Reddit reviews From Vpi to State University: President T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. and the Transformation of Virginia Tech, 19621974

> to really mean just most popular college football team.

No, I took it to mean total number of active fans of any sport, which is thoroughly dominated by football and men's basketball. But I certainly also count fans of the men's tennis teams, all 200 of them.

> VT used to be just a mid-size school of average-to-good academic stature like JMU, Radford, VCU, or ODU today. Like many other higher ed leaders and boards, they started putting money into the football program in the 80's which increased applications and enrollment. With the increased enrollment they were able to grow the school and be more selective in admissions.

I am surprise you managed to be 100% incorrect for this paragraph, though I applaud your success in getting a perfect 100%.

VT history is something of a hobby of mine. I'd say it never resembled JMU or Radford or VCU. Historically it was a senior military college which was overwhelmingly undergraduate focused and primarily concerned with STEM and agriculture. API (now Auburn) has the most similar origin, not a SMC but has a strong ROTC. VT changed in the late 1960s under the plans of T. Marshall Hahn who sought to become a comprehensive university with extensive graduate programs and multiple campuses with a flagship in Blacksburg. He intended to merge with the existing Virginia State University (Petersburg) and take the name, a move which was blocked in the General Assembly. Nevertheless, the school added numerous colleges, liberal arts, social sciences, a vet school. It also greatly expanded the graduate school, and enrollment in the corps of cadets fell drastically as a proportion. It then began to focus on sponsored research, becoming an R1 in the late 80s - that was all decades before any serious football success, which started in 1993. There's actually a fascinating book on this entire transition.

Aside from some major research institutes, the medical school in Roanoke is the only major addition to VT since Beamer's early successes, and I would argue the school is simply larger version of what existed in 1985. In fact, it has been the largest research university in the state for decades, and that income ($500m per year) dwarfs the income generated by football.

I have no idea where this nonsensical rumor that football made the university more selective or improved its academic rank came from. I love VT football, but we've been about as selective and about the same rank since I was in middle-school in the 1990s. I remember buying printed copies of the old US News rankings guide from the bookstore every year, and VT has always been about 15th in engineering, about 25-30 among public national universities. The overall rank fell from mid-60s to mid-70s due to US News' decision to move some high performing master's colleges from the regional to national rankings (e.g. Villanova was #1 NE region for a decade, now ~50s national).

If anything, I'd argue VT's research institute infrastructure has done more to change the nature of VT, which for the last 30 years (well before football success) has been a large R1 research university. JMU and Radford are undergraduate focused masters-colleges, VCU is an amalgam of an undergrad career institute and a fantastic medical school, which today is also an R1 but of a very different character. ODU is an R2 which historically was a satellite campus of W&M.

> Yes, VT football is more popular than UVA football, as it should be with all the money and support VT gives to it.

Actually not true, UVA has spent more on football over the last decade, including paying more for their coaches and assistant coaches. They also have a larger athletic budget. If this year is any indication, that may be paying off.

> But if you stop disregarding the bigger picture of their athletic programs, then UVA is more popular to the average sports fan.

Maybe, but I'd still be surprised if that were true given the substantially larger living alumni base and the popularity of football compared to non-revenue sports like lacrosse, volleyball and wrestling. UVA has probably closed the gap though given their incredible basketball success.

You said earlier, UVA students don't care as much because they're so much more engrossed in academics. I don't entirely buy this, but if true, then where are all these fans coming from? Are they just bandwagon fans in rural VA who really love the UVA men's soccer and golf teams???

> Like I said earlier, I don't have a dog in the VT/UVA fight. I went to art school.

Ironically, I am affiliated closely with both schools and currently work for UVA (went to VT obviously, hence the username). I'm well aware of how fantastic UVA is as a university and its history; we spent 80% of the faculty orientation discussing it.