An Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors - Please Fund the Athletic Programs!
To the Esteemed Members of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors,
First of all, thank you for your service to Virginia Tech. Your leadership of our beloved institution takes much time and effort, and you often have to make very difficult but necessary decisions that appease some yet rankle others. Thank you for taking on this responsibility.
Today, you are faced with one such difficult decision, and it is monumental in terms of the future impact on the university and the greater Blacksburg area.
Virginia Tech Athletic Director Whit Babcock recently made an urgent appeal for more funding to the athletic programs. He cited a significant lag in athletic investment as compared to other conference institutions, and he made realistic projections of the consequences of both increasing and not increasing the financial investment in Virginia Tech sports.
As a graduate and a passionate fan, I support Mr. Babcock’s plea. I think I speak for a majority of the fanbase too. We are more than just a crazy bunch of people who jump to “Enter Sandman” and pack the stadium when we play Wofford at 11 am.
We called Blacksburg home for four years - and still do. We fly flags, stick magnets to our cars, and wear our colors all the time. We figuratively live and die every Saturday. We are the only school with the “Hokie” nickname and the unique Chicago maroon and burnt orange color scheme.
We are a distinct group. We are tethered by an indescribable bond. We are Hokies. It is part of our identity, it is ingrained in the fibers of our being.
We have experienced the extreme pride and satisfaction of national relevance and a very strong brand from 1995 to 2011, but we have also endured a fall from grace since then.
We want to climb back up the mountain. However, in today’s world of college athletics, that will take more than stadium sellouts and viral “Enter Sandman” videos. We need more investment in our sports teams. We need to stay relevant in college football.
The cliche is true - the landscape of collegiate athletics has had a seismic shift, and money is more important than ever. Without keeping pace, Virginia Tech is staring at oblivion. The school is at a crossroads.
Teams who are winning and those on the rise are the ones who are spending the most. There is a reason why the SEC and Big Ten are dominating the rankings every year - they have (and spend) the most money. Sure they have the richest TV contracts, but they also have made far greater commitments to their athletic programs than we have. And they are reaping the rewards of those decisions.
Everyone else - the ACC, the Big 12, and the Group of Five schools - can hope to have a periodic magical season where they get to sit at the big boys table for one year, but the way things are headed, that will be the outlier season for individual schools, not the norm. Sustained athletic success will be nearly impossible without sustained investment in sports.
And quite frankly, that investment has been lacking recently. When compared to athletic spending by other public institutions in the ACC, Virginia Tech is lagging behind. We aren’t even among the “averages”; we are soundly with the bottom tier schools.
We are an extremely proud fan base. I would think that most alumni do not consider the Hokies as a lower tier program, especially in football; however, according to the slideshow that Mr. Babcock presented, Virginia Tech is actually at the bottom of all public schools in the conference in terms of athletic spending.
While this is a shot to our collective ego, it comes as no surprise, as Virginia Tech football has been mediocre for the past fourteen years, with periodic success followed by more mediocrity. Our on-field results are a clear reflection of our lack of investment into the program.
In this new environment of collegiate sports, we are on pace to relegate ourselves to Group of Five status. Without ample funding, Virginia Tech will not be able to compete at the highest levels for any sustained periods of time.
If that happens - a devaluation of our football program - the entire university will suffer. The negative effects would spread to the greater Blacksburg community, adversely affecting business fom Blacksburg to Christiansburg to Radford to Roanoke.
Conversely, the ripple effect of a winning football team results in millions and millions of dollars of added revenue for the school as well as for Southwest Virginia. An increased interest in the school will cause applications to rise (and with them, application fees), enrollments to increase, partnership opportunities to materialize, and increased spending by the throngs of people who will come to Blacksburg for the game weekends.
This is not just about football.
As a school, we have already seen this phenomenon. Those of us who lived in Blacksburg before 1995 experienced a much smaller campus - and town - than the one that exploded after the string of success that was highlighted by the national championship experience.
We called it “The Michael Vick Effect.” It was real.
And now, we are poised to see the opposite. Television viewership has already waned, and it is only a matter of time before continued 6-6 seasons result in a falloff in interest and attendance. This decrease, coupled with more mediocre or losing seasons, could cause Tech to miss the boat in terms of when the next round of expansion will take place.
It is impossible to tell what college football will look like in five years, but most would agree that more conference realignment is on the way. It is imperative that Virginia Tech makes itself an attractive program and a target for inclusion in any potential super conferences.
And if that expansion does not happen? Then Virginia Tech still needs to be near the top of the ACC, as the league has significantly changed its revenue-share formula, whereas more football and basketball success will result in more TV revenue.
While it might be impossible to tell what college football will look like in five years, we can all predict with certainty what Virginia Tech athletics will be in 2030 and beyond if there is no substantial change to the athletic funding - and that is a picture that none of us wants to see. That will be a program of mediocrity and little chance at championships. It will be a program that is not relevant, one that is more in line with Group of Five schools than Power Conference schools.
Like it or not, the new age of college football revolves around money more than ever, and the future of the football program, the entire athletic department, and the school and community as a whole will be forever changed by whether or not the Board of Visitors decides to increase funding to the athletic programs at Virginia Tech.
I implore you to do as Mr. Babcock requested and “radically leap forward” in funding to the Virginia Tech athletic program. I realize there will be great challenges to do that, but the Board of Visitors MUST find new ways to generate revenue. There is only so much we can rely on from the students and alumni, and the school has done “more with less” for far too long.
More money invested does not automatically mean more wins. However, the converse is true - less money invested will result in less wins. And less revenue. And less relevance.
The Hokie brand is strong. But it will not continue to thrive under the current funding equations, it will not endure if investments do not change. I shudder to think of how much weakening the brand will incur should Virginia Tech fail to improve funding and keep pace with at least the middle of the pack of the ACC.
I started my Hokie life in the early 90’s when Virginia Tech was mired in mediocrity, when we were nationally irrelevant. I don’t want to return to those days.
Please, for the sake of the fans, the alumni, the football team, the sports programs as a whole, the Southwest Virginia community, and especially for the future of the entire university for generations to come, please increase funding to Virginia Tech athletics.
Respectfully,
Rich Luttenberger
Virginia Tech class of 1993
