Carla Williams maps out her strategy for returning UVA Football to prominence

The model for UVA Football that worked in the George Welsh years was, win at least seven games every year, every so often, have a chance to do something special.

Of late, it’s been, losing record after losing record, make the occasional run at .500.

Who here is for getting back to where things were in the 1980s and 1990s?

“You really have to start from the sub-surface and build up that infrastructure, change the culture, and you have to stack years on top of each other to build something that is sustainable at a special level. Otherwise, we’re going to have these peaks and valleys every 10 years,” said Carla Williams, the athletics director at the University of Virginia, on the second installment of the “Inside Virginia Athletics” podcast.

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ICYMI

• Are college athletes mercenaries? UVA’s Williams, Jones address the question of the day
• The focus for UVA Football GM Tyler Jones: ‘Making data-informed decisions’
• UVA Athletics now requiring student-athletes to sign ‘binding’ contracts
• UVA Football: School does a 180 with ‘support’ from admissions helping recruiting
• Carla Williams: ‘Conference realignment’ putting pressure on UVA Football
• The first task for Carla Williams when she got the job: Investing in UVA Football

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Williams, on the first episode of the podcast, noted how her focus at the outset of her tenure – she was hired in 2017 – was on building up from within, starting with getting money in the budget for a full staff of coaching assistants, strength and conditioning trainers and nutritionists, then shifting the attention to physical infrastructure, namely, the $80 million football operations center that opened last year.

With all of those bases covered, the attention has now turned to the roster budget, which wasn’t even a thing eight years ago when Williams took over, but has become a priority with the advent of NIL and the House settlement.

Virginia boosters reportedly committed in the area of $30 million to this year’s roster, with clearcut results, in the form of the Top 25 rankings for the transfer class brought in by fourth-year coach Tony Elliott.

Fans were noticeably frustrated the past couple of years at the relative lack of investment in NIL, but I’d argue that, looking back on it, what Williams was trying to do was make sure that we could get the most value out of the investment, which, to her, required taking care of the basic things, like staffing and physical infrastructure, first.

“We’re looking for sustained success,” Williams said, “and that required an overhaul, culturally, mentally, facility-wise, infrastructure-wise, operational support-wise, university support, academic support, all of those things. It takes all of that to completely change the narrative and build a program that is sustainable, and that is exactly what has to happen. That’s what we’re working really hard to build right now, and it’s just going to take ongoing effort.”

The roster budget made available to the UVA Football staff in the 2024-2025 offseason was “an absolute game-changer for us,” said Tyler Jones, who was named the general manager of the UVA Football program last month.

“I would articulate it is that our entire recruiting board changed literally that quick, right, and the type of, you know, prospects that we’re going to pursue. It was an incredible jolt of energy and excitement for the program, and it certainly did pay dividends for us in acquiring elite student-athletes,” Jones said.

He didn’t name names, but I could point to Chandler Morris, a QB who was also recruited by the likes of Ole Miss, a CFP contender in 2024, and Oklahoma State, a traditional power in the Big 12, as one example of what the new budget for acquiring elite student-athletes has meant for the program.

“The battles that we’ve won on the recruiting trail are a good indication to where our investment level is,” Jones said. “I have a small group of colleagues that are at peer institutions very similar to UVA, and we talk, and we don’t share trade secrets, you can’t, but it’s like, wow, man, can’t believe you guys got that player. That’s just that that’s a good indication that we’re in a good spot, in a much better position that we’ve been for the last several years.”

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