AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. — Exhausted by the incessant revenue chatter emanating from the ACC’s spring meetings this week? Prefer to hear about athletes and coaches and the games they play?
Get in line. But here’s a case of enhanced conference revenue producing dividends.
Virginia Tech in fiscal 2021-22 boosted football support staff investment by nearly 80%, from $1.9 million to $3.4 million. Plus, assistant football coach compensation increased by 33%, from $4.2 million to $5.6 million.
Those numbers are per the school’s latest NCAA financial disclosure, provided to The Times-Dispatch via an open records request.
Hokies athletic director Whit Babcock attributed the bumps to a pair of sources.
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“The ACC’s been helpful in that regard with the revenue that’s come in from the network,” he said during an interview at the spring meetings. “That didn’t exist a few years ago.”
Indeed, while the ACC lags far behind the Big Ten and SEC in average distributions to schools, the ACC Network has fueled annual television revenue increases of about 20% since its 2019 launch.
“And then our donors, our fundraising, again it goes back to revenue,” Babcock said. “If you can fund football at a high level, it tends to produce results. I’m sure there’s some level of diminishing returns, but yeah, football’s the bread and butter that funds the 21 other sports at Virginia Tech, and we wanted to make strategic investments.”
Such funding can’t help but assist Hokies coach Brent Pry, a first-time head coach last season after eight years as Penn State’s defensive coordinator.
“I felt like Coach Pry really had a nice model that he learned from at Penn State,” Babcock said. “I think we all know how they invest in their recruiting infrastructure and support staff.”
The most recent example of Tech’s football commitment is the addition of James Johnson as a second high school relations director. Babcock fired Johnson as the Hokies’ basketball coach in 2014, but even as Johnson moved to other hoops jobs at Miami and N.C. State, he remained connected at Tech.
Moreover, Pry’s chief of staff, Michael Hazel, is close friends with Johnson.
“When Coach (Pry) presented it to me, I thought, like everything he presents, it was strategic and well thought-out,” Babcock said. “I’ve seen James volunteering at practices and just being around, and for a guy that had to leave Virginia Tech the way he did, to care about a place that much, and it’s genuine, you’re like, all right, I can get on board with that. ... It would be tough if he was coaching quarterbacks, but I like the role he’s in. His makeup is perfect for Virginia Tech.
“I had, and have, a tremendous amount of respect for him. I think he got thrown into something a little early and sometimes as a new AD you come in and try to shake things up. He handled himself with a lot of class, and our paths crossed when he was an assistant. But really, his grace led to my grace. He came by the office and we chatted a couple times about it. He seems all in, and if he can help us win a football game or two, that would be pretty cool.”
Babcock also said that he is close to finalizing a raise and contract extension for women’s basketball coach Kenny Brooks, this on the heels of the Hokies’ 2023 Women’s Final Four appearance, the first in program history. Brooks’ current deal runs through the 2026 season and pays him approximately $800,000, a bargain by ACC standards.
“Everyone feels good about it,” Babcock said of the extension, “and I think we should have something to talk about in the next few weeks.”
To close our half-hour conversation, I asked Babcock about two recent changes to the college sports universe — the expanded College Football Playoff and the merging of collectives designed to assist Tech athletes in monetizing their names, images and likenesses (NIL).
Late last month, Triumph NIL announced its acquisition of Commonwealth NIL.
“When you can aggregate all your student-athletes under one umbrella, you’ve got strength in numbers, some critical mass for advertisers,” Babcock said. “I think that’s the natural evolution of collectives.”
NIL compensation remains so new that Tech has yet to compile data on whether those efforts are interfering with traditional fundraising for scholarships and facilities.
“There’s no tension, but there is a finite amount of dollars that people can give,” Babcock said. “It’s too early to tell, but I’m sure it will pull slightly away from our fundraising. NIL isn’t for every donor. ... We want to be competitive in the NIL space, but I don’t think you have to be at the top.
“We are still finding in the NIL area that, yes, that’s a piece of it. But there is still a driving force of where do they want to go to school and the relationship with the coach.”
The expanded football playoff, from four to 12 teams, debuts in 2024. Qualifying would have been a viable annual goal for the Hokies 15 years ago, but after four losing records in the past five seasons, the prospect is longer term.
Still, one carrot the new CFP offers is a first-round home game for seeds 5-8. Has Babcock envisioned a playoff game at Lane Stadium?
“One step at a time,” he said, “one step at a time. Have we run a tabletop exercise on that? No. But we know how to run a football game, and hopefully we’re fortunate enough to get in. We know it can be done, but I wouldn’t put that pressure on our coach just yet. That is our ultimate goal, though, dang straight. Absolutely.”