Coach Tony Elliott and company entered Blacksburg’s Lane Stadium on a cold November night, the fate of Virginia’s season resting upon the three hours of football about to take place. Virginia, 5-6, arrived in the midst of a free fall after a blazing 4-1 start. Luckily, Elliott looked across the sideline at a Virginia Tech team with the same record. Even more, the Hokies were now reduced to a freshman quarterback making his first career start. A Cavalier win, which seemed eminently feasible, would mean a return to postseason play, the program’s first bowl appearance since 2019.
Instead, Virginia Tech took home its 19th win over Virginia in the last 20 football matchups. Coach Tony Elliott endured his third losing season in three years. Senior receiver Malachi Fields and senior safety Jonas Sanker played their final game in orange and blue. And fans were forced to look elsewhere for hope in an increasingly bleak fall for Virginia athletics.
But Virginia football is not beyond saving. The advent of NIL, combined with the removal of transfer limits, have created an environment with levels of player movement unlike anything seen before. If there’s one idea that’s been jammed down the throats of every college sports fan, it’s that the industry looks much different than it did even a few years ago. Just ask Tony Bennett. One consequence of this increasing volatility? For better or worse, it has never been easier for college football programs to turn around so quickly. Of this year’s AP Poll’s final Top 25 teams, eight did not have winning records last season. Virginia, then, has multiple blueprints for the type of turnaround it so desperately needs.
Only one of them, though, fits the bill of a returning head coach and a new starting quarterback. And it’s the most successful team with the most dramatic turnaround.
Arizona State ended its 2023 campaign in even worse fashion than Virginia concluded 2024. Home fans watched as the team was pummeled by Arizona, losing 59-23 en route to a 3-9 season. Even worse, true freshman starting quarterback and former top-50 recruit Jaden Rashada transferred out, doing so along with three other four-stars, per 247Sports. With just one year under his belt leading the program, Coach Kenny Dillingham was tasked with filling out a severely depleted roster while navigating a conference move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12.
Elliott has to face some of the same challenges this offseason. The departures of Sanker and Fields, along with multiple offensive and defensive linemen, left glaring holes that needed filling. In Sanker, Fields and graduate student Brian Stevens, the Cavaliers lost three captains and All-ACC selections. Sophomore quarterback Anthony Colandrea transferred out, and the 2024 season marked graduate student Tony Muskett’s final year of eligibility. Just like Dillingham, Elliott had work to do in the portal.
The Sun Devils rose to the challenge. Arizona State brought in a transfer class of 30 players, the fourth-most of all FBS teams. 247Sports ranked the class at 30th nationally and fourth in the Big 12, and there’s no question Dillingham brought in adequate numbers to reinforce a depleted roster. And most importantly, he found the Sun Devils a quarterback. Ranked a high three-star, Sam Leavitt played four games in his first year at Michigan State before preserving his eligibility with a redshirt. Then it was on to Tempe, Ariz., where Leavitt was awarded the starting job in August.
The Cavaliers, too, have shown aggressiveness thus far in the portal. Elliott’s 19 commits already constitute the largest transfer class in his tenure at Virginia, and this is coming even before the onset of the spring portal window. The Cavalier class is valued relatively highly, ranking 23rd in FBS and fourth in the ACC.
One major priority in the portal this offseason was the offensive line. The Cavaliers surrendered the fourth-most sacks in FBS in 2024, and Elliott responded by bringing in four key blockers, headlined by graduate student Monroe Mills, the fourth-highest-ranked offensive tackle in the portal. Also in the transfer class is the man Mills will likely protect in 2025 — fellow graduate student Chandler Morris. Maybe a veteran signal-caller is exactly what the Cavaliers need, especially after the failed Colandrea experiment of a young, sometimes-erratic quarterback leading the charge.
And though the portal’s significance should not be underplayed, it’s worth noting that Arizona State’s best player — running back Cam Skattebo — was with the Sun Devils the year prior. After transferring from FCS Sacramento State in 2023, Skattebo’s first season in Tempe was un-incredible. But just a year later, he put up the second-most all-purpose yardage in all of FBS, landing him fifth in Heisman Trophy voting. Skattebo and his video-game statistics were the single-most important factor in Arizona State’s turnaround. Whether the Cavaliers have anyone capable of such a monstrous jump will not be answered until the fall.
There’s no better example of the unpredictability that accompanies a largely new roster than Arizona State. The Big 12 preseason poll projected the Sun Devils to finish dead last. Aside from a measly three votes in week four, they wouldn’t sniff the AP Poll until week eight — when Arizona State found itself third in the “others receiving votes” category. But the team in Tempe became difficult to ignore, as the Sun Devils took down No. 16 Utah, No. 16 Kansas State and No. 14 BYU. The regular season culminated in a 49-7 rout of Arizona, a 78-point swing from the same game just one year prior.
Arizona State’s 10-2 regular season earned it a spot in the Big 12 Championship, and its 26-point victory there meant a bye into round two of the CFP. Here, too, the team rode Skattebo’s 143 rushing yards, two rushing touchdowns, 99 receiving yards, 42 passing yards and one passing touchdown. But outrage over a possible, uncalled targeting penalty in the loss against Texas masked the crux of Arizona State’s season.
This was a Sun Devil team that finished the 2023 season 3-9, humiliated by a rival on its home field. Just a year later, Arizona State made the College Football Playoff, won the Big 12 in its first season of membership and finished seventh in the AP poll. It’s easy to lose the unfathomability of the Sun Devils’ season in its controversial, tight final loss. But the fact of the matter is that Arizona State and Dillingham pulled off one of the most improbable turnarounds in college football history.
Elliott’s situation is not an enviable one. Success in the portal does not guarantee success on the field, and every football season comes with a slew of unpredictabilities. But Arizona State proved that such a turnaround is possible. Dillingham took a losing team to the College Football Playoff. Can Tony Elliott do the same?
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