Tony Elliott had been on the next Power 5 coordinator to become a Power 5 head coach list for a while, and even turned down a chance to interview at Tennessee when that job came open in 2021.
What was it about Virginia that finally got him to leave Clemson, where he’d been part of two national champs as Dabo Swinney’s offensive coordinator?
“I wanted to be somewhere where I could build what I believe is the model program that shows you can win at the highest level, but you don’t have to compromise anything from a character standpoint, an academic standpoint and player development standpoint,” Elliott told reporters this week at the ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte.
Elliott has been on the job at Virginia since December, hiring a staff, hitting the road to rebuild relationships with high school coaches across the Commonwealth, designing and implementing an academic advisory program modeled on what Swinney has in place at Clemson, and putting his stamp on his first spring practice as a head coach.
His appearance at the ACC Kickoff was his first. I happened to run into him in the bathroom before he stepped up to the podium to take his first questions from ACC beat writers as a head coach.
Linebacker Nick Jackson advised Elliott that the podium experience was the hardest part of the media days event, his advice coming from wideout Keytaon Thompson, who represented Virginia at the 2021 ACC Kickoff.
Turns out, it wasn’t tough at all for the former Clemson walk-on who was voted a team captain as a senior, then used his industrial engineering degree in a two-year stint working as an engineer for Michelin North America before getting his first job in football as an assistant at South Carolina State in 2006.
Virginia wasn’t the only suitor for Elliott’s services in the offseason. He was also being courted by Duke, which certainly has as much to offer for a coach looking to build a football program in a top-flight academic environment.
What sealed it for Virginia was the back-and-forth between Elliott and UVA athletics director Carla Williams as he was interviewing for the job.
“I’m very intentional. I’m about relationships. I was looking for alignment. That was the number one thing I was looking for. We were able to have a couple of conversations off the record that solidified that UVA was the right place for me,” Elliott said. “It already fit the profile, what I was looking for, because you guys know that academics for me is the most important thing. I was a ballplayer just like these guys, and I had dreams of playing in the NFL, but it was my aunt’s persistent and consistent messaging to me about my education. Now my life and the lives of my children has changed because of education.
“It started there. The alignment was established through those off-the-record conversations, and then there’s a lot of similarities between where I was coming from and UVA. It’s a college-oriented town. It’s in the ACC, and I believe that this is the best conference in college football. I’ve experienced it at the highest level, so I knew I had a chance to compete for championships.”
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Chris Graham
