I feel personally blessed and humbled, at the same time, that we’ve been able to build up a steady following among the UVA Basketball and UVA Football fanbases for our coverage of what our ‘Hoos are up to.
That anybody out there cares what I think and have to say about the teams that I’ve lived and died with since I was an elementary school kid who wanted to play power forward for Terry Holland and quarterback for George Welsh, all I can say is, wow.
Important point to make here: it’s not just a cool thing that I get to do.
I’ve been at this long enough now that, it’s actually important, what we do here at AFP, in terms of our coverage of the goings-on in UVA Athletics.
The Iowa-based company that owns most of the legacy newspapers in Virginia is rumored to be on the verge of making another round of staff cuts, this time to its sports departments, which are already running at skeleton-crew level as it is.
It’s to a point where the people who are left on press row can barely tell you the final score anymore, around having to figure out how to do what they need to do to report on the games and keep the lights on – be that by hawking ads or working second and third jobs.
Not that you need any of us to tell you the final score – y’all turn to us to give you insight into how we arrived at the final score, and what the strategy is going to be to do better next time.
And that’s not even accounting for keeping the folks in charge of running the show accountable.
I give my colleagues heck for completely ignoring the big story that we broke last week about UVA Football coach Tony Elliott being made aware of the rape investigation involving a star player on the eve of the 2025 season opener, and playing the kid the whole season anyway, but to be fair, it’s hard to catch up on the off-the-field stuff when you’re juggling game coverage and making sure the bills are paid.
ICYMI
Not that we at AFP don’t have those pressures, too, because we do; we’re just, fortunately, more mature as an organization, since we launched in 2002, an eternity ago now, back when online journalism was a frontier.
And we have a secret weapon, in the form of Crystal Graham, whose professional history includes a stint running a statewide nonprofit, who wakes up each morning and goes to sleep every night thinking through what we have in the works to be able to build on what we already have in place.
We’re about to roll out news about a new partnership with a nonprofit that will allow us to tap into grants and other monies from foundations, trusts and individual donors who support the kind of community-interest news coverage that we’ve offered here at AFP since our founding.
It’s more common that those dollars go to fund coverage of local government and public policy, which we also do plenty of at AFP, but what we do in the sports-coverage realm is also important.
Maybe not so much the fun-and-games stuff about the final scores and how we got there, which we also do well, but there’s a lot going on in the intersection of sports and culture, as evidenced by the Jahmal Edrine rape case, which, whatever the reason, we’re the only ones telling you about the choice made by the higher-ups at UVA Athletics to try to sweep under the rug the investigation, in the name of trying to win football games.
We’re still the only media entity in Virginia to report on the two-year probation handed down by the U.S. Center for SafeSport to an assistant coach on the six-time national champ UVA Women’s Swimming team, in a case in which the coach admitted to engaging in emotional abuse of athletes at three previous jobs.
We’re also the only media company in these parts, and elsewhere, to report on allegations of emotional misconduct involving the coaching staff with the UVA Softball program, which some would prefer us to ignore with the softball team having earned berths to the past three NCAA Tournaments.
I know for a fact that I’m not a favorite of the bean-counters for the frequent reminders that I offer to readers about how UVA Athletics balances its annual budgets through the assessment of millions of dollars in student activity fees that most students have to add to their student debt to pay.
ICYMI
- UVA Swimming coach Gary Taylor on probation after admitting to emotional abuse of athletes
- Letter to UVA President details concerns about culture in UVA Softball program
- ‘Hoo foots the bill for UVA Athletics? Well, it ain’t the people who buy tickets
And, yes, on top of AFP being the only media group keeping ‘em honest at the administrative level, we also find plenty of time to tell you the final score, how we got there, and what our guys and gals are going to do strategically to get better.
We’re only able to do all of that because you, our readers, have made clear that you want us to – by clicking, reading, engaging on social media, emailing me your thoughts on things that I may have missed, and stuffing money into our Tip Jar as your way of saying, thanks.
Right back’atcha there.
Thanks for making what we do possible.
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Chris Graham
