
  And he was like, absolutely not like, I'm done.
• 1:33:22
  Like this is old. Essentially, this is terrible
• 1:33:25
  and not that fun. And it's like, all right, so how
• 1:33:28
  am I can, how can I project somebody from some very
• 1:33:32
  successful company who's already a high up executive there that
• 1:33:35
  they're going to want to move to Blacksburg and, and get get
• 1:33:39
  involved in this? I, I, I think that'll be an,
• 1:33:41
  that'll be an interesting question to ask whoever does end
• 1:33:45
  up getting the job. Who was the guy at Marilyn, you
• 1:33:47
  said? Joe Lebou.
• 1:33:50
  Gentle of you. Because that that seems like
• 1:33:53
  it's. Like like that's.
• 1:33:55
  The kind of experience that. Fits whether it's him or
• 1:33:58
  somebody with that same kind of experience where they can send
• 1:34:01
  out the press release and we can say, yeah, that makes that makes
• 1:34:05
  sense. Are you are you looking?
• 1:34:07
  Primarily for if if you go the traditional route, someone
• 1:34:12
  that's coming from kind of AP4 football focused university must
• 1:34:20
  have yeah, like. But it's got to.
• 1:34:22
  Be. It's a completely different
• 1:34:24
  world than than the G5 or I would even say you're looking at
• 1:34:30
  the P2 like like. I've seen people float like Matt
• 1:34:34
  Rohn out there, and I'm like Roan, Roan would be somebody.
• 1:34:39
  Yeah, I don't think you can win the PR battle if you hire the
• 1:34:43
  JMU athletic director. But also like, he's the guy that
• 1:34:47
  I think would make a like would kind of do what Banco did at
• 1:34:52
  Auburn or Kromer did the LSU where they had to leave the G5
• 1:34:56
  job to, to go take a deputy job at AP4P2 school to kind of work
• 1:35:02
  to, to, to take, to truly take the next step.
• 1:35:05
  Because I think without without experience and he doesn't have
• 1:35:08
  any experience at the P4, much less the P2 without that
• 1:35:12
  experience. It's just you're, you're not,
• 1:35:15
  you're not, you're not going. To be hirable.
• 1:35:17
  Because of how different it is, and especially with Virginia
• 1:35:22
  Tech's going to be a two, well, like a $200 million enterprise,
• 1:35:26
  like it's just different. It is.
• 1:35:29
  Who's your guy? You, you, you wrote nine.
• 1:35:31
  You probably got. There's probably.
• 1:35:34
  There's probably. Somewhere in your computer.
• 1:35:35
  There's like 30 other people that you have names on.
• 1:35:38
  Yeah, I think there was a lot more on the list.
• 1:35:40
  And I was. Like I can't write.
• 1:35:42
  All these people, if I had to pick.
• 1:35:44
  Somebody off my? List it would be Banco at Auburn
• 1:35:49
  like. That's the kind of school.
• 1:35:51
  That cares about football a lot runs his own ran his own
• 1:35:56
  athletic department according to his bio had a ton of success
• 1:35:59
  raising money like all like and is now the number 2 at a a you
• 1:36:05
  know a high high P2 institution in terms of how much they are
• 1:36:11
  investing in athletics, which you can see by.
• 1:36:14
  Their. Coaching decisions over the last
• 1:36:16
  several years. So if I had to pick one off the
• 1:36:18
  list, I'd probably go with him. I I, like I said, I don't know
• 1:36:22
  where to start with like, all right, pick somebody from from
• 1:36:25
  the outside. Yeah, I know.
• 1:36:28
  That's probably a much harder ask.
• 1:36:30
  The the traditional route is probably a little bit easier to
• 1:36:32
  quantify. Yeah, it's the same thing is
• 1:36:35
  like. Looking for a head coaching
• 1:36:36
  candidate where you can see the experience.
