How Virginia Tech adapts to the new landscape in collegiate athletics
Over the last decade or so, collegiate athletics have been completely turned upside down. We have a 12-team college football playoff, we have Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) completely revolutionizing how programs acquire quality athletes, and on October 15, 2018, the Transfer Portal as we know it today made its debut. Now that’s easier than ever for athletes to represent themselves and put themselves in a position to succeed, coaches and recruiters have had to adapt to these drastic changes. Brayden Wells, a Virginia Tech recruiting intern explains how the portal has been affected by NIL.
“I think NIL has had huge implications on the portal, just in terms of how fast everything moves nowadays. Say there’s a player going in the portal and his main goal is monetary value. It may be a couple of days before he’s set on a school because of how much money they’ve offered him. But if they come in for a transfer portal visits…it’s almost like an NFL meeting…you tour the facility and you’re gone the next day,”
As for the programs themselves that are tasked with navigating this new landscape they found themselves with the new goal of building a winner while dealing with roster turnover that’s even more extreme than it was five years ago. If you’re a smaller school that lacks the bountiful funding of a top dog, a great season could be stained by watching the talent that got you there leave for greener pastures. It may be desirable for the perennial winners that can write the biggest checks, but even for a school like Virginia Tech, despite the prestige they’ve built, are no stranger to a winning roster being gutted, as we saw when their women’s basketball team lost head coach Kenny Brooks and star guard Georgia Amoore to Kentucky not long after a run to the Final Four. Eli Atzenhoffer, the director of player personnel for Virginia Tech Men’s Basketball will have to face this dilemma head on.
“You have to worry about the guys you can bring in but you also have to worry about the guys you can keep too…we had a lot of guys that departed from the program last year and you try and fill those roster spots the best you can, but it’s hard. It’s hard because you feel like you can build something and all of a sudden guys leave, some that you don’t expect, and that can put you in a tough spot.”
Those in charge of turning a struggling program into a contender not even a decade ago had a difficult, yet simplistic task. Recruit the right players, develop them, set them up to succeed, and build a winning culture. Now, those in charge have to deal with consistent departure of quality athletes for one reason or another. Maybe you’re in charge of a small school and can’t match a top dog’s ability to write the biggest check. Look at Saint Peter’s. In 2022, the men’s basketball program pulled off a miraculous run to the Elite Eight as the 15th seed in the tournament, the first school in history to accomplish this feat. Not too long after their journey came to a close, three of their star players, including team mascot and ace Doug Edert, hit the transfer portal, sending the program back to square one.
It’s impossible to know if coaching legends of the past would be able to thrive in this new environment, where players are more empowered than ever before, and can essentially carve their own path in college sports if they’re dissatisfied with the situation they end up in. What is a safe bet is that history will smile upon the coaches that are able to build juggernauts in any sport with how volatile rosters can be if the athlete’s situation is not ideal or if they don’t have the funds to keep them around, and even the thought of that would likely have made many coaching legends of the past wince.
“It’s hard enough to focus on the X’s and O’s…It’s hard enough to develop these young people…Developing you as young people to be ready to go forward into your professional career right after college. And for these coaches, prior to NIL, revenue sharing, engaging with agents, this new way of recruiting…their jobs are hard enough. Winning is hard, especially at this level,” said Brian Cox, the associate athletics director for Virginia Tech men’s basketball.
As Virginia Tech athletics enters the mid-2020s, coaches, recruiters and directors’ jobs are much more complex and difficult than they once were. These men and women now have to navigate a landscape that was already ever-changing due to just the nature of college sports, but now with the added layers of the Transfer Portal and NIL. The volatility and unpredictability of these newfound changes will without question make their jobs more difficult, but if there’s one thing that can be stated as fact, if a coach is able to create a champion from the ground up and turn a middling school into a dynasty, they’ll be looked at just as, or even more favorably than those that came before them.