The BOV might want to pay for a review of UVA Athletics, to make sure all is on the up and up

UVA Athletics hasn’t had a sign-stealing scandal under a football coach, as is the case at the University of Michigan, where that guy’s replacement was caught in an affair with a staffer, and also, a former offensive coordinator is awaiting trial on charges of hacking private images belonging to thousands of female student-athletes.

Holy crap, Michigan!

But the same argument that kept the AD at Michigan, Warde Manuel, supposedly safe in his job – look at all that winning! – would seem to apply to the continued job security of Carla Williams at Virginia.

Manuel, who we learned on Monday is stepping down, at the point of a bayonet, at the end of the calendar year, oversaw national championships in football (2023) and men’s basketball (2026), in addition to national championships in gymnastics and five Frozen Four appearances for the ice hockey team, as all of the above shenanigans were playing out.

With Manuel on his way out, there does seem to be a limit to what the folks in the academic ivory tower will put up with.

Turning our attention to UVA Athletics, our shenanigans are at least in the ballpark of what we’ve seen going on at Michigan.

To wit:

• Williams decided to cut ties with Amaka Agugua-Hamilton in April, days after a surprise run for the women’s basketball team to the Sweet 16, amid allegations that Agugua-Hamilton created an uncomfortable work culture for her staff. (ICYMI: UVA Basketball: Everything you need to know about the dismissal of Coach Mox, what’s next)
• A group of parents and former players wrote a letter to UVA President Scott Beardsley to ask Beardsley to look into allegations of emotional abuse of student-athletes in the softball program involving head coach Joanna Hardin. (ICYMI: Letter to UVA President details concerns about culture in UVA Softball program)
• The AD agreed to extend the contract of associate head swimming coach Gary Taylor not once, but twice, after Taylor agreed to accept a two-year probation from the U.S. Center for SafeSport for the emotional abuse of athletes at three previous coaching stops. (ICYMI: UVA Swimming coach Gary Taylor on probation after admitting to emotional abuse of athletes)
• Former football player Jahmal Edrine is facing a jury trial in November on rape and abduction charges dating to the week of the 2025 season opener. Edrine played the entire 2025 season as the investigation into the alleged incident played out quietly behind the scenes; the UVA Football team won a school-record 11 games in 2025 with Edrine as the third-leading receiver. (ICYMI: UVA Football player charged with rape, abduction: Who knew what, when?)
• Former men’s lacrosse coach Lars Tiffany has filed suit over his termination, alleging that he had signed a three-year contract extension offered to him last summer before he was sacked. (ICYMI: UVA Lacrosse: Lars Tiffany files suit over botched contract extension)

This is a lot, obviously.

But then, football did win that school-record 11 games last year; Williams’ hand-picked replacement for legendary basketball coach Tony Bennett, Ryan Odom, won 30 games in his rookie season at the helm of UVA Basketball.

UVA Athletics finished fifth in the Directors’ Cup for the 2025-2026 academic sports year.

Women’s swimming has won six straight national titles; men’s tennis won another national title in the spring, the third on Williams’ watch.

Tiffany, before being run off, won two men’s lacrosse national titles during Williams’ tenure as AD.

The budget for athletics has grown; Williams seems to have been successful in keeping things in balance with the growth in NIL.

Williams dictated the need for significant upgrades in infrastructure within the program, which was in a woeful state in terms of foundational elements when she took over in 2017.

There’s a lot to like about what we’ve seen from Carla Williams, obviously.

But, can’t ignore the downsides.

Tiffany is almost certainly going to get at least a sizable monetary settlement in his suit, which in the process is already an embarrassment for UVA Athletics, that things got to this stage.

It’s odd to me that whatever was going on behind the scenes leading to the dismissal of Agugua-Hamilton hasn’t seen more of the light of day, but whatever it was, it was enough for Williams to say, no more, to the person that she lured from a mid-major in 2022, to try to pick up the pieces left behind by another disaster hire in women’s basketball, Tina Thompson, whose last season was marred by Thompson’s decision to forfeit two games.

The Gary Taylor situation, meantime, is the real head-scratcher here – that Williams moved to keep Taylor on the coaching staff after allegations of years of emotional abuse of athletes at NC State, Auburn and a local YMCA youth swim team.

I don’t know what to make of the Jahmal Edrine story, other than, it doesn’t look good, not good at all – and that it looks like athletics department officials just looked the other way so as not to create a distraction as the football team racked up wins last fall.

The one pause that I have in pointing all of this out is, Williams has long been under fire from segments of the fan and alum base for the simple fact that she’s a she, and that she’s Black – and that writing anything of a critical nature of a Black woman in a leadership position is an invitation to misogynistic and racist trolls to do their thing.

The trolls, being trolls, could be, oddly, a layer of insulation for Williams – UVA, as an institution, certainly doesn’t want to be seen as feeding the trolls.

As much as I don’t want to feed the trolls, either, it seems to me that there’s at least a lot of smoke here, with:

• the two bad hires in women’s basketball.
• the bungled forced departure of Lars Tiffany.
• the inexplicable move to extend the contract of a swim coach on probation for emotional abuse of athletes.
• the don’t ask, don’t tell approach to the softball program.
• the blind eye to the star football player accused of a violent crime.

If I’m on the Board of Visitors, I’m trying to get a majority to agree with me that we need to hire a law firm to conduct an independent review, just to make sure everything is kosher over there in athletics, is what I’m getting at.