BLACKSBURG, Va. — Whit Babcock has made numerous coaching hires in his career as an athletic director, and he’s seen those men and women have debut seasons of varying success.
So while the man in charge of Virginia Tech’s athletic department is like all Hokies fans, wishing that gridiron success would come quicker, he’s also urging patience regarding Brent Pry during what’s been a historically bad football season.
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“I guess what I would say to fans is I’ve had coaches in multiple sports shoot out like a rocket, I’ve had them come out mediocre, I’ve had them come out poorly,” Babcock said. “And the verdict on this decision is a year or years away. And it’s just too early to tell.
“But absolutely I empathize with three years of mediocrity and then this. I’m sure the patience level is wearing thin. … I understand that and don’t blame them. That’s why I want so badly to change it.”
Babcock, who spoke to The Athletic on a variety of football-related subjects early this week, said he knew this season would be a bit of a rebuilding year for the Hokies, who made the head coaching transition from Justin Fuente to Brent Pry late last fall.
In hindsight, he wishes he and Pry had managed expectations better for a team with significant question marks going through that change, but this season, Virginia Tech’s worst in 30 years and the first time the Hokies (2-8, 1-6 ACC) have lost seven consecutive games since 1951, was more of a struggle than he thought.
“To have the record that we have and it’s been 70-some years, no, I did not anticipate that at all,” Babcock said.
The athletic director remains steadfast in his belief that the plan Pry outlined is the right one and in the process of working, despite the short-term on-field results.
“I’m pleased with what I’m seeing, we’re seeing, in the recruiting space, especially with underclassmen, rebuilding those relationships in the state of Virginia and the more regional focus,” Babcock said. “I like his plan on name, image and likeness. I like what they’ve done with the culture, and I know that’s an overused word, but the people close to the program, it’s evident. So that gives you enough of a foundation to go forward.
“I’m proud of the coaching effort. I’m always proud of the players. I think they’ve played hard. But no, this is not good enough and what we want at Virginia Tech. So all hands on deck to get it turned around.”
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Like he did with Fuente previously, Babcock has a weekly Wednesday meeting with Pry to discuss how things are going, though a more top-to-bottom view of the program — from staffing to strength and conditioning to nutrition to NIL and beyond — will take place after the season.
“It’s a total evaluation of it, and we both know that college football is a small window and you have to make good evaluations, have good self-awareness and do what you need to do,” Babcock said. “So I’m not making any assumption of what those changes may be, but it’s much more in-depth than simply staffing. That’s always an obvious one. But you want to go all the way around the program and also look inward. It will also be an evaluation of me and the administration too. Everything.”
With this being Pry’s first year as a head coach, Babcock thinks there’s a steep learning curve.
“He will learn more about being a head coach in Year 1 than he might in the next five combined,” Babcock said. “And he’s as prepared as an assistant coach to be to take the next step, and it’s still a huge jump.
“So absolutely, we talk about what he’s learning, how we can improve. I certainly give guidance or advice or my thoughts. It’s not about play-calling, it’s not about this or that. It’s more about leadership and how we do it. But yes, my first year as AD, I felt like I was prepared, and there was a huge learning curve there. So that’s what we talk about a lot, is if you can take this year, learn from it, be better from it and turn it around, then we’ll be OK.”
With the Hokies set to play at Liberty this week, the second time they’ll travel to face a Group of 5 team this season, plenty of questions have surfaced about why Tech chooses to play these kinds of road games.
Though the fact that there are two such games this year is in part happenstance, the primary reason is financial. With an increasing cost of one-off buy games, getting Liberty in what was a 3-for-2 arrangement made in 2017 — games in Blacksburg from 2027-29 and in Lynchburg this year and 2030 — makes sense when you do the math.
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“You’re aware of the gap in revenue between the Big Ten and the SEC and ACC,” Babcock said. “So we have to always find ways to close that gap.”
The Hokies gross about $3 million for a home game, with operation costs of $1-1.2 million, meaning a net of $1.8 to $2 million per game. (Babcock generally uses a base figure of $2.3 million for budgeting, though in reality it’s lower for Group of 5 games.) But that’s not accounting for the money it costs to bring a team in — and that price has been skyrocketing.
