UVA Athletics is making the claim, in a press release issued late in the day on Thursday, that an anonymous donor has made a multimillion-dollar gift in support of the UVA Football program.
It’s an anonymous donor, we don’t know the value of the gift, and we don’t know what it’s going for, other than the claim in the release that it will “elevate Virginia Football, equipping the coaching staff with the resources to attract, develop, and retain top talent to compete for championships.”
All sounds good, right?
This is the first that I’m hearing of this big check, which is to say, there were no rumblings from any of the usual sources of rumor and innuendo.
And then, poof, here we go, millions are raining down on UVA Football, like manna from heaven.
Sorry to be the a&$hole here; experience tells me that things that seem too good to be true, usually are.
I did enjoy how the release letting us in on this apparently needed infusion of cash included this rather lofty quote attributed to the anonymous donor:
“A football team is the flagship brand of a public university; it is the part of the school most frequently seen by the largest number of people. Sustained winning in football energizes the student body and activates our alumni. It attracts our country’s best and brightest to matriculate at school. I am bullish on the future success of this program and optimistic that this commitment will be a catalyst for increased support.”
The timing of the release about the supposed gift is another thing about this that is curious.
Tony Elliott just finished up his third season with a 5-7 record, so, his third straight sub-.500 season.
His three-year record is 11-23.
The last three UVA Football coaches with similar three-year records – Don Lawrence (1971-1973) and Dick Bestwick (1979-1981) were both 11-22; Mike London (2014-2016) was 11-25) – were fired at the end of the third year of those runs.
Two factors are contributing to Elliott not being on the firing block:
- the uncertain status of the athletics director, Carla Williams, whose contract is set to expire on May 31, 2025, and who, as of Tuesday of this week, hadn’t signed a contract extension.
- the $14.4 million that Elliott would be owed, per his contract, which runs through May 31, 2028, if he were to be let go.
Now, you could direct the money to go, you know, there, but, no, this big gift, which we’ll assume is on the up-and-up, isn’t going toward a buyout.
“The timing of this gift is critical as we provide Coach Elliott with the necessary resources to elevate his program. I am immensely grateful for the donor’s amazing generosity and enthusiasm for Virginia Football,” said Kevin Miller, the executive director of the Virginia Athletics Foundation, the fund-raising arm of UVA Athletics.
Odd thing here: a shortage of money isn’t the problem for UVA Football.
The most recent full accounting, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, had the UVA Football program bringing in $20 million more than it had spent.
If you didn’t have to use that operating surplus to pay the bills for what we call the Olympic sports, which include baseball and women’s basketball, Elliott, or whoever was the coach, would have what would be needed to elevate the program.
Getting high school and transfer recruits into school, that’s another issue.
Share
Chris Graham
