The feeling was that it wouldn’t be long after Timothy Sands announced his departure that Athletic Director Whit Babcock would throw in the towel before the 2026-2027 school year.
In a Completely Unsurprising Move Whit Hangs Up His Hat
Babcock is hanging his Virginia Tech cap up and
following University President Timothy Sands out the door and into retirement. The speed of the move is interesting, but it does allow for his continuation until the Softball and Baseball seasons end.
He Leaves a Mix Legacy
Babcock entered the labyrinth of Cassell, Jamerson, and Merryman at a time when the Virginia Tech Athletic Department was on a deep downward trough. The facilities were old, dated, and in poor shape. The baseball field (English Field) was barely above high school level and quality, and the softball team might not have even made most large secondary school ball fields. Whit managed to find quality coaching hires right off the bat with Buzz Williams rescuing the Men’s Basketball team, Kenny Brooks taking on the Women’s team, and finding funding to turn English Field into Atlantic Union Bank Park. The practice field was supplemented with what became known as the Beamer Barn, and a new jumbotron installed at Lane Stadium.
What people forget is that Babcock hired the hottest football coach of 2015, Justin Fuente, and for the early years of his administration the world was looking up. The 2016 and 2017 football seasons were successful (but things were getting dicey). The Women’s Basketball Team was on a major upswing, and the Men’s team went from nothing to a tournament team under Williams.
Babcock, who was a baseball player at JMU, hired Pete d’Amour to helm the Softball program, and John Szefc to take over the baseball team. Suddenly we had tournament playoffs in Blacksburg, for not only the softball program, but the baseball team, and women’s basketball. Hosting post season tournaments is a big deal for an athletic program.
But things just came unglued. As the court rulings continued to benefit and professionalize college athletes, the program began to struggle. The big problem was that the football team began to suffer talent deficits, and seasons quickly went from winning to par, to struggling just to win a few games. Fuente, who is no longer even coaching, was dismissed with a huge severance and the search for a first-rate coach bogged down into an offer for Penn State’s defensive coordinator, Brent Pry, to take over the team. Pry is a great personality and good man, but the job of head coach just seemed to be beyond him and the team just never recovered from the doldrum spiral of the post Beamer era.
A Dozen Years is a Long Time
In college sports, any major administrator hanging on for 12 years is a pretty big run. It’s just time for a change, now and then, and with the hiring of James Franklin by the Board of Visitors with Whit only advising and then the retirement of Dr. Sands, it was pretty obvious that the Visitors were ready to move the University and Athletic Program in a different direction. It’s nice that Whit’s been given the dignity of choosing to retire in good order.
Babcock’s replacement will need to be sharp. The new world of paid athletes and free agency has changed the function of an Athletic Director into a CEO who has to run a profit-making company, not a non-profit charity. He made many beneficial changes to the south side of campus, and we wish him all the best. He’ll be a Hokie for Life, now.
We will be checking in to see who takes his place in Jamerson.
