In 2017, Carla Williams was hired as the University’s tenth athletic director. Seven eventful years later — including one national championship in men’s basketball, four in women’s swimming and diving, two in men’s lacrosse and two in men’s tennis — Williams signed a five-year contract extension in December 2024. Though the athletic director role is not a traditionally hot-button topic on college campuses, the decision to extend her contract has been met with unusually widespread criticism which misconstrues what has been a holistically successful tenure. Rather than being deserved, the current backlash against Williams speaks to a newfound and problematic culture of immediacy in college sports. This culture, which values short-term results over long-term growth, imposes unfair benchmarks onto athletic directors like Williams whose strength lies in their longer-term strategies.
As athletic director, Williams is responsible for coordinating the budgets, staff and facilities for all 25 of the University’s sports. This position entails a vast array of responsibilities, including cultivating investments in facilities, recruiting corporate sponsorship and supporting team and player development. It would be a mistake to judge these efforts on whether or not we lose a game, or only in relation to football and basketball. And yet, often it feels as if fans do just that. After all, students only have four years in college and a certain number of seasons to celebrate or criticize. But this push for immediate gratification has led some in the University community to minimize Williams’ long-term successes in favor of platforming recent struggles.
Let’s not mince words — the football and basketball teams have had profoundly mediocre seasons this year. This mediocrity has become the basis for many critiques of Williams. The men’s basketball team currently sits at 3-7 in the Atlantic Coast Conference after the sudden retirement of Tony Bennett. And while one would be remiss to expect football excellence at the University, last fall’s third consecutive losing season devolved into disaster after a promising start. Seasons as poor as these naturally raise questions about those in charge, including Williams.
After all, struggling in the University’s two highest-attended sports genuinely detracts from the student experience. Yet, fans cannot forget the recent, unprecedented setbacks which these two teams have experienced during Williams’ tenure — the tragic shooting for the football program and Tony Bennett’s retirement for men’s basketball. Yes, there are other underlying causes for concern, but let’s remember that Williams has also presided over two winning football seasons and the basketball team’s national championship.
Moreover, targeting Williams for recent shortcomings fails to recognize the matrix of challenges created by new name, image and likeness rules. Since 2021, NIL has allowed student-athletes to profit from their image, often through deals coordinated by their universities’ athletics booster funds over which athletic directors have little to no formal control. The ensuing chaos of vague regulations has been felt particularly acutely at the University, with Bennett citing the current environment as the reason for his abrupt and unexpected retirement.
In addition to creating widespread uncertainty, the revolutionary change has transformed fans’ expectations about administrators’ capacity to control team performance. Success stories like Colorado football and Louisville men’s basketball have created the illusion that all it takes is administrative commitment to transform a struggling program into a winner in a singular year. In reality, NIL spending alone is not a reliable catalyst for immediate success — take Kansas State men’s basketball, a program currently floundering despite shelling out millions in NIL last offseason. In the end, consistent, strategic investment is the real winning factor.
And Williams has certainly proven her commitment to this sort of strategic investment. She has overseen the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in facilities for baseball, softball, football and Olympic sports, while also attracting the largest donor gifts in University history toward the football and women’s basketball programs. This sort of long-term investment has yielded tangible and holistic results for Virginia Athletics — the University finished fifth nationally in the 2024 Director’s Cup, which measures a school’s comprehensive athletic success as a result of equitable investment across sports. Tremendous, Olympic-level achievements in sports like swimming have elevated Virginia to international prominence. And Virginia remains poised to contend for national titles in other traditional fan favorites like baseball and lacrosse this spring. In short, looking beyond basketball and football reveals that Virginia Athletics is, in many ways, thriving.
College sports fans today are more reactive than ever, demanding immediate, Cinderella success stories. However difficult it may be, Virginia fans must embrace the opposite approach. Players, coaches and even NIL dollars come and go, but programs and facilities last much longer. Williams’ vision for Virginia Athletics has consistently favored sustainability over immediate success and is the most surefire way to set Virginia athletics up for success — regardless of how collegiate sports look a few years down the road.
The Cavalier Daily Editorial Board is composed of the Executive Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, the two Opinion Editors, their Senior Associates and an Opinion Columnist. The board can be reached at eb@cavalierdaily.com.
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