Virginia Tech AD Whit Babcock speaks glowingly about Brent Pry and the future of football

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, if you build it, they will come.

That was the case for Virginia Tech football coach Brent Pry, who begins his third season leading the Hokies next fall with high expectations. Why are there high expectations? Well, for starters, he got a lot of holdover from his 2023 roster from key and impact players and had a very good winter and spring in the transfer window.

Add it all up and you have a schedule and fan base that can’t wait for the season to get here pretty quickly. Virginia Tech AD Whit Babcock recently spoke about Pry and his staff and what they hope to offer fans sooner rather than later.

Babcock hired Pry from Penn State three years ago and watched his coach go from 3-8 in his first season with a roster he didn’t recruit to 7-6 last fall after which started 1-3 and ended the season with a military victory over Tulane. Considering all the retention he’s received from key contributors, it’s easy to see why it’s shaping up to be an interesting fall in Blacksburg.

Babcock spoke with Eric MacLain on the MacLain & Gramlich show about Pry and the excitement expected for the fan base.

“For the last four, maybe five years, I’ve been selling hope and patience. So it’s a nice change of pace to get back into the expectations game and try to cut some slack. Back to the fanbase, they are Fome, they showed up. When we start this, it should be off the charts. They’ve been through some down times and again it makes us reward them Coach Pry has managed to keep our current team we have a few days left in the portal and really with Coach Pry you learn a lot more about coaches during a losing season than a winning season, but winning can mask some culture issues. Really, coach Pry came in the first year with a team he didn’t recruit and went 3-8, then he kept the team and they played hard until the end of last year slow, finished strong and I think it speaks volumes about his culture and the excitement that we have Virginia Tech has to be great for our sake. The ACC needs us to be great and hopefully this is a big step in that direction.”

– Whit Babcock

He’s not wrong, and you can point to many reasons why the culture works so well, but let’s not overlook the fact that he’s hitting it big in the transfer portal and getting players from Florida, Oklahoma and Alabama to commit to Virginia Tech. . The train is running fast and is expected to pick up speed this season.