UVA Football | Elliott defends playing FCS schools: ‘Just good for football’

A reporter put UVA Football coach Tony Elliott on the spot at his Tuesday presser regarding this week’s opponent, William & Mary, an FCS school, and Elliott, unfortunately, took the bait and offered up the party line, because what else is he going to do?

“I think it’s important for the game of football. I think it’s important for the state of Virginia, from the standpoint of, there’s a lot of high school players in the state of Virginia that wanna play, and this gives an opportunity for both programs to have exposure,” Elliott said, by way of offering spin.

This is where being nice – and not pulling a Bill Belichick and saying, next question – does you absolutely no good.

These games are an embarrassment to everybody involved – to UVA Athletics, which is paying W&M $450,000 to come take the beating; and to the College of William & Mary, for taking the money to take said beating, to help finance its football program and overall athletics budget.

The UVAs of the world need to be focused on improving their schedules going forward, at the least pretending that playing tougher schedules could factor in to their ability to earn consideration for a spot in a College Football Playoff.

As it stands, we get W&M back on the schedule in 2027, Richmond in 2028 and 2031, VMI in 2030 and 2032.

Note to the money folks: we’re going to need to buy those games out.

But in the meantime …

“They got four Power 4 players on their roster. They had several players from the last time that we played them that were able to transfer up,” said Elliott, which, seriously, just stop it already, making it about these kinds of games are good for recruiting the transfer portal.

“Every kid wants to play Power Four, but there’s not enough spots for every kid that’s getting recruited to play at the Power Four, or maybe they got to develop a little bit more,” Elliott went on, continuing the, it’s good for recruiting nonsense.

“It’s a great opportunity for them to see, hey, I can go to William & Mary, I can go to these smaller schools and develop and then have an opportunity to compete against the higher level, and then possibly maybe elevate my status over time. I think it’s just good for football,” Elliott said.

No, Coach, it’s not.