Going Out With a Bang: Whit Babcock's Complex Legacy as Virginia Tech Athletic Director

The cold, mountain air likely jolted him out of his post season exhaustion as he drove to the Merryman Center early that January morning. His future, and with it the future of Virginia Tech athletics, had been in the balance over the last 48 hours. He felt confident in his decision to, as he put it, “stay home”. But with that decision came a burdensome truth; a harsh reality that he most certainly shared with his administrative counterparts that morning before his infamous “2020 - Let’s Go” announcement to his fellow Hokies.

Justin Fuente’s dance with Baylor had pulled back the curtain, and a grim picture of the modern college athletics landscape was clearly evident. Virginia Tech was not just falling behind, they were falling off the map. 

While the X's and O's were the job of Fuente and his staff, the dollars and cents fell to tenured Athletic Director, Whit Babcock. And therein, lies the problem. 

Not with Babcock, necessarily; he had proven himself a more than serviceable leader for the university already. In the first few years of his stewardship, Babcock had gained national acclaim for his handling of the transition from legendary coach Frank Beamer to the aforementioned Fuente as well as the hiring of Buzz Williams - who at the time the most high profile hiring in school history - to lead the men's basketball program to heights unseen in the modern era. In lieu of the listing out of Babcock's hiring accolades, his success can be summed up succinctly with one statement: Under Whit Babcock led coaches, Virginia Tech reached their heights in Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, Baseball, Softball, Track & Field, and Wrestling. 

Combining his hiring acumen with state of the art facility upgrades to the football practice facility (the affectionately named "Beamer Barn", the largest indoor practice field in the country at the time), and a $20M+ upgrade to English Field and corresponding baseball and softball practice facilities, you see why Babcock was so nationally renowned. He was named the Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year in 2017-18, as well as a finalist for the Athletics Director of the Year Award from the Sports Business Journal in 2016-17.

So how did we go from nationally acclaimed athletic department to falling off the college athletics map in just a few years? Well, it's all about perception. It's what causes so much confusion with the last decade of Virginia Tech athletics. How can you be lauded as an industry standard one year, then the next year be told you're substantially behind mid-sized private schools? As we'll explore further, college athletics is not the most agile of industries. Things move slowly, and that can be a blessing or a curse. The transition from the old-guard to the new-guard was a slow one for Virginia Tech. At first, Whit Babcock seemed to be handling the venture with ease. But when things got rocky, and boy did they get rocky, that old-guard with an overly nostalgic sentiment seemed to be pulling Virginia Tech back down the college athletics mountain. Unfortunately, Babcock was not able to overcome that challenge...and not many athletic directors would be able to either. Because behind the shield of over performing coaches and post season runs, a financial catastrophe was getting ready to erupt. 

At the end of the 2016 season, right after Fuente's first season ended with an ACC Championship game appearance and a Belk Bowl victory vs the SEC's Arkansas, Virginia Tech announced its most ambitious fundraising initiative to date: The Drive For 25.

The goal was to grow the Hokie Club from ~10,000 members to 25,000 members. A pretty crazy goal, but not one that was without merit. Not only was the number 25 special to Hokie Nation via the legendary Frank Beamer, but it was approximately the membership levels of Clemson and Florida State's respective donor clubs. And if you're looking to be a big player in ACC athletics, those are the two public institutions you're chasing. In fact, Clemson and Florida State are mentioned in the THIRD SENTENCE of the official press release from December 11, 2016. Some may call that "living rent free", but for Virginia Tech the goal was very clear: get on their level.

*A quick Editor's note, which it's me, hi, I'm the editor. I can't actually corroborate either of those membership approximations for Clemson or Florida State. In their 2025 Membership Guide, IPTAY, Clemson's donor program, reported 22,268 members. In their 2023 Financial Report, Seminole Boosters reported just 14,529 members. To say both of those figures were around 25,000 a decade ago seems incredibly far fetched. Hokie Club this year touted over 25,000 members that donated in the latest giving cycle for the fourth consecutive year. I understand there's some wiggle room in these tallies, but it's fair that we take these figures was a healthy bit of salt.

