UVA Football coach Tony Elliott’s 2025 prep recruiting class included six kids from Virginia, none from the Top 10 recruits in the state.
Virginia Tech got two Top 10 kids, and 12 of the Top 50.
Maryland had two of our state’s Top 10 and three Top 50 kids.
Clemson had three Top 10 and the #14 kid.
I’m old enough to remember when Elliott got the UVA job, three Decembers ago, there was a lot of talk about how Bronco Mendenhall had let us down by not prioritizing Virginia in his recruiting strategy.
Elliott was going to fix that, and the $80 million football ops center that came online this year was going to be a big help.
It’s not working.
Elliott’s 2025 class ranked 13th in the now 17-team ACC and 54th nationally, per 247Sports, and yes, while this is his best class – his 2024 class ranked 88th nationally and 15th in the 17-team ACC, and his 2023 class was 64th nationally and 13th in a 14-team ACC – he’s not exactly showing progress at what he said would be his focal point.
So, 2025, again, no Top 10s, six in the Top 50.
In 2024, UVA had no one from the Top 10 in Virginia, and four from the Top 50.
In 2023, UVA had one Top 10 (outside linebacker Kam Robinson), and six from the Top 50.
Of the Virginia preps signed under Elliott, only Robinson, defensive lineman Anthony Britton, the #44 recruit in Virginia in the Class of 2023, and wideout Kam Courtney, the #20 recruit in the Class of 2024, have cracked the two-deep.
Dumb question: This is all good, right?
What I love about working in the media – being sarcastic here – is how tone-deaf my colleagues are to all of this.
Schools have press conferences on signing day to go over their recruiting results, and at the one held for Elliott on Wednesday, a reporter actually asked this question:
“A lot of in-state kids. What does it say about the movement and the progress you have made?”
And they consider me “fringe media” over there.
Cue the Tony Elliott Word Salad answer.
“I think it’s progress,” Elliott said, and to be fair to him, that’s what these press conferences are all about; he’s selling something here.
“Man, I want to get guys on the 804, I want to go to 757, I want to go up into Northern Virginia. I want all of the best players to stay in the state of Virginia, and we understand the work that we got to do, like, we got to make it, make them want to stay. And I think this is a good step in a direction. I feel like we hit on the right players, because again, as many as you want to stay, still got to be about fit. Make sure that that it’s a fit.
“Six guys, and we went after more, there were several other guys that we battled, and obviously we lost a couple of in-state battles to some high-profile guys, and we also lost some out-of-state battles as well. But we’re going to try and keep the best players in the state of Virginia, and I’m excited about kind of the direction we’re heading this offseason.
“Hopefully we can just make a compelling argument. You know, we got the academics, I know what we got to do as a program, from a football standpoint, the new facility, I think, you know, going forward, we have an even stronger, you know, you know, component of things to be able to sell, to keep these guys, to keep these guys home.”
Prep recruiting in the transfer portal era
Signing day used to be everything, back when transfers had to sit out a year, and thus, high-impact transfers were rare, because guys worth anything weren’t going to sit out a year for a change of scenery.
It’s still a big deal at the big-boy schools, but at a place like UVA, I don’t know that UVA Football today isn’t what FCS programs were five and ten years ago.
I used to do broadcast work down at VMI, and the song and dance there each offseason was, how many kids who came here and worked themselves into being studs are we going to lose to a Power 5 this year?
Now the UVAs of the college football world are developmental programs for the slimmed down Power 4 – where kids who couldn’t get a sniff from the big boys can take what was their best offer coming out of high school, prove themselves against the ACC, and put themselves back out on the market to regauge their place in the pecking order.
This is our reality, whether the anonymous donor we heard about yesterday, and who I am now being told is pledging $50 million over 10 years to give us a chance in the NIL game even knows any of this or not, and I suspect not.
Elliott is at least acknowledging the reality, unpleasant as it is.
“I do want to be a developmental program. However, man, the landscape is changing so fast,” Elliott said on signing day. “It’s hard to be developmental if you lose your developmental guys, right? If I have developmental guys that are leaving, it’s hard to get the exact replacement with the exact same situation based off timing. If I lose guys now, it’s hard to replace that by February with a high school kid.”
Kam Robinson played and contributed as a true freshman. Anthony Colandrea started six games at quarterback as a true freshman, and was named the starter for 2024 in training camp.
Colandrea’s sophomore season could be considered developmental; problem being for Elliott, with Colandrea now in the transfer portal, some other coach is going to get the value of Colandrea’s junior and senior years.
Robinson’s status at UVA going forward, I am hearing, is uncertain; if he were to bolt, that would be a bigger loss than Colandrea.
No-win situation
Elliott has talked at length in recent weeks about how hard it is for his program to work the transfer portal, because it’s almost impossible to get sophomore and juniors through the admissions office, limiting his staff’s work on transfers to guys who just finished their freshman year, or guys who are going to compete as grad students.
So, UVA Football can’t be a player for roughly half of the guys on the portal just off the top.
Elliott is already working almost against the folks in admissions in terms of being able to recruit a wider base of high school kids, which is why he has to put his staff’s focus on getting the top recruits that he can, but otherwise, they have to find diamonds in the rough and focus on their development.
Problem there being, as much as Elliott wants to be a developmental coach, he runs the risk, as FCS and Group of 5 coaches have for years, of being too good at the developmental side of things, and seeing his successes move on to greener pastures.
I don’t know how he wins here, against these headwinds.
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Chris Graham
