The UVA Baseball interwebs are smoking with renewed speculation that long-time coach Brian O’Connor is the top target for the Mississippi State job.
Not sure what this is worth, but as the guy who told you that Tony Bennett was set to retire six months before he actually did end up retiring, I can tell you that I’m not hearing anything from anybody in the know behind the scenes at UVA Athletics that O’Connor is going anywhere.
O’Connor just met with the media on Tuesday, so, two days ago, to talk about the 2025 season, and the snub from the NCAA Tournament selection committee.
ICYMI
The topic of any possible interest in another job didn’t come up, but that was because O’Connor had already addressed Mississippi State directly during a mid-week press avail three weeks ago.
“It’s nothing I have any control over, but it’s an honor that people think that much about what has been done in this baseball program and that’s all it is. It’s all a result of the consistent success we’ve had in this baseball program,” O’Connor said back on May 8, in advance of a weekend series with Miami.
More from O’Connor from that May 8 avail:
“If it’s about developing players and getting to Omaha, why is there another job that’s any better? Because that’s all we care about. We care about developing the players, winning and running an elite program that they enjoy being part of and that will set them up for success in the rest of their lives,” O’Connor said.
The strength of that answer seemed to make the point moot.
O’Connor has been a target of top programs in the past – Texas, back in the mid-2010s, more recently, LSU, which had O’Connor’s mentor, Paul Manieri, personally lobby O’Connor to take the job, which is inarguably the Notre Dame Football/Duke Basketball job in all of college baseball, back in 2021.
ICYMI
- How close was Brian O’Connor to taking the LSU job?
- Brian O’Connor resists overture from Texas, staying put with UVA Baseball
The guy who ended up getting the job, Jay Johnson, is working on a $1.8 million annual compensation package.
Last June, UVA signed O’Connor to a three-year extension that runs through the 2031 season and pays him $1.4 million annually.
ICYMI
- UVA announces extension for baseball coach Brian O’Connor
- Brian O’Connor’s new UVA deal puts him in Top 10 nationally in total compensation
- Rumor-killer: No, Texas A&M didn’t offer UVA’s Brian O’Connor $3M a year
Mississippi State was paying its head coach, Chris Lemonis, who won a national championship at the school in 2021, but was only in one NCAA Tournament in the three years following, $1.325 million a year.
In sum there: O’Connor has been targeted in the past by the big boys, he turned down the best job in all of college baseball, resisting the recruiting effort of the guy who got him the UVA job back in 2003, and O’Connor is making more at UVA than what Mississippi State was paying the guy who won a national championship there three years ago.
There had been talk circulating for months behind the scenes that there could legitimate reason for concern that O’Connor might be willing to listen to the people down in Starkville, to the effect that O’Connor is frustrated with a lack of commitment from UVA Athletics to use money from the $20.5 million that the House settlement will authorize to go toward compensation for his ballplayers.
I’ve not seen anything formal on this, but the word circulating behind the scenes is that UVA Athletics is planning to use 95 percent of the total that it can dole out under House to football and men’s basketball, with the other varsity sports getting crumbs.
Thinking this concern through, though, I don’t know why any other Power 4 school would do anything differently, particularly down at Mississippi State, where the folks there also have to compete in big-boy football.
And it’s not like Mississippi State makes a ton of money at the baseball thing, vis-à-vis UVA Baseball.
The baseball program down there routinely averages more than 10,000 fans per home game, and still runs annual operating deficits in the $2 million to $3 million range, just like UVA Baseball, which averages 4,000 a game, does.
The stark reality illustrated in those numbers: money in college sports comes from TV, and college baseball doesn’t make money on TV, because only the diehards are watching, and there aren’t many diehards.
The College World Series gets in the range of 2.5 million viewers, but the Super Regionals are closer to 500,000, the Regionals 250,000, and the averages for the relative few regular-season games that get on broadcast cable draw less than 100,000.
This is a tiny fraction of the numbers for football and men’s basketball, which is why athletics departments are saying, we’re going to put more of that House money into football and baseball, because, return on investment.
Back to O’Connor, and the Mississippi State rumors: I don’t doubt that Mississippi State wants to make a splash hire, and the folks there wouldn’t be doing their due diligence if they didn’t reach out to O’Connor to gauge his possible interest.
It wouldn’t take giving him more money for himself, but promising a bigger budget for recruiting and retention – and I’d expect them to be able to promise a bigger budget for recruiting and retention.
How much bigger, given what O’Connor has been able to generate at UVA, from the regular donors, and his guys who have gone on to great success, the Ryan Zimmermans, Sean Doolittles, the Chris Taylors, would be a question.
Back three weeks ago, O’Connor had this to say about the support he expected going forward:
“I can assure you that the support of Virginia baseball moving forward will be elite. The University has made and will continue to make the commitment for us to continue to compete at the highest level of college baseball. There’s no question about that. That commitment will make our current players, future players, former players and fans very proud and excited,” O’Connor said.
He was asked about the financial support again in his post-season presser on Tuesday, and this is what he had to say:
“We will be in a much improved scholarship situation moving forward. That exact number I don’t have, OK, but that’s being continued to be worked on. The NIL situation is totally up in the air for all of college athletics. I don’t think there’s anybody that can sit there right now and say, we have this for NIL, because everybody anticipates that that’s going to drastically change and go into this NIL go system. You know, you could see what we could do in football and basketball here, because we were still under the old rules, right, kind of donor-driven NIL, right, that is scheduled as part of the House settlement to all change. So, there is a ton of uncertainty about that, right?
“We will do what we are capable of doing with regards to scholarships and what the NIL system allows with not only retaining our roster of the guys that that want to and need to be back here, but also to for the incoming recruits and the transfer portal. I mean, we will go into the transfer portal and add pieces. We’re presently doing that, and that’s ongoing, but that will, as every year, will be important part of putting the roster together for next year. But it’s, it’s like baseball is in a weird position right now, right, because of the timing of it. Football and basketball were able to get through all that before this House settlement. I mean, this thing could be signed any day now, and so there’s a lot of uncertainty about how you’re going out and acquiring talent.”
Doesn’t sound to me like a guy who’s going anywhere.
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Chris Graham
