It seems a bit premature to be talking about UVA Football coach Tony Elliott’s future, with his team sitting right now at 4-4, two wins away from bowl eligibility with four games to go in the 2024 season.
Which is important for me to point out as I also relate to you, this is the #1 thing I’m hearing about from UVA fans, and particularly UVA Football alums, right now.
A distant second: Andrew Rohde is the best we’ve got at point guard? Seriously?
Even at 4-4, the writing is on the wall with the football program as far as the 2024 season is concerned.
Virginia will be a decided underdog in each of its final four games.
ESPN Analytics gives the ‘Hoos a 24.0 percent chance of winning tomorrow night at #23 Pitt, a 4.4 percent chance of winning next week at #10 Notre Dame, an 18.2 percent chance of winning at home on Nov. 23 against #13 SMU, and a 19.9 percent chance of winning at Virginia Tech in the Nov. 30 regular-season finale.
The ESPN Analytics estimate on the chance that Virginia can get to six wins this season: 13.1 percent.
That’s, you know, not good.
The conventional wisdom going into the 2024 season was that Elliott, who was 3-7 in his first season at UVA in 2022, and 3-9 last year, would need to get Virginia back into a bowl game to avoid being in the hot-seat discussion.
Now, my thinking on this back in the summer was, anything less than six wins and a bowl appearance would put Elliott onto the hot seat heading into 2025.
The sense I’m getting from the football alums and money people is, the heat is already on.
I’m about to throw some water onto whatever fire there might be there.
14.4 million reasons why there won’t be a change
I reported earlier this week that Elliott is under contract through May 31, 2028, which gets him through the end of the 2027 season, and spring practice for 2028.
That’s three more full seasons and an extra half year.
His contract, a copy of which I obtained through a public-records request, entitles him to the remaining amount of his base salary, supplemental compensation, licensing royalties and a supplemental benefit plan “existing at the date of termination and for the remaining term.”
Which is to say, the buyout is the whole enchilada.
Per his deal, Elliott is paid $500,000 in base salary each June 1; $2.4 million in supplemental compensation on April 1, 2025, and April 1, 2026, and $2.55 million on April 1, 2027, and April 1, 2028; $1 million annually in licensing royalties; and UVA Athletics pays the premium on a $500,000 life insurance policy for Elliott under “supplemental benefit plan.”
I calculate that to come to $14.4 million, plus the insurance policy, that Elliott would be owed if he were to be terminated without cause after the 2024 season.
The last time UVA fired a football coach with money and years left on a deal was 2009, when Al Groh was let go with two years left on an extension that he’d signed in 2007.
His buyout ended up costing the University a relatively paltry $4.3 million.
Elliott’s deal, like Groh’s, includes a clause that would subtract the salary of any subsequent jobs that he would take in the contract years from what UVA would owe him, which you can presume would knock that $14.4 million figure down at least a little bit – let’s say he gets a position coach or coordinator job somewhere, and gets paid, say, $400,000 or $500,000 a year at that new job, that’s potentially two or three times $400,000 or $500,000 that gets knocked off the final tab.
It’s still a crap ton of money; in effect, UVA Athletics would be paying one guy $4 million-plus a year to not coach football, and then would have to pay another guy somewhere in that same ballpark to coach football.
Does UVA have the money to pay $8 million-plus a year for a football coach?
Because that’s what would have to happen.
I don’t think it’s a question of, does UVA have the money; it’s more, would the donors who pay the bills pony up the money?
Uncertain times for UVA Athletics
I’ve raised the point about the cost to make a move in private chats with folks who insist that UVA most certainly has the money, and I’ve yet to be convinced that this is something that actually can happen, not with so many unknowns around UVA Athletics right now.
The biggest unknown: the status of the athletics director, Carla Williams, whose contract expires on May 31, 2025.
The key date to watch out for with Williams is Nov. 30, the date spelled out in her contract as the deadline for Williams to meet with UVA President Jim Ryan to discuss “renewal or nonrenewal” of her contract.
Nov. 30 is also the date of the UVA Football regular-season finale.
Now, let’s assume, for sake of argument, that our current 4-4 season turns into a 4-8 finish after this upcoming stretch of tough games, and it’s not hard to assume that.
A 4-8 finish would mean that the season ended on a seven-game losing streak.
Tony Elliott would then be 3-7, 3-9 and 4-8 in his three seasons.
This year’s roster has 43 seniors and grad students, so next year is a rebuild anyway, no matter who the coach is.
The case can most certainly be made that it would be a good time to cut bait with Elliott and start anew.
The holdup, to me, is Williams’s status.
If the administration moves in the next couple of weeks to extend her contract, she could, with confidence, make a move in the direction of change in the football program.
It would be awkward to have her fire Elliott and begin a new national search, because it was Williams, you may remember, who forced out Elliott’s predecessor, Bronco Mendenhall, after the 2021 season, pressuring Mendenhall to fire his defensive coordinator, Nick Howell, in a power play that Mendenhall turned on its face by stepping down instead.
On the flip side, if Williams is still a lame-duck AD on Nov. 30, she couldn’t make a move on Elliott even if she and the administration wanted to.
No coach worth considering for the job at UVA is going to leave where he is now to go to a school whose AD may or may not be around in a few months.
And if you can’t make a move as soon after the season finale as possible, you might as well just stick with Elliott, even if you’ve decided that three years with 10 wins, and another new rebuild on the horizon, isn’t the way you want to go, either.
What I think ends up happening
I’ve been going back and forth on this, but here’s where I am now:
- Carla Williams will sign an extension. I’ve been told by folks in the know that she’s interviewed for other jobs, and not been offered anything new. I don’t see the administration moving on from her, despite the obvious issues with the football program, which has regressed on her watch, and is playing to half-empty home stadiums on fall Saturdays.
- The question to me on a Carla Williams extension: the timing. I don’t know that UVA locks her up this month. This thing could play out into the first couple of months of 2025. It needs to be resolved, one would think, by mid-March, with the men’s basketball coaching job already on the table in the wake of Tony Bennett’s shock retirement last month.
- Tony Elliott doesn’t deserve another year, but he gets at least one more year, and probably another one after that, even with 2025 shaping up to be another down year for the UVA Football program. I’m going to be rooting like heck for the kids to pull another win or two out the rest of the way, but I don’t see it. Even so, I also can’t see the UVA that I know and love paying a guy $4 million-plus for three years because he had a better agent than we had an AD when he signed his deal.
Yeah, this sucks
I don’t like any of this any more than any of you do, so don’t misread my read on what I see happening from where we are as me wanting all of that to play out that way.
Because I don’t.
I think it’s time to clean house in the athletics department, personally.
I just don’t know that the will is there on the part of the people ultimately responsible for making things happen to do what is necessary to get things moving forward.
And yes, I know that some of those decision-makers are reading along with the rest of us here, because they tell me that they read us.
Looking y’all square in the eye here: the ball is in your court, and, having fun with mixing metaphors, I’m certain you’re just going to punt it.
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Chris Graham
