The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Craig Littlepage Joined Jerry Ratcliffe & Jerry Miller Live On The Jerry & Jerry Show!

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

The Jerry & Jerry Show headlines: Interview Craig Littlepage, Former UVA A.D. How Is Littlepage Enjoying His Retirement? Reflect On Littlepage Hiring Tony Bennett Reflect On Littlepage Hiring Brian O���Connor Thoughts On College Sports Landscape Today What Does Littlepage Think About NIL Today? Do College Sports Need A Complete Overhaul? Breakdown NCAA Tourney Selection Process? Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Craig Littlepage, Former University of Virginia Director of Athletics, joined Jerry Ratcliffe & Jerry Miller live on The Jerry & Jerry Show! The Jerry & Jerry Show airs live Tuesday from 10:15 am – 11 am on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Jerry & Jerry Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Good Tuesday morning. Thank you for joining us on the Jerry and Jerry show. My name is Jerry Miller. We are live in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, our studio in the shadows of the University of Virginia, about a mile and change from the John Paul Jones Arena, Scott Stadium, the Rotunda, and everything orange and blue. But have no fear, this show broadcasts across all social media platforms. So if you have a question for Craig Littlepage, our guest on today's show, let us know and we will relay it live on air. We're very excited to conversate with a man that I think needs absolutely no introduction, an athletics director that's made some of the most monumental and impactful hires in UVA athletics history. Just to name a few, how about Tony Bennett and Brian O'Connor. Juna Wickhauer, let's go to the studio camera and let's welcome the star of our program, the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer, 40 years on the Virginia, 40 years plus on the Virginia Athletics beat. 50 consecutive ACC tournaments right around the horizon. Jerry, Hootie, Radcliffe, my friend, good Tuesday morning to you.

Thank you. And fellow Virginia Sports Hall of Famer, Mr. Littlepage, who will be inducted in April. I know he's looking forward to that. They treat you like a king during this weekend. I'm looking forward to it. You're in for a blast. Craig Littlepage is in the house. Viewers and listeners, let us know your questions. I'll start with a simple one for him. Craig, what's going on with your life

today? Well, Jerry, my life is extremely busy. I was told by a couple of friends as I was winding down, I had announced my retirement, and a couple of friends called me, and the advice that I was given was take a few months to just kind of unwind and kind of get your footing and so forth. But long term, make sure that you find something that brings value, something that adds value to either the institution, to college sports, to your friends, in addition to spending time with family. And I was able to find that passion and kind of the why and the purpose and so forth. So I'm engaged in executive search work, handling multiple directors of athletic searches and coaching searches.

I'm a senior consultant with the executive search firm collegiate sports associates todd turner former colleague from the university of virginia founded csa back in 2010 and the interesting part of this is that todd turner and i started work at the university of virginia on the same day and i don't know the exact date, but I want to say June 20th, 1976, we started work together, and our first interaction was going to the benefits office together on that first day of work. So we've known each other since 1976. But I do executive search work, number one. Secondly, I do professional development work, executive coaching.

The professional development work is in the identification and development of aspiring coaches and athletics administrators. And do some of that work with the NCAA, do some of it with conferences. But I find a lot of joy in that. And I'm still a very big fan of the University of Virginia. I go to as many events as I can. Many of the coaches, the head coaches that are there are coaches that were there when I was the director of athletics. So I take great joy in seeing the success

of all the teams, but in particular those teams that I had gotten to meet those coaches and hired those coaches while I was the director of athletics. And, I mean, that makes for a pretty full week. I mean, there isn't a lot of free time. I'm now dog sitting for my grand dog, and that is a lot of fun. My wife and I haven't had a dog for over, well, about 30 years or so. So having that as a part of the family

in the short term for the next two months is a big activity as well. Fantastic. Absolutely busy man here, Hootie. Absolutely. And for those who may be newbies to charlottesville or are not familiar with craig's career he was ad at virginia for 16 years before i mean he was assistant ad before that but ad for 16 years that's incredible longevity for an ad

particularly in in these times yeah they're, you could count them on one hand, the number of athletics directors that have been in their current positions for 15 years or so. Yeah. Again, it's a very small number. And you see a lot of movement of ADs that are moving from one job to another. Maybe it's a step up the ladder. It could be a perceived lateral step. A lot of coaches as well moving.