• 1:36:38
  There's so many people that probably the experience lines
• 1:36:41
  up. You know, I know Syracuse he
• 1:36:44
  just retired, but like you hire an ESPN guy like a media exec
• 1:36:49
  would fit to in in today's world, but like the the
• 1:36:55
  possibilities are endless on that side all.
• 1:37:00
  Right. Tally Braun.
• 1:37:01
  Anything. Else floating out there like I'm
• 1:37:04
  going to say what I've been doing the like all the names.
• 1:37:06
  I have literally like started reading biographies of 80s for
• 1:37:10
  the last few minutes here. Le Beau's thing is interesting.
• 1:37:14
  I'm going to put Le Beau out there because that gives you
• 1:37:17
  what you're talking about. Heavily involved not only with
• 1:37:21
  FC, but with Pepper's stuff with the Panthers, the professional
• 1:37:25
  football level. And then he's dipped his toe
• 1:37:27
  into the collegiate world. So there's like he has that
• 1:37:30
  experience both ways. So I'm like, I mean, again, I
• 1:37:36
  don't know everything it takes, but I'm like, but but you're
• 1:37:39
  kind of selling me on having like that be outside of college
• 1:37:43
  sports, but in sports in some way could get some experience in
• 1:37:46
  or to your point, go run your own.
• 1:37:49
  And if somebody was at Ohio, Ohio has been a pretty
• 1:37:52
  successful Mac program the last decade.
• 1:37:54
  It has. They've always they're always
• 1:37:56
  one of the teams in the Mac Championship.
• 1:37:58
  And if you're putting that kind of emphasis on football at a
• 1:38:01
  smaller program where they're staying good, you're getting
• 1:38:04
  those people to invest within the program, then you know that
• 1:38:07
  they have some sort of sales pitch that works great.
• 1:38:11
  Yeah. The the.
• 1:38:14
  The, the executive experience, whatever you won't call it,
• 1:38:17
  having run your own department huge.
• 1:38:19
  I think, I think we're seeing that with James Franklin, the
• 1:38:22
  difference of how he runs the program versus like Brent Pride.
• 1:38:26
  I mean, Brent Pride was right next to James Franklin as a dire
• 1:38:28
  career and couldn't, couldn't replicate it as a head coach
• 1:38:32
  because he'd never done it before.
• 1:38:35
  But like you bring in a guy that has done it for 12 years, you
• 1:38:38
  bring in an athletic department that has experience running
• 1:38:42
  their own, running their own shop, so to speak.
• 1:38:45
  Like I think that's, that's the big thing.
• 1:38:47
  Or if it's outside, like I guess you got to be AC suite type type
• 1:38:52
  person that that has, has that responsibility, has that
• 1:38:57
  decision making experience and kind of that leadership ability
• 1:39:02
  that you need to, to, to do what Virginia Tech wants to do with
• 1:39:06
  the $230 million that they're investing into the athletic
• 1:39:09
  department, 100%. Valley, Bryan, y'all had
• 1:39:13
  anything else y'all want to ask though, before we get ready to
• 1:39:15
  wrap this up? Yeah, just the only thing I.
• 1:39:18
  Would say I've been reading the chat for the last, I don't know,
• 1:39:21
  maybe 5-10 minutes and VPI under score 13 said he's just giving
• 1:39:30
  with his props and that's fine, you know, giving him his
• 1:39:32
  flowers. But hey, man, no moral
• 1:39:34
  victories. He didn't do a good job.
• 1:39:37
  I don't care if he's a good guy. I don't care that he came and
• 1:39:41
  shook hands. You know, I like James Franklin,
• 1:39:44
  but if he don't win no football games, he need to go.
• 1:39:47
  He didn't coach yet. Like the moral victory thing is
• 1:39:50
  over. You know, I again, I'm just, I'm
• 1:39:54
  just speaking my truth. He said it's true.
