The UVA Football program is where it is, and not where Florida State is, because Carla Williams had a plan.
Now, to be fair, the AD who got sacked today down at FSU, Michael Alford, he had a plan, too – it’s just that, his plan was, in a word, dumb.
Alford, alternatively, pleaded poverty, as part of a harebrained strategy to get FSU out of its contractual binding to the ACC, as if that was their main problem, and then, he committed $500 million toward infrastructure improvements, with the bad timing being, he did that just as the advent of the NIL and revenue-sharing era made it necessary to be able to put millions toward roster budgets.
ICYMI
I can’t say for sure that Williams, when she got the AD job at UVA back in 2017, foresaw the NIL and revenue-sharing era that was to come, but let’s just say, it’s fortuitous for us that she got the job when she did, and got things moving on the infrastructure front when she did, because by the time she had the building blocks in place, UVA Athletics was in a position to be able to then invest its time and money toward building top-tier roster budgets for football and men’s basketball, as the likes of FSU were playing catch-up.
Playing catch-up at FSU has meant, for them, carrying the highest debt load of any athletics program in the country, alongside Alford having signed embattled football coach Mike Norvell to an extension after the 13-1 season the ‘Noles had in 2023 that includes a buyout that has made it impossible to cut bait on him as Norvell’s last two teams have gone 2-10 and 5-7.
Being fair to Norvell here, though, is it his coaching, or the lack of money, that’s at the heart of why the football team has sucked the past two years?
We’ll almost certainly never know there, because Norvell’s days are obviously numbered now, with his AD gone – and I wouldn’t be all that comfy right now if I was the president down there, because that guy, Richard McCullough, is the one who hired Michael Alford.
From a UVA Athletics standpoint, none of that FSU stuff matters to us; seriously, let ‘em wither on the vine, for all we care.
No, what matters to us is, our AD got us caught up infrastructure-wise ahead of the coming of NIL and revenue-sharing, meaning, she’s been able to rally our donors to put their money not toward debt service, but building top-level competitive rosters for the money sports, football and men’s basketball.
ICYMI
- The first task for Carla Williams when she got the job: Investing in UVA Football
- Carla Williams maps out her strategy for returning UVA Football to prominence
Which is why football is coming off an 11-win season, and is loaded for bear for 2026, and men’s hoops won 30 last year, and might be better this fall and winter.
A lot of folks have given Carla Williams hell, and for a while, I was one of them, but I had my Saul on the Road to Damascus moment last summer, when I finally saw what it was she’d been doing all these years.
Today’s news down at FSU seemed a good excuse for me to remind those among ye who haven’t yet been convinced that, yes, we got ourselves a good one in Carla Williams.
Share
Chris Graham
