I am disappointed by the athletics experience I got at Virginia.
And before you say anything, I know — University students, including me, are a spoiled bunch of sports fans. When I enrolled in 2021, the football coach was Bronco Mendenhall and the men’s basketball coach was Tony Bennett. The football team’s most recent full season had included a bowl game, a top 20 national ranking and a trip to the ACC title game. And the basketball team’s most recent full season had ended in a national championship.
Moreover, since being enrolled, the national accomplishments of Virginia’s swimming and diving, tennis, track and field and baseball programs have made for a more successful period of athletics than most college kids can dream of. Additionally, the ascensions of Virginia volleyball, softball and field hockey promise much hope for the future.
But the average student’s core sports memories, and some core memories at large, come specifically from success in football and men’s basketball. And this current four-year stretch of Virginia’s two major sports has produced very few, if any, of those.
To be clear, I have loved my time in Charlottesville. The University’s academics, extracurricular opportunities and campus life are as advertised. It’s a special place. But when I leave next spring, I will be longing for the element that could have made my college experience that much more memorable — elite, or at the very least, entertaining, football and basketball programs.
I am months out from my graduation with the Class of 2025, yet I have been on Grounds for a grand total of zero winning seasons by the football team and zero NCAA Tournament wins by the basketball team. The head coaches of those two programs are Tony Elliott and Ron Sanchez, neither of whom look to be long-term answers.
Ask a Virginia Tech student graduating in 2025 about their favorite memories in Blacksburg. I would hazard a guess that before they’re done responding, they’d mention something about singing “Enter Sandman” inside a packed Lane Stadium or watching the Hokies blow out Virginia on the gridiron.
Ask a Virginia alumni who was around in 2019 for their favorite memories in Charlottesville. I think most would smile while recounting the basketball team’s magical March Madness run or Bryce Perkins’ heroic performance against Virginia Tech that sent the football team to the ACC Championship.
All of this is to say that the success of the football and basketball programs at the University, which competes in a power conference, is paramount to the student experience. They are the two sports that students rally around the most, that school spirit relies most heavily on.
Well, during my first year, the very first basketball game I attended at John Paul Jones Arena ended in a horrific upset loss to Navy, a mid-major program that had never beaten Virginia until then. Alongside hundreds of other first-year students, I left my debut at JPJ shellshocked.
The last game I attended that year was almost as bad. Virginia missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2013 and then was upset by St. Bonaventure, another mid-major, in the quarterfinals of the National Invitational Tournament. Traveling Bonnies fans laughed the Virginia student section out of the arena after the game, filling my classmates and I with embarrassment.
I was watching in 2023, the following season, when the No. 4 seed Cavaliers blew a double-digit second-half lead in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, unraveling in a stunning loss to No. 13 seed Furman. I was watching again in 2024 when, in a First Four game against Colorado State, Virginia went scoreless for over 12 minutes en route to a 25-point defeat.
And I’ve been watching at the start of this season, the first without Tony Bennett since 2009, as the Cavaliers have stumbled their way to four double-digit losses already. Last week against Southern Methodist, they dropped their conference opener. Last month, they lost back-to-back games by 22 or more points. Neither of those things ever happened under Bennett.
Football, for its part, has been even worse. I remember, before the home opener in 2021, taking part in a pep rally with other first-year students at Scott Stadium. They handed out orange t-shirts, lit up fireworks and had us rehearse gameday chants, trying their hardest to stir up excitement. But eventually, it felt trivial to even attend games.
As it turned out, Virginia’s 6-6 record that year was the best it could muster in the last four seasons, during which the program went 17-29 overall and was outscored 121-58 by Virginia Tech in three rivalry meetings. During this time, the Cavaliers lost 12 of their 16 home games in the ACC, six of the defeats coming by 20 or more points.
The two most recent of those losses were the final two games at Scott Stadium for the Class of 2025. Virginia took a 41-14 bludgeoning from North Carolina and then got blown out 33-7 by Southern Methodist, the Hill emptying at halftime on both occasions. That was the Class of 2025’s sendoff.
So, after nearly four years in Charlottesville, the football team’s near-bowl game appearance in 2021 and the basketball team’s ACC Tournament runner-up in 2023 are the athletic highlights that the University’s next graduating class will take with them.
That reality leaves Virginia’s athletic administration with a set of vital decisions to make in the near future, including potential coaching changes within the football program, the search for a permanent men’s basketball coach and the school’s level of investment in Name, Image and Likeness resources that attract high-end athletes.
This is not a suggestion to Virginia Athletics about how it should make those decisions. This is simply acknowledgement of just how important it will be to get them right. There cannot be more graduating classes leaving as disappointed, and as empty-handed, as the Class of 2025.
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