But a lot of the veteran folks are as well retiring because of the complexities of college athletics and all the things that are going on. I'm sure that we'll cover at least some of those topics today. But it's a time of great turnover, which makes the executive search business pretty good. Yeah, good for you. Yeah, but getting a chance to stay involved in a number of things that keep me connected with my friends that are either recently out of the business or still working. It's a good feeling to have somebody give me a call and say, well, what do you think about this?

What would you do under these circumstances? That type of thing. Well, you would be the guy that would know. In your 16 years as AD at Virginia, Cavaliers won 13 national championships, 76 ACC championships. More than any of the other ACC schools. Correct. And you're like Pete Rose. You know all your stats. I know I do. Prioritize athletic success across the board.

I was at UVA as a student when he made that commitment of making it what? The Stanford of the East. You guys routinely, it used to be called the Sears Cup. Director's Cup. The Director's Cup. You know, routinely contending. And it made it just a fantastic experience for students. And now as a father of two and as a husband, as we take our little boys to games, nothing better than seeing John Castine and the director of the Board of Visitors to develop a blueprint, develop a game plan for what would be needed to move the University of Virginia's athletics program into a consistently performing top 10 program. And the answer basically came down to investing in people. That is that we had to hire quality coaches, great educators and leaders.

We had to fully fund scholarships so that the coaches could maximize their ability to fill their rosters. And then number two, building facilities. And in 2001, we were not in good shape in terms of the facilities that we had. The baseball facility at that time was an embarrassment. Football, we were just finishing up the expansion to Scott Stadium, David Harrison Field. We had needs in tennis. We had needs, as I said, in baseball.

There were other facility needs that we had, but the most important need at that point in time was basketball. And we had done a study a number of years prior to that that indicated that for an investment of $40 or $50 million, we couldn't do much with University Hall. We couldn't add seats, so there wasn't a payoff in terms of being able to generate additional revenue. So the answer then became we need to build a new facility. And the John Paul Jones Arena then was a concept that came up at that point in time. And, what, five or six years later, we opened the John Paul Jones Arena, and it still remains one of the most outstanding multi-use but basketball facilities in the country,

particularly on a college campus. Yeah, pretty tough place to play. 22 straight, Hootie. Yeah, hosting tough place to play. 22 straight, Hootie. Yeah, hosting Pitt tonight. And, you know, one of the things, Craig, that added to your legacy

I think is some of the and Jerry mentioned it earlier, is some of the people that you brought in to the program over the years. And one of the questions I got last night from Dante C, don't know who that is exactly, but he said, Craig Littlepage hired so many of Virginia's NCAA championship coaches.

Could you ask him what traits he looks for in a coach? What does he think is his version of the UVA way? Great question. It is a great question. I would say, first, let's get out of the way the intangibles that are no-brainers. You have to have somebody that is honest, particularly at the University of Virginia, given everything that UVA stands for, a person that's going to play by the rules, whether they are NCAA rules, ACC rules, or institutional rules, that they have to respect playing by the rules.

Secondly, I think they have to have a respect for education, teaching and learning. And coaches are, in my my opinion are more than coaches coaches are educators coaches are leaders and individuals that are willing to embrace the challenge of being a professional in higher education again being something beyond a coach that works with 15 players or 80 players or whatever the number is. And the reason that's important is there are so many challenges that a coach will face. Sometimes those challenges are academic challenges versus athletic challenges, number of missed class days, when practices are held, and whether a student athlete is going to be able to take his or her preferred major,

even if that major conflicts with practice, those sorts of things. So an individual that really does respect teaching and learning, an educator that is a leader, as I said, and it's not just that this is a person that's a leader of that particular sport, but we want somebody that's going to be a leader in the department, be a leader in terms of the university as a whole, and be a recognized and available university community leader. And then the final thing that I would talk about is coachability, somebody that doesn't come in wanting to be portrayed as somebody that has all the answers but is willing to sit down and talk about the issues, talk about the needs,