Babcock said Virginia Tech has had trouble getting a one-off FBS opponent to come to Blacksburg for anything nearing even $1 million. Some Group of 5 schools have gotten more than that. Appalachian State got $1.5 million to go beat Texas A&M in College Station this season, while Georgia Southern got $1.4 million to do the same to Nebraska in Lincoln. Pay that much and the Hokies might be clearing $500,000 or $600,000 for a home game.
The Liberty contract calls for Virginia Tech to pay the Flames $500,000 for every trip they make to Blacksburg, with those three games equaling the cost of what one buy game is often going for.
The tradeoff is two trips to Lynchburg, but the Hokies get $250,000 each for those and have minimal travel costs, just having to drive 90 miles away. The math favors the 3-for-2 arrangement by potentially a couple million dollars. Some rough math:
Money for five home games vs. Group of 5:
- $2 million net – $1.4 million to bring a team in x 5 games = $3 million
Money for three home games vs. Liberty and two at Liberty:
- $2 million net – $500,000 to bring in the Flames x 3 games = $4.5 million
- Add to that $250,000 to go to Lynchburg x 2 games = $5 million
Babcock acknowledged having both ODU and Liberty on the road in one season isn’t ideal, particularly given the transition state the Hokies are in right now. It’s often what he called the smaller-conference team’s “Super Bowl” going up against one of the commonwealth’s flagship football schools.
“When you schedule the games, you don’t necessarily know how good your team is going to be,” he said. “If I knew it was going to be a transition year with a new coach, I wouldn’t have done it that way. I think when your team is prepared and successful and you win them, people are frustrated a little bit with the schedule, but it’s kind of a side note. When you’re not doing so good and you lose them, it certainly becomes a headline and I wish it hadn’t happened that way.”
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Long term, the frequency of that ODU series, which is almost a home-and-home through 2031, could be re-evaluated.
“It seemed to make sense to take a game to our fans, to our recruiting base (in the 757),” Babcock said. “But when you lose two, it’s a big mistake, and I have to own that.”
It’s especially under the microscope given the changing scheduling priorities by ACC teams. In the playoff era, the league has moved away from scheduling FCS teams, with road games at Group of 5 teams not prioritized either, because the league doesn’t get that TV inventory.
A more en vogue approach is, in addition to eight conference games, to play two Power 5 nonconference opponents. The Hokies are situated that way in four of the next five years, though the opponents on the front end — Purdue and Rutgers in 2023 and Vanderbilt (in the Titans’ stadium in Nashville) and Rutgers in 2024 — aren’t exactly headliners. A neutral site game in Atlanta against South Carolina and potentially Shane Beamer to open 2025 could be the next nonconference game most fans circle on their calendars.
Granted, Tech’s recent nonconference slate would have looked much different if those Michigan and Penn State home-and-homes came to fruition, or if Wisconsin would happen sometime this century, but it’s always a moving target with setting up future schedules.
“It’s a bit of a crapshoot,” Babcock said, “but I can certainly understand the frustration and questioning, and I get it.”
Complaints can’t help but be louder in a year like this, given that the Hokies hadn’t lost eight games in a season since 1992, right before Frank Beamer and Tech began their famous bowl streak.
Babcock empathizes with the plight of the fans experiencing a losing season like this and sees the feedback, even if he doesn’t check his Twitter mentions. (“You can tell the Twitter warriors that I haven’t looked at my mentions in months,” he said, “so they’re screaming into the wind.) He gets the criticism from fans after they’ve spent their time and money on a product that, frankly, hasn’t been very good.
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“Even when criticism hurts, oftentimes there’s an ounce of truth in the pound of criticism, so you can’t just be so hard-headed,” he said. “But also, I’m confident in our department. We’ve been doing this for a while, the same formula that we’ve used going from the bottom to the top in men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball, baseball, on down the line.
“So you take advice, you hear it, you try to pick out the nugget of truth and not second guess yourself too much and just buckle down and move forward. It’s like a hailstorm and I’m driving. I’ve got to have both hands on the wheel, turn the radio off. I can’t have a lot of distractions. And just be convinced that we know what’s best and that’s what we’ll execute.”
(Top photo of Brent Pry: Reinhold Matay / USA Today)