• 1:39:57
  He presented when he presented James Franklin at the press
• 1:40:00
  conference, I saw a man that had been putting himself through the
• 1:40:02
  ringer to set VTL for success. No, he is put himself through
• 1:40:07
  the ringer to get paid. He is a millionaire because he
• 1:40:12
  didn't do a good job. Not only did he not do a good
• 1:40:14
  job at Virginia Tech, what was he at Cincinnati before?
• 1:40:19
  Didn't. Do.
• 1:40:20
  A good job there either. So I I can't say that.
• 1:40:24
  And then Bassmaster, my guy, he said Wit gave us James Franklin
• 1:40:29
  kinda. So his legacy.
• 1:40:32
  It's still it's still unwritten. So I'm thinking that he got some
• 1:40:35
  sarcasm in there, but Wit didn't have nothing.
• 1:40:37
  I mean, he might have had a little bit to do with him, but
• 1:40:39
  he Doug. You kind of said it a little
• 1:40:42
  earlier. He might have been able to call
• 1:40:44
  the agents and make some moves. Jake Peterson, Blood Foster and
• 1:40:47
  some of those guys on BMV Director.
• 1:40:51
  Why can't I think of his name? Rakovich, Rakovich.
• 1:40:53
  Rakovich. Rakovich.
• 1:40:55
  Is maybe? The.
• 1:40:56
  Best director, Director of the BOV for athletics in Virginia
• 1:41:01
  Tech history. He was there in the early part
• 1:41:03
  of the 2000s, and he made those moves to get into the ACC.
• 1:41:07
  That's a game. Again this.
• 1:41:09
  Is funny, we're talking about Rector's, a board of visitors,
• 1:41:11
  but every time that guy has been Rector, something really good
• 1:41:16
  happens for Virginia Tech athletics.
• 1:41:18
  So he said he don't. Do moral victories.
• 1:41:22
  Perfect we we won him the same then.
• 1:41:25
  Let's go. I'm tired of more.
• 1:41:27
  Victories I want. To win, we want wins.
• 1:41:29
  We want to be. Hooping and hollering and
• 1:41:32
  screaming on Saturday nights about wins, not about moral
• 1:41:36
  victories. But Doug, man, listen, the last
• 1:41:40
  90 minutes plus has been a blast.
• 1:41:42
  Thank you for bringing your insight, your knowledge on all
• 1:41:46
  this stuff. We really appreciate you joining
• 1:41:48
  us tonight. And with that being said, I'm
• 1:41:51
  going to wrap up this episode of the Boundary Corner Podcast
• 1:41:54
  brought to you my moments on the Maury in Lexington along with
• 1:41:57
  our Special Decks guest, Doug Bowman.
• 1:41:59
  Check him out at Doug Bowman 247.
• 1:42:01
  Sign up at 247 to read all of Doug's awesome articles and the
• 1:42:06
  stuff he's going to be coming out with as this president
• 1:42:09
  search happens, as this AD search happens, he's going to be
• 1:42:12
  the man on the mission there. My name is Curtis Wilson.
• 1:42:16
  I'm Brian Siegler. Jonathan Talley visit.
• 1:42:19
  Boundary Corner BT. Dot com to listen to all of our
• 1:42:22
  episodes. Don't forget to follow us on
• 1:42:24
  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, subscribe to our YouTube
• 1:42:28
  channel, your favorite podcast source.
• 1:42:31
  Please go there as well. We are on them all.
• 1:42:35
  As always, we let our buddy Jason Long play us in play us
• 1:42:38
  out. Check him out at
• 1:42:39
  jasonlongmusic.com to let all of his music on all of his formats.
• 1:42:44
  Also check out that little live page.
• 1:42:46
  He is doing a lot of events down from the Roanoke area this
• 1:42:49
  summer, so check him out when you can.
• 1:42:51
  I appreciate y'all for listening.
• 1:42:53
  We appreciate the chat. Thank y'all for being so active
• 1:42:55
  tonight. And as always, let's go Hokies.