To Hokie Nation's credit, they stepped up. On February 3, 2022, Virginia Tech announced that they had reached their goal of 25,000+ members. A pretty astonishing feat by all accounts. If you were to tell anyone plugged into the football program in 2016 that the Hokie Club would increase by 150% in the next 6 years, most would've expected that Justin Fuente had hoisted up the national title trophy at some point in that time frame...or at least a few ACC titles. So how come the increase in donors didn't see results on the field? That's $6.53 million dollar question....

I had a professor in my graduate program for Data Analytics that lived by a simple rule for data: If what you're measuring doesn't count dollars in the bank or points on the scoreboard, you're missing context.

One of the most impactful statements I've had in my professional (and semi-professional) career. Because it's 100% true. And that is where the problem with The Drive for 25 campaign lied. The goal was simply to bring donors into the building, but there was never any mention of the revenue generated from those donors. Virginia Tech was simply chasing a conveniently traditional number that equated to more of a catchy marketing ploy than an actual financial long-range plan. Because while Virginia Tech was looking for volume, Clemson was focusing on quality. 

According to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, Virginia Tech in 2016 brought in 23% of its revenue from donors, or $19.35M. For 2022, after the success of the Drive for 25, Virginia Tech reported $25.88M in donor revenue, while still accounting for 23% of total revenue for the institution. That's an increase of 33% over six years. During that same time period, Clemson saw growth from $35.64M to $60.86M, over 70% growth in donor revenue. Looking at the most recently reported figures from both Hokie Club and IPTAY, that insinuates that for every $1.00 a Hokie Club member gives, an IPTAY donor gives ~$2.30. 

This is but one example of Virginia Tech failing to understand the scale at which college sports was growing. And truthfully, the results on the field didn't help things. I firmly believe that Virginia Tech has some of the most loyal, passionate fans in the country. The growth from 10,000 to 25,000+ donors shows that clearly. But when it comes to donor investment, Virginia Tech simply wasn't playing the same sport as their peers. I don't have to use my business degree to figure out that a 150% increase in units doesn't match a 33% increase in revenue. "Donor Fatigue" became an epidemic in Blacksburg, and with no trips to the ACC title since that first year in 2016, you can understand why.

I can imagine how perplexing that must feel though for an athletic department. To see packed stadiums, donor volume increases, and yet at the same time you're slipping further and further away financially. I imagine an employee sitting in their office in Merryman Center opening up checks from a Golden Hokie Club member and going, "huh, I think this one's missing a zero?"...

The unit economics of Virginia Tech’s vast donor pool are, frankly, puzzling. Virginia Tech donors are paying at the bottom end of the spectrum on a per donor basis for a product that is certainly touted to be well above market average. Wins and losses be damned, the production and atmosphere around Virginia Tech athletics is certainly greater than most equitable college programs. Spend 2 minutes on YouTube searching “Virginia Tech Enter Sandman” and you’ll be grappling with the financial realities. “This is the program that can’t afford a strong coaching staff? This the program that can’t win more than 6 games?”

Again, the perception of Virginia Tech athletics didn’t match the reality behind the scenes. And while Babcock and his staff deserve some credit for masking those problems well to the national media, that facade also created much of the issue. For much of Babcock’s tenure, a few viral Enter Sandman videos and a win vs Virginia on Thanksgiving weekend was considered a successful football season. Doesn’t matter what achievements the university claimed to strive for, that’s what their actions said.

There's really no secret who runs the show in Blacksburg. It's the same as most major college campuses around the country. Football is king, and it's an absolute monarchy.

For Virginia Tech, there seemed to be a disconnect between the expectations of the Hokie faithful and the realities of the modern landscape. Success in football can lead to success in basketball and olympic sports, but not the other way around. While other major athletic departments were pushing funding to football, Virginia Tech was remaining relatively flat year over year even when total athletic department revenues were increasing at a standard market rate. Again using data from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database, here is what Virginia Tech's total revenue compared to some similar athletic departments from around the country:

So much goes into that "Total Revenue" number, but we can simplify it into a few key areas: television contracts, donors and corporate sponsorships. What the "Drive for 25" did was vastly increase the base of that third revenue stream, the donors. However, as we've seen, that didn't necessarily increase the total dollar figure coming into the athletic department. Combining that with the lucrative TV contracts held by the SEC and BIG10 and that explains a portion of that revenue gap. The third key area, corporate sponsorships, is another area where Tech was unable to differentiate themselves. While many SEC and BIG10 schools are able to ride the coattails of lucrative TV contracts and lavishly rich donor pools, institutions in the ACC and BIG12 need to be a little more creative in their partnerships. 

