UVA Athletics needs UVA Football to be successful because, the AD, Carla Williams, said last week, “we need options, whatever comes down the road, whatever the future holds.”
It doesn’t take much to figure out what Williams is getting at.
“We need to make sure that the University of Virginia has options, and you can only do that by investing in the primary revenue driver,” said Williams, in a sit-down for the first installment of a new podcast, “Inside Virginia Athletics with Carla Williams,” hosted by John Freeman, the play-by-play voice of UVA Athletics.
“You have to invest in football, because that drives, that is the engine, as we’ve said over and over again, that is the engine,” Williams said. “Without a clear investment in football that is visible, then, whether it’s conference realignment or media rights or television deals or sponsorships, if you don’t invest in the primary driver of this entire industry, then you’re sending a message that you’re you don’t want to be a part of a national landscape moving forward, and we certainly want to be a part of the national landscape moving forward, and that starts with a proven track record of investing in the primary revenue driver.”
Alrighty, then.
What we know, from the details of the agreement between the ACC, Florida State and Clemson that settled their lawsuit – the details were made public last week through a public-records request – is that the ACC as we know it now will cease to be in 2030, at the latest, 2031.
ICYMI
- The first task for Carla Williams when she got the job: Investing in UVA Football
- Did the UVA Football money people really give Tony Elliott $30M to build a roster?
- The new ACC TV money deal is going to hit UVA Football where it hurts
How we know that: the exit fee for schools to leave the ACC drops to $75 million in 2030, one, and two, the Big Ten’s TV deal expires in 2030.
Complicating things here, the Big 12 and College Football Playoff TV deals are through 2031, and the SEC runs through 2034.
The best guess: we’re going to see a seismic, landscape-changing shift beginning to take shape in the next two to three years.
The shift will obviously be wrapped around football, and the thinking is, it’s going to involve the creation of some sort of superconference.
Virginia is 11-23 in its three seasons under Tony Elliott, so if you’re wondering why the UVA money people put in the area of $30 million toward his NIL budget in the offseason, well, there’s a lot of reasons why there, but number one has to be, we need to win, now, so that we can be included in the superconference discussions.
It’s not so much about paying the bills.
The athletics department, Williams said, is “the primary marketing arm of the university.”
“I mean, you think about it, last summer, the V sabre was global with our swimmers in Paris. It is a national brand because our sports teams are on the ACC Network, they’re on ESPN and ESPN2 and so forth,” Williams said.
It’s not hard to imagine the ACC surviving 2030 in some form, much like the Pac-Whatever-It-Is is making do after most of its members bolted for the Big Ten and Big 12, but Virginia doesn’t want to be in that ACC.
“We want to be the top public institution by the year 2030, you know. Winning is a part of our culture. You know, the desire to be the best, that is, the desire to pursue excellence, is a part of UVA, and athletics should be no different,” Williams said.
“We want to pursue excellence,” Williams said. “That’s why a lot of us came here and believe in this place, because we believed in the idea that we were going to pursue excellence. And so, we’re just charging forward with that premise.”
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