“Storm clouds hover at UVA,” specifically, over the McCue Center, in the vicinity of the office of Carla Williams, the AD, following Brian O’Connor’s puzzling decision to leave for Mississippi State, we’re being told by one gatekeeper.
It takes a while for some weather systems to materialize, apparently, because these “storm clouds” date back, we’re told, to Bronco Mendenhall’s abrupt decision, way back in 2021, to step down as the UVA Football coach, take two years off, coach one year at New Mexico, then bolt from there to Utah State.
ICYMI
That one was on Williams, who gave Mendenhall an ultimatum to hire a new defensive coordinator, which seemed reasonable, given that his defense in 2021 ranked 121st nationally in yards per game, but still.
To get a new defensive coordinator, she ended up having to hire a new coach, and that new coach, Tony Elliott, who inherited from Mendenhall a program that had been in the Orange Bowl two years prior, has gone 11-23 in three seasons, with a defense that, last year, ranked, ahem, 101st nationally.
As that part of the storm system was gaining strength, UVA Basketball coach Tony Bennett was in the midst of a mid-life crisis across the street in JPJ, telling Williams in the spring of 2021 that he was thinking of stepping down, not sure that he was fit for the new NIL/transfer portal era in college athletics.
Williams, doing what a good AD should, when you have a Hall of Fame coach in his early 50s thinking about early retirement, talked him out of it, and would have to do so several more times, before he finally resisted, and quit, last October.
ICYMI
The idea that Tony Bennett quitting is somehow Carla Williams’s fault: bunk.
The weather app is telling us rain is 10 minutes away now that Brian O’Connor is scanning the real-estate market down in Starkville, after months of complaining behind the scenes that he wasn’t getting enough money to be able to compete on the national stage, despite having a Top 15 budget.
The issue, it seems, had to do with the idea that O’Connor has that he needs the new full allotment of 34 scholarships that the NCAA has set as the upper limit, up from the long-standing 11.7.
Mississippi State, apparently, has promised O’Connor 34; Williams, apparently, was unwilling to do so.
My verdict on that one: Williams is in the right.
ICYMI
Baseball loses money, at both UVA and Mississippi State, and everywhere not named LSU; and we’re not talking about losing just a little bit.
In 2024, the UVA Baseball program operated with a $3.4 million loss; Mississippi State Baseball reported a $3.1 million loss.
And that was before the scholarship limit went from 11.7 to 34.
Those 22.3 new scholarships for baseball is going to cost Mississippi State in the neighborhood of another million dollars, with, what, exactly, as the return on that investment?
And considering that a scan of the stats pages across the college baseball landscape tells us that nobody uses more than 28 guys as regulars in a season, and most fall in the 23-26 range, the 25 schollies that we understand Williams had pledged to fund for O’Connor is more than reasonable, considering the economics.
ICYMI
The jury is still out on the football move – 2025 is a make-or-break year for Tony Elliott, whose program was flushed with cash in the offseason, funding an NIL spending spree that puts win-now-or-else pressure on the fourth-year coach.
Williams was able to find, as the successor to Bennett, a guy in Ryan Odom who was on the short list of several Power 5 schools with job openings, and has already been able to piece together a roster getting preseason Top 25 love from the sportswriter set.
The AD is busier in the first week of June than she’d expect to be, pulling all-nighters to find a guy to lead the baseball program.
The hard part to that is going to be sifting through the long list of names of highly qualified guys who are lining up for the chance to get access to The Dish and UVA’s oversized baseball budget, which, in addition to being Top 15 nationally, ranks second in size in the ACC.
The idea that we should be critical of Carla Williams for only being willing to lose another $500,000 on baseball instead of going in for a full million in additional losses is, I dunno, I guess it gets clicks.
There’s a lot to be critical of with respect to UVA Athletics, most of it – almost all of it – having to do with football, which was doing fine until Williams ran Mendenhall out of town.
The baseball coach complaining his way into missing the NCAA Tournament and Bob Irsaying his way to Bumfuk, Egypt, ain’t on Carla Williams.
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Chris Graham
