BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech President Tim Sands spoke briefly Tuesday morning at an athletic department staff meeting about college sports’ litigious and uncertain future. Hokies athletic director Whit Babcock followed with a more detailed presentation, outlining the issues and potential outcomes.
“No one can read the tea leaves that clearly,” Sands said in a subsequent interview, “but I would trust Whit’s judgment over anybody’s.”
The seeds for that trust were planted a decade ago in Indianapolis, and the stability Babcock and Sands have brought to their positions is unusual for a Power Five conference institution.
Indeed, with Notre Dame’s athletics and campus leadership transitions — AD Jack Swarbrick is retiring, and President John Jenkins is returning to the classroom — the Sands-Babcock tandem soon will be the second-longest tenured among the 69 Power Five schools, behind only Kentucky President Eli Capilouto and AD Mitch Barnhart.
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“It’s interesting to be at a place 10 years,” Babcock said. “I’d only been at places for five, not intentionally, but that’s how it worked out. And you find a school you relate to and you really like. It’s easier to leave than to stay sometimes — your decisions catch up with you — and the fact that Dr. Sands is committed and I’m certainly committed, I absolutely believe it’s an advantage just that working relationship.
“I also feel like it speaks to how challenging the jobs can be, where it’s rare to have long tenures, especially with the president. ... It’s one of the best things going on here. The president, the board, the support. It’s what makes Virginia Tech special.”
Entering his third season, football coach Brent Pry appreciates the support and consistency stable management provides, evident Wednesday when the Hokies announced contract extensions for Pry's staff.
"I think they work very well together," Pry said. "I’ve been places where that hasn’t been the case, and over time, I’m sure they’ve worked through the good, the bad and the ugly. ...
"Retention with our staff, they’ve been very supportive there. I think we’ve been aggressive in our promotion of name, image and likeness. The other piece is just supportive through the growth of rebuilding a program. It certainly was important to me when we were 1-3 (this season). To have Dr. Sands’ support and Whit’s support, and belief, that we were doing things the right way and making progress, even though the record at that time didn’t show it."
Athletics 'always
on our minds'
Babcock and Sands each came to Blacksburg from the Midwest. Sands was executive vice president for academic affairs and provost at Purdue, Babcock the athletic director at Cincinnati.
Appointed by Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors in December 2013, Sands began his tenure the following June. Then-president Charles Steger hired Babcock in January 2014, and he took over the Hokies a month later.
Steger asked Sands to interview the AD finalists, and Babcock and Sands met at an Indianapolis hotel, halfway between Cincinnati and Purdue.
“Being kind of newbies at the same time was great for us,” Sands said. “... One of the luxuries I had, and I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but in my first six or seven years at Virginia Tech, I could pretty much let Whit do what he needed to do. We had periodic tag-ups. Things were calm. There wasn’t this concern over litigation. There wasn’t a lot of conference realignment going on at that time.
“So I would say I was pretty happy that I didn’t have to spend much time on athletics, and I could delegate it to Whit, and he would keep me informed. But that changed a few years ago, and so now it’s almost a daily activity. ... It’s always on our minds.”
Running a $130 million enterprise for 600 athletes is eventful and stressful enough, replete with victory, defeat and personnel churn. But more volatile than the actual on-field competition has been radical and constant change to the business model.
An insatiable appetite for television revenue has distended conferences beyond recognition. Once-feared, the NCAA has been rendered toothless by the courts as athletes seek compensation, through endorsements and revenue sharing, and an end to transfer restrictions.
In the last two months alone, Florida State sued to escape the ACC’s grant of media rights; attorneys general in several states, including Virginia, filed antitrust complaints challenging NCAA guidelines for transfers and name, image and likeness (NIL) monetization; moreover, a National Labor Relations Board regional director ruled that Dartmouth men’s basketball players are employees of the university.
While Babcock navigates the daily drama, Sands is among six presidents who comprise the ACC’s executive committee. Most recently, Sands replaced outgoing North Carolina Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz as the ACC’s representative to the NCAA Division I Board of Directors. Guskiewicz is the newly minted president at Michigan State.
“Dr. Sands is certainly engaged,” Babcock said. “He’s a great leader. He gives you freedom to go, and when you need him, he picks up the phone. Yes, I would like to take some of the time he spends on athletics off his hands, but I’m afraid it’s not going to happen for awhile.
“A lot of interaction with him, general counsel of the university (Kay Heidbreder) and (chief operating officer) Amy Sebring. ... It’s more as the AD trying to present to that small group that we visit with that while it’s impossible to see the crystal ball, here’s what could happen, here’s all the things we need to take into consideration. And we try to keep it high-level (because) the president has a lot going on.”