In 2024, Virginia Tech brought in ~$14.3M in revenue from corporate partnerships. On the whole of college athletics, that's a very favorable figure. However some of Virginia Tech's competition has used this area to bridge the gap. Louisville reported ~$27.1M in corporate sponsorships, Wisconsin reported ~$24.3M. Florida State and Clemson, the two schools Virginia Tech so adamantly called out in their largest donor drive, received ~$27.8M and ~$21.2M, respectively, from these partnerships. While institution location and brand awareness play a large part, Virginia Tech's inability to woo a major corporate partner from the Richmond or Northern Virginia regions is pretty perplexing. Another portion of this is the infamous Nike contract that Virginia Tech has sold its soul to. This can, and likely will be, it's own article in time, but here's the cliff-notes version: Virginia Tech signed onto a horrifically cheap and long apparel deal with Nike during the transition from former AD Jim Weaver to Babcock, in where it makes pennies on the dollar compared to the average power conference institution. One example that leads to just a few millions dollars a year, but those add up over a decade. 

Still, Virginia Tech's total revenue has been growing at a similar rate to most of its peers. The TV contract gap that existed when Justin Fuente had his talks with Baylor (and allegedly with Arkansas) are still present today. Where Virginia Tech fell behind was in its utilization of funds. Just before the big bad world of NIL came to be, college football's top half was investing heavily in coaching staffs. Experienced coaches, larger staffs, immense support staffs, truly building an army. Virginia Tech roughly flatlined.

I'm going to go out a limb and say when Justin Fuente had that talk with Whit Babcock in 2020, this was not the kind of investment he had in mind. Granted, COVID really through a wrench into things. But COVID hit everyone (hence the exclusion of 2020 from my data). 

In April of 2021, Virginia Tech announced the "Reach For Excellence" Campaign. This $400M initiative was the athletics arm of the much larger, $1.5B university wide initiative called "Boundless Impact: The Campaign for Virginia Tech". Of the $400M goal, $30M was earmarked for the "Football Enhancement Fund". This included sub-sections of funds designated for assistant coaching salaries, new recruitment staff positions, and other capital expenditures. The remaining bulk of the campaign was focused on a renovation to Cassell Coliseum.

There's a lot to like about this initiative on the surface level. For starters, explicit dollar amounts for specific use cases is a much more measurable goal and ideally would result in speedier and more succinct implementation. Also, the push for a major renovation of Cassell was not only for the athletics programs, but also in hopes of attracting outside events to Blacksburg and opening up a new revenue stream, something that other ACC schools like Virginia and Louisville have been doing for years.

But with any lofty goal comes the realities of achieving that goal. Ultimately, Virginia Tech was relying on the aforementioned "Drive for 25" to drastically change the math behind the equation. As was covered earlier, it did not. With very few avenues of fundraising outside of philanthropic donations, the Hokies were stuck. Not all of this should fall on the Hokie Club and, in turn, Babcock. The entire campaign was delayed by COVID, and frankly the performance of the football program between 2019 and 2021 didn't give donors any motivation to pony up large swaths of cash. Those are outside factors that just weren't in the realm of possibility when this plan was devised. 

Right after the campaign was announced, VP of Advancement Charlie Phlegar and Sr. Associate AD Brad Wurthman sat down on the Tech Sideline Podcast with Will Stewart for an in-depth interview that pushed almost 2 hours. It was a fascinating insight then, and it's eerily foreboding looking back at it now. This excerpt puts into perspective the growth trajectory of donor revenue in the most critical 12-18 months of Babcock's tenure. (Editor's Note: When they refer to Hokie Club raising "$30-33M a year", I believe that is contributions plus season ticket donations and other purchased based incomes). 

Virginia Tech clearly was making inroads with donors, and pushing for a larger and larger operating budget. To an extent, they were succeeding in year over year growth. Not enough to propel them into a higher tier of athletic departments, but enough to push for better on field results than they were seeing. Ultimately, all this would not end up enough to reach their $400M goal. But substantial revenue increases were there. Problem is, Cassell Coliseum is yet to be touched, and the football staff budget was largely unchanged except for a common place annual wages inflation. In large part, not reaching these goals and the introduction of NIL payments to athletes I believe scared Virginia Tech initially off major investments in its football program. Why spend millions on a staff that you will likely have to fire and pay severance to on top of an additional $20M to athletes annually? This was not the correct strategy for this new age, and it became apparent very quickly.

