Not far down the list of issues that I know at least one MAGA who is now a former member of the UVA Board of Visitors had with Jim Ryan was Ryan’s move last fall to extend the contract of the athletics director, Carla Williams.
Williams, for lots of reasons, including two obvious ones – the obvious reasons being, she’s Black, and she’s a woman – isn’t a favorite of the MAGA set.
Not that anybody on that side will say those things out loud, oddly, given the political climate, particularly vis-à-vis the coup that felled Ryan from within, which nailed him to the cross of DEI – DEI being this year’s critical race theory, which was 2021’s Obama birth certificate, which was the 2012 update to post-9/11 Islamophobia, the Willie Horton ad, Nixon’s Southern strategy, the way Jesse Helms said the word “nigrah” in his TV commentaries, Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats, Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow and the Three-Fifths Clause.
ICYMI
- UVA President Jim Ryan resigns: Making sense of something that doesn’t make sense
- Jim Ryan explains decision to step down as UVA president: ‘Real and direct harm’
How I got looped into the anti-Williams movement was my reporting and opining on Williams’ management of the UVA Football program, beginning with her running off Bronco Mendenhall, two years after the Orange Bowl, in a dispute over his defensive coordinator, and the lack of attention to detail to repairing relationships with football season-ticket holders that were broken under the regime of her predecessor, Craig Littlepaige, who ran a generation of fans off in 2008 with a money-grab reseating plan just as the program was falling into decline on the field.
Because I wrote critically of Williams on those issues, there was an assumption from the Dump Williams contingent that I am a fellow traveler.
To be clear, I’ve written critically of Williams, and wrote critically of Ryan, for his handling of the Nov. 13 shooting investigation and the UVA Health debacle, but I’ve not been of the mindset that either’s job should have been on the line.
To that end, I’ve written critically of my own mother and father; nothing, to me, is sacred or off-limits.
In the case of Carla Williams, the UVA Athletics program is consistently in the Top 15 in the Directors’ Cup, she has overseen several big-dollar infrastructure projects, she’s been able to boost annual athletics spending 26.3 percent since taking over in 2017, and she just pulled off a couple of coups in the personnel department – replacing all-time basketball wins lead Tony Bennett, who quit on the eve of the 2024-2025 season, with Ryan Odom, whose roster rebuild is getting Way Too Early Top 25 love, and luring Chris Pollard from Duke to succeed the disgruntled Brian O’Connor at the helm of the baseball program.
ICYMI
- Scott German: Carla Williams, after losing Brian O’Connor, got her man
- We have our guy: UVA Athletics formally names Ryan Odom new hoops coach
Williams also deserves some credit for convincing the money people to inject a massive amount of money into football for the 2025 season.
Her work there may not be done – if Tony Elliott can’t win with a $30 million NIL budget, Williams is almost certainly going to have to launch another coaching search this fall, though it shouldn’t be hard to find top candidates for our football job, given the commitment of cash from the donors to give Elliott no excuses going into training camp.
ICYMI
I’ve got a new issue issue with Williams with respect to her handling of the situation with the swimming program, which hired Gary Taylor, the former Auburn coach, last spring to serve as the associate head coach under Todd DeSorbo, who has led the women’s team to five straight national titles.
Taylor is currently serving a two-year probation after admitting to emotional misconduct of athletes at NC State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics, a youth swim program at the Piedmont Family YMCA in Charlottesville, and Williams, per my reporting on the Gary Taylor story, was aware as Taylor was being hired for the UVA job that there was an investigation into the allegations against him, and she still signed off on the hire, and has remained silent since word of the probation has come into the public domain.
ICYMI
The quick and easy solution there: issue a statement acknowledging the issue with Taylor, and the damage done to the athletes under his charge at NC State, Auburn and Cav Aquatics, that also makes it clear he is at strike two, and one more strike, and he’s done.
With football, I’d like to see more effort from the marketing folks in the athletics department to get butts in seats, as I’ve been writing for years, dating back to the Littlepaige era, and I’m disappointed that we’re not seeing or hearing anything going on behind the scenes that makes us think they’re doing anything other than what they’ve always done.
(Hint: I’ll be writing more about this in the fall.)
Neither of those issues is close to being a firing offense, not even accounting for the record of success as measured by the Directors’ Cup, the hundreds of millions of dollars of completed infrastructure improvements, the massive influx of annual budget money that keeps our teams competitive year in, year out.
Carla Williams could be a better communicator, and that’s an understatement, but her style is less publicity hound, more baseball umpire – if you don’t think about her, to her, that means she’s doing her job.
Is her job on the line if Tony Elliott can’t figure out a way to win seven or eight games with the big budget he was handed by the money people?
No more than it was when Brian O’Connor left for Mississippi State, and she lured Chris Pollard, or when Tony Bennett decided he couldn’t do NIL anymore, and she landed Ryan Odom.
The Dump Williams folks went ballistic on Williams when both Bennett and O’Connor left, and then nuclear silent when she found top-notch replacements.
She’s found more money for our teams to be competitive, she’s raised millions for improvements at Scott Stadium, at The Dish, built a new park for a softball team that has become a consistent winner.
She’s also Black, and she’s a she – and to too many of our bluebloods, that means she’s a DEI hire.
UVA has a lot that needs fixin’ right now – we could start with our spineless Board of Visitors resigning en masse.
Carla Williams doesn’t need fixin’.
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Chris Graham
