Today is Black Monday in college football, and I may be premature here, writing before 5 p.m., but I’m assuming here that UVA Football head coach Tony Elliott is safe.
I’d heard rumblings of a staff meeting that had been scheduled for Monday morning that ended up getting canceled on Sunday afternoon, making some in the program wonder if something was up, but maybe all that happened there was, somebody important had to make an emergency trip to the dentist, and they just rescheduled.
Tooth pain can be fierce.
ICYMI
- UVA Football: Tony Elliott knows what he needs to do with Des Kitchings
- UVA Football: Anthony Colandrea, not surprisingly, headed to the transfer portal
- UVA Football: Ugly Virginia Tech loss foretells a housecleaning that, news flash, isn’t coming
- UVA Football: Getting fired would be the best thing that could happen for Tony Elliott
With the early prep signing day coming up on Wednesday, I don’t know that I anticipate any internal changes, e.g. the dismissal of offensive coordinator Des Kitchings that seems all but obvious.
One issue there, with respect to Kitchings’ job status, brought to me by several readers, is with Elliott, 11-23 in three seasons at UVA, clearly being a lame duck.
He’d already be out the door if not for two things: the uncertain job status of Athletics Director Carla Williams, and $14 million-plus buyout.
Incidentally, on Carla Williams, I reached out today to the media-relations office at UVA Athletics to ask if there is an update on her contract status since my last reporting, back on Nov. 4.
I was advised to submit another Freedom of Information Act request on that.
The opportunity was there for the athletic department to tell me that she’d signed an extension; I was, instead, foisted off to the FOIA folks.
I assume I’ll be reporting back in five business days to tell you that there is no update on Williams’ contract status.
ICYMI
- UVA Athletics: Carla Williams still hasn’t signed a contract extension, despite rumors
- UVA Athletics: Stuck in neutral waiting for clarity on Carla Williams
- Fact check: Did UVA quietly sign AD Carla Williams to a contract extension?
Related note: I filed a separate FOIA request to get copies of the contracts for the football coaching and support staff, so that we can get a handle on how much the program is spending overall on those folks, so that we can know the full costs of a staff buyout in the future.
Back to Elliott, the lame duck.
Seriously, on that point, him being a lame duck, with 43 seniors and grad students on the 2024 roster, it’s going to be hard for Elliott to even practice in the spring.
He may not have enough O and D linemen to do more than walk-throughs most days.
With that as our reality, double-digit losses are almost a guarantee next year, after which the buyout gets inside the $10 million threshold.
Keep in mind here, the buyout isn’t due in a lump sum, now or whenever it would come into play.
UVA Athletics can decide to go lump sum if it wants, but the contract also allows the money to be paid out in installments, on the schedule spelled out in Elliott’s employment contract.
And if he gets another job, and you have to presume that he would, the value of that salary would be deducted from what UVA pays him.
I’m telling you a lot here, and my intent when I started writing this piece wasn’t to go into all of that, as much as it was to suggest who Elliott should go for when he replaces Kitchings as his OC.
My assumption here is, it’s not going to be easy for a lame-duck coach to get anybody worth considering for the job to come to Charlottesville, for one year on a staff that is going to get fired.
All of that as preface, I have the perfect OC for Tony Elliott.
Tony Elliott.
It’s going to take a miracle for Elliott to survive 2025, with 2-10, 1-11 or 0-12 staring him in the face.
But there is a guy on the staff right now who was the offensive coordinator and play-caller for two national champs down at Clemson.
Elliott hiring himself to be his OC would require that he give up being a CEO coach, and, in effect, elevate his defensive coordinator, John Rudzinski, into being the head coach of the defense, with Elliott being the head coach of the offense.
Make this call early enough, and it could be a boost to recruiting the portal.
We need two portal QBs, for instance.
The pitch to portal QBs: come to Virginia, and play for the guy who called plays for Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence.
The pitch to tailbacks: Tony Elliott was Travis Etienne’s position coach.
Et cetera.
That kind of thing might move the needle for a guy or two.
More to the point, Elliott would be putting his future literally in his own hands.
I don’t know that there’s magic to be worked with the roster that we have coming back, but whatever magic he can conjure up, it would have to be better than he got out of three years of Des Kitchings, and a few months of whoever he could lure to Charlottesville with no guarantee of future job security.
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Chris Graham
