BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech invested bullishly in new football coach Brent Pry, with a robust contract, increased salaries for assistant coaches and expanded support staff.
Moreover, Pry inherited a new weight room, nutrition center and residence hall.
But Pry also inherited an unusually awkward 2022 schedule that Hokies athletic director Whit Babcock regrets.
During a 50-minute interview in his office last week, Babcock addressed myriad subjects, which I’ll write about in two parts. Today, local matters, tomorrow global.
Now about this season’s football schedule.
For the first time since 2011, Tech is playing two road games against opponents from outside the Power Five conferences. The Hokies open at Old Dominion on Sept. 2 and face Liberty on Nov. 19.
Among the 65 Power Five programs, only two others are playing multiple Group of Five teams on the road. North Carolina visits Appalachian State and Georgia State; Vanderbilt travels to Hawaii and Northern Illinois.
“Yes, that is suboptimal,” Babcock said, “no disrespect to Liberty and ODU. In the nine years that I’ve been here, this was always the season we looked at where we were not scheduled the way we want to be.
"We’ve known it was a bit of an albatross, and those are going to be tough games to win, right? We should win, but anytime you go on the road, and with a new coaching staff.”
Hokies fans need not be reminded. They recall quite well falling to East Carolina in Charlotte, N.C., in 2008 and at ODU in 2018.
Tech’s non-conference schedules are booked through 2030, and no other year resembles ’22. The Group of Five road games during that stretch are at Marshall next season, at ODU in ’24 and ’27, and at Liberty in ’30.
ODU has hosted two other Power Five opponents, North Carolina and N.C. State, and has future home dates contracted with Virginia and Wake Forest. Virginia Tech will be the second Power Five program to visit Liberty, after Syracuse in 2019, and the Flames have scheduled a future visit from Wake Forest.
Signing multi-game contracts with ODU and Liberty that included road obligations saved the Hokies millions in the six-figure guarantees that Power Five programs routinely pay visiting Group of Five opponents. Plus, the contests against the Monarchs in Norfolk planted Tech on fertile recruiting turf.
The price was the 2022 coincidence of trips to Norfolk and Lynchburg. The flip side is an attractive home schedule headlined by West Virginia, Miami and Virginia.
“We dealt Coach and the team a tough hand,” Babcock said, “but I’m confident they can handle it. And I certainly like that West Virginia game. I bring that one up when people don’t like the other two.”
Tech’s future home schedules include Power Five opponents Purdue, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, Brigham Young, Notre Dame, Maryland, Arizona, Wisconsin, Ole Miss, Alabama and South Carolina.
Others I'd most like to see are Tennessee and, given Virginia Tech's military heritage, Army West Point.
PRY WORKED the past eight seasons at Penn State, a longtime Hokies recruiting nemesis, and during the interview process, Babcock asked to see the Nittany Lions’ org chart.
The glimpse prompted him to green-light recent additions to Pry’s staff such as analyst Jan Johnson Jr., assistant director of player personnel Alex Jones, player personnel assistant Rob Branch and assistant director of creative services Serena Rodriguez.
“I wanted to see what we were up against,” Babcock said. “We didn’t take the Penn State model person for person, but we certainly did model off of that, and we probably need to add a few more staff. But [the additions] have been significant and we feel like we’re in a good spot right now.”
NAME, IMAGE AND LIKENESS benefits for college athletes have dominated recruiting since their 2021 inception, and Babcock senses “a titanic shift” in priorities for many athletic departments and their donors.
No matter what NIL guidelines are adopted by the NCAA, Congress and/or courts, Babcock anticipates more focus on player compensation and less on infrastructure.
“I feel like we’re competitive in [the NIL] space,” he said. “But what it is in Year 1 is not what it means in Year 2, 3, 4. ... The few NFL places I’ve been, their indoor practice facility is a bubble. Their weight room is certainly nice and functional, but [most of] the money is spent on the players.
“The college model has been facilities, and it will be interesting to see through courts and everything else what that ends up being. But we have been in a model that is going to be a big boat to turn.”
ECHOING PRY, Babcock embraces Virginia Tech’s status as a leading ACC football brand and understands the Hokies need to reverse their decline.
“It’s a compliment,” Babcock said of Tech football’s importance, “and while we’ve spiked up here and there, yeah, since 2011 we haven’t been where we want to be. Schools go through that. ...
“Even Alabama missed on three straight head coaches [Mike Shula, Dennis Franchione and Mike DuBose] before they got to Nick Saban, and back in the day, Oklahoma was down. But you can’t stay down much longer than we have and be relevant, and we feel like we’re certainly back on track and in a hurry to do it. But [we don’t want to] take shortcuts because we want to build it for the long haul.”
During Virginia Tech’s run of 27 consecutive bowl appearances, four Hokies quarterbacks earned conference offensive player of the year honors: Jim Druckenmiller, Michael Vick, Bryan Randall and Tyrod Taylor. Maurice DeShazo, Marcus Vick, Logan Thomas, Josh Jackson and Jerod Evans were pretty darn good as well.
Boasting a combined 11 national championships, Miami, Clemson and Florida State are the ACC’s premier football brands. And given its seven con…
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