talk about how we get things done as a department, how we get things done as a department, how we get things done as a university asset. And so those are the things that go into it. We were, I think, very fortunate to have attracted the people that we attracted over the years. And one of the things that I was most pleased with as a director of athletics was the fact that we never had during the period of time that I was the athletics director, a head coach that left the University of Virginia to take a head coaching position at another institution. Wow, that's right. It's a great stat. That's amazing. There's a caveat to that in that we had one coach, Augie Bush, who was the head swimming coach that left UVA to go to the University of Arizona,

but it wasn't necessarily because of professional advancement. His mom and dad had retired and were living in Tucson, which was Augie's alma mater, so it made sense that he would make that move. But for that one situation, and I can guarantee you, I know it was a reality when I was the director of athletics, athletic programs, universities all over the country are interested in these people. Brian O'Connor. Oh, I know.

Tony Bennett. Todd DeSorbo. Andres Pedroza. I mean, we can go right down the line. And all of these people came to the University of Virginia for the right reasons. They understood the type of young person that they would need to bring to the university, what would translate to success in athletics, and as well, education at the University of Virginia. I'm very happy that so many of those

people have stayed. And one of those people in particular is going to possibly set a milestone tonight should Virginia beat Pittsburgh. Tony Bennett is one win away, Craig, from 13 consecutive winning seasons in the ACC. Only two other coaches in history have done that, and I'm sure you know who they are. Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski. That's incredible. Having been a head basketball coach and an assistant, just talk about, and you know the ACC as well as anyone, talk about how much of a challenge that is just to accomplish that feat. Well, the ACC is truly one of the most competitive basketball leagues in the country year in and year out.

Sometimes it's number one, sometimes it may be number three or four, but if you're in that top three or four conferences in the sport of men's basketball or women's basketball, you have competition every night out. And not only do you have that level of competition, but you're going against some of the best players in the country. You're obviously going against some of the best coaches in the country. And to do what Tony has done in a situation that is a challenging coaching situation from recruiting and now with NIL and the transfer portal, it's even more complicated. The path that student athletes take across the board is not an easy path.

I mean, you're taking real majors. You're actually going to class. Imagine that. You're doing all the things that the other students do. And you're doing it with this other activity that is playing the sport of basketball that takes up a significant amount of time. It takes up a significant amount of energy and wear and tear. And for Tony to have had just that level of consistency over the time that he's been here is just phenomenal. I was not tracking on that. That's an interesting stat. And I'm sure one way or another he'll get there.

Oh, yeah. There's no question in my mind about that. But I am so happy for the success that this team is having, particularly because of some of the struggles early in the year. And I know just in going to games and talking to different people, what's

going on? Is the transfer portal and is NIL finally catching up to our program and so forth? And I think that Tony has shown an ability to adapt to the circumstances. He has shown an ability to adapt to his players and his players adapting to this is our way of playing the game. And when we were doing the search for Tony, it was important that the person coming in had to understand how the University of Virginia was unique and traditionally understand what were the things that led to the success that Terry Holland had

and that we had through so many of the years that Terry was the head basketball coach here at the University of Virginia. And in understanding that and respecting that, I think we were able to identify Tony as somebody that really could be successful here at the University of Virginia. Can you give us the flip book of the job interview? I mean, you talk about one of the most impactful hires in the history of the university here, and Coach Bennett. As someone who bleeds orange and blue, my dad, a UVA graduate, my brother went to UVA. You know, knock on wood over here, would love if the boys went to University of Virginia.