When the world emerged from the dark ages of the pandemic, most football programs went pedal to the metal. Virginia Tech stayed stagnant. 

I'd argue there were two other factors outside of budgetary restraints:

1. Virginia Tech rarely had coaches on staff that were worth higher levels of pay. The hiring of first time coordinators and largely unproven or sunsetted assistant coaches didn't warrant $1M+ salaries. That's on both Babcock and Fuente for not bringing in the best of the best...and doing it not once but twice in a short time span.
2. Virginia Tech failed to move on from underperforming coaches, resulting in a lack of need to enter the assistant coaching market. Not entering that market largely kept Babcock in the dark as to the market value for high end assistant coaches, keeping the budget for Brent Pry relatively small. This resulted in Virginia Tech, again, hiring unproven coordinators and uninspiring position coaches. All in the name of staying within a budget that was too small simply because they didn't know any better. 

A similar story unfolded just two years ago, when the Men's Basketball program's NIL budget was so small that it struggled to field competitive team. Same issue, different sport.

The financial problems Virginia Tech has faced over the last decade are in large part due to a lack of understanding of the college athletics landscape, not a lack of revenue. This falls on Babcock as the leader of the athletic department, yes, but it also goes to show how lacking his support staff was. A lack of experience in both fundraising and major college athletics left Babcock's decision making virtually blind. And in a fast moving era of modernization, that was a kill shot for both Virginia Tech's teams and Babcock's career.

When the clock hit zero's for the first half, the boos rained down.

Virginia Tech, once a national powerhouse, was trailing in-state foe Old Dominion 28-0 at home. It wasn't the first time the Monarchs had embarrassed the Hokies. In 2018, just days after a messy game cancellation against East Carolina, the Hokies travelled to Norfolk and lost by two touchdowns to an ODU team that would end that season 4-8. Even though he would have some moments of redemption, that would mark the beginning of the of end of Justin Fuente at Virginia Tech. But just a few years later, also in Norfolk, Virginia Tech would lose its first game of the Brent Pry era to the Monarchs in horrific and excruciating fashion. In many ways, Old Dominion football is to blame for all of this.

In July of 2025, Virginia Tech made the announcement that they were cancelling all remaining game in Norfolk vs ODU for the remaining of the contract. Many across the country wondered why Virginia Tech signed a contract for a decade plus of home-and-home matchups with a lower level in-state opponent. But finally, the athletic department woke up. Just a month later, Whit Babcock stood in front of the board of visitors and proposed a substantial $229M increase in athletics budget over the next four years. This would rocket the Hokies from 14th in the ACC to towards the top of the conference and college athletics as a whole. The budget was later approved the next month, as was the firing of Head Football Coach, Brent Pry. 

Less than two months later, James Franklin walked into Cassell Coliseum to be introduced as the next Head Football Coach. The rest of that story remains unwritten, but it would mark the end of Babcock's.

To start so promising, then to fall so far, seeing Whit Babcock on stage with one of the winningest college football coaches of the century touting one of the largest athletic budgets in the nation felt...oddly perfect.

When he gave that presentation to the Board of Visitors over the summer, I believe he knew he'd never see the end result. Whit Babcock wasn't a major contributor to the hiring of James Franklin from a discovery standpoint, and the reason for that was blatantly obvious. But when James Franklin has addressed his move to Blacksburg, he's quick to credit Babcock's role. Babcock's insistence on elevating Virginia Tech out of its darkest days became his mission. Many around him say that "getting football right" was what drove Babcock over the last 18 months. That's why this article focuses on football and not the other sports. It's what steers the ship, and what ultimately sunk it for Virginia Tech. You can tout whatever olympic sport you want. You can build the grandest facilities. You can hire the best coaches and succeed at the highest levels in baseball and softball. You can do all that, but it's not how you're judged in the world of college athletics. But you better make sure that when the clock hits zero on Saturday's in the fall, the Hokies have more points than whoever the hell they're playing. That's your number one job as Athletic Director in Blacksburg.

Even though his days were numbered, Whit Babcock finished the job.