Hokies committed
to top tier
One year into Sands’ tenure, a 2015 Gallup survey of nearly 14,000 Virginia Tech alumni found that former athletes are more likely to “thrive” than the general student population, reminding Sands of a viable sports program’s benefits. So unknowns notwithstanding, he and Babcock envision the Hokies investing the resources necessary to remain part of the power conference structure.
“As far as wanting to be among the top tier of athletics programs across the country, absolutely,” said Sands, crediting Babcock for modernizing facilities, growing Hokie Club membership to 25,000 and managing a department that has finished among the top 40 nationally in the Directors’ Cup all-sports standings six times in the last decade.
“So it’s not just reviving the football program, which is in-process, but all-sports success as well. I think we’re in a much better position now to compete and to claim a spot in the top tier. But we’re all waiting to figure, and not just waiting, we’re actively involved, and trying to understand what that exactly means. ... I love gaming things out. This is a situation where I don’t even know where to start. Any one decision, any one incident, whatever it may be, could shift the whole landscape.”
Babcock: “I guess we’ve gotten comfortable being uncomfortable. Fear of the unknown is sometimes worse than reality. ... But people here understand the balance of athletics and academics and how athletics can really be valuable and done in the right way. I’m sure our donors, administration, board, everybody wants to play at the top tier. I have no doubt about that.”
Meanwhile, as rival conferences welcome new members later this year — Oklahoma and Texas join the SEC, Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA the Big Ten — and move further ahead financially, the ACC confronts the internal strife of Florida State’s lawsuit, even as the league prepares to add Cal, Stanford and Southern Methodist this summer, growing membership to 18.
Sands and Babcock said interactions with their Florida State peers remain civil.
“I think it will be a long, drawn-out fight. I’ll just leave it at that,” Babcock said.
Can the relationship be mended?
“We have (FSU) President (Rick) McCullough in our board meetings, unless of course it has to do with the lawsuit,” Sands said. “He’s a great colleague. I really enjoy working with Rick. And the student-athletes and the program at Florida State are absolutely part of our fabric. I understand the frustration around the revenue gap. Everybody feels that, but we try to keep things as normal as possible. ...
“What happens here, I have no idea. ... If I knew, that would be one less thing to worry about. ... We are happy in the ACC.”
To address revenue concerns, ACC officials crafted a “success initiative” that will reward those schools that perform best in football and men’s basketball. Sands served on the presidential subcommittee, chaired by Virginia’s Jim Ryan, that brokered the deal.
“That’s culturally a hard thing to do because most leagues are used to equal distributions,” Sands said, “but we really felt like this was a time to alter that, not to an extreme point, but to create an opportunity for some programs to earn more if they perform better. So I think we have made some changes that reduce the tension a little.”
Why support
ACC expansion?
Considerable tension swirled around the ACC’s expansion deliberations last summer. Conference bylaws require approval of at least 12 of the current 15 schools, and only an 11th-hour change of heart by N.C. State overcame staunch opposition from Florida State, North Carolina and Clemson.
League presidents had final say, but Sands and Babcock conferred frequently on the matter.
“What Whit and I were doing was updating each other on what we’re hearing from the ADs, what we’re hearing from the presidents, and also what our student-athletes are saying, the student-athlete advisory committee, and what we’re hearing from other institutions like student-athletes at Stanford and Cal and SMU.
“The (presidents) of the ACC did not sequester themselves and come up with an idea and then spring it on everyone else. It was a deliberative process. ... In the end, one of the most compelling features is adding the regions of Dallas and Northern California, which have concentrations of Hokies, and prospective students, and partners. So for Virginia Tech, there’s a big advantage in just getting our name and presence out there in places where we have devoted Hokies who don’t hear from us enough.”
Sands earned his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D., from Cal and also taught there.
“Oh, I definitely had to put away my alumni hat,” he said. “My time there was in the ’70s and ’80s as a student, and then from 1993-02, I was a faculty member there. So it (has been) 22 years since I set foot on that campus. A lot’s changed. So the reality is, although I have an alumni connection and I’m a former employee of UC Berkeley, that didn’t factor in. I feel like I don’t know the place that well.”
After a decade together, Sands and Babcock believe they know one another well. The legal minutiae inherent with construction projects, not to mention fiscal restraints, prevent green-lighting all of Babcock’s ideas, but Sands appreciates his AD’s ambition and innovation.
Babcock is 53, Sands 65, and neither sounds ready for retirement.
“I just hope we can keep it rolling for at least a few more years,” Sands said with a laugh. “We’re trying to become the longest-serving pair. So that’s the goal. No pressure on Kentucky.
“I really do think it’s a huge value to the institution having that stability. ... It’s just been a real pleasure working with him and really learning from the wisdom he’s developed over the last decade, just extraordinary. I feel like my position is a lot easier knowing that I have an AD who can set me straight and give me the real deal whenever I need it.”