Hootie, probably the most significant moment in my Virginia experience in life was the national championship. Tears coming down my face legitimately when Virginia basketball won the national championship. Tears coming down my face legitimately when Virginia basketball won the national championship. Tears of joy. I'm getting emotional right now. I would love to get the flip book or the fly on the wall perspective of the interview with Coach Bennett

and what you saw and what struck you about Coach Bennett as a great leader for this program. Well, I think that the lead-up to the interview was equally interesting and important, but the interview itself, to your question, was nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that we felt as though it was very important for not only Tony to be a part of that conversation,

but also his wife, Laurel. And so John Oliver, our executive associate AD, who did a lot of the work behind the scenes to get us to that point that Tony and Laurel were here, John and I, Tony and Laurel, were in a suite at the Boar's Head Inn, and we spent maybe 90 minutes, two hours just having a conversation and getting to know each other. And one of the things I remember Tony saying, not only in the interview, but in a lot of conversations that we had before he

coached his first game, Greg, I just need to know that you're going to be comfortable in me doing it kind of my way, and there are going to be some challenging times, particularly early on, but I guarantee that we can get the right kids here. We have all the resources that we need. It's a phenomenal school and a phenomenal league and a great area of the country, et cetera, et cetera. If you can work with me and handle some of the downtimes that we are bound to experience, I think that we're going to be very successful here. Laura was fully engaged in the conversation as well and giving us kind of a perspective of her husband, the coach, and things that she felt as though we would need to know to help Tony and his development of the program. So we were very comfortable once we made the decision in just turning the reins over to

Tony, knowing that he understood the program, he understood the university, clearly he understood the game, but he understood how he had to coach here at the University of Virginia. And it wasn't just a matter of getting a list of the top half dozen coaches in the country. It had to be somebody that was obviously a very good coach, but who understood the University of Virginia, understood the ACC, understood teaching, coaching these kinds of kids, et cetera. Fantastic. Jeff Capel, tonight's opponent, coach of tonight's opponent,

had this to say about Tony. Among many flattering things, it's on my story on the website today, but just the consistency of excellence that they've been able to have is the reason why it's only two of the greatest coaches ever, Coach K and Coach Smith, and he's joining that company. Tony has proven during his time at Washington State and Virginia that he's one of the premier coaches that this game has seen. scene. Okay, and if we go back to that date that Tony was hired and who you may remember some of this, but it was kind of like who the heck is Tony Bennett? I didn't know

who Tony Bennett was when I was told. Well, there were dozens of emails that came in within a couple hours of the announcement being made and I get it that he was from the West coast he was young and a lot of people didn't know him i think that there was a lot of sentiment around tubby smith and people were

tracking the the plane playing yeah i remember this vividly and all that stuff but uh tony But basketball people knew Tony Bennett, and I've told this story many, many times. A gentleman named Tom Jernstedt, who is now deceased, was the vice president for basketball at the NCAA for close to 40 years, really ran the Final Four. And not only did Tom run basketball for the NCAA, but he was a member of USA Basketball, the Olympic Committee. He did a lot of basketball work in his

career. And I was two years removed from the basketball committee myself, so I had worked with Tom Germstead over about a five to seven year period of time. And he and I were, I can't remember where we were right now, but he knew that we were in a search for men's basketball coach. He says, well, Craig, I'm going to tell you who the best college basketball coach in the country is. You may not know a lot about him, but I guarantee you he would be a perfect fit for the University of Virginia.

My only hesitancy is that I'm not sure that you can get him. I said, well, what do you mean? He says, well, he's had opportunities to go to a number of very, very good places, and he's never even taken a visit yet. He says, the guy's Tony Bennett, the young guy at Washington State University. I said, hmm, okay. And so I kind of put that in the memory bank. Stan Morrison, who was a head basketball coach at Cal Berkeley, Pacific, Southern California, knew West Coast basketball but knew the Pac-12 in particular. So I called Stan. I said, Stan, I want you to take on an assignment for me. I would like for you to rank the coaches in the Pac-12, one being the best, all right, down to number 12.

And I'll give you 24 hours, and I'm going to call you back. And Stan Morrison is one of the most excitable. I mean, he just loves basketball. He doesn't care if it's youth basketball, if it's European, whatever it is, he loves basketball. And I could just tell the enthusiasm. He said, how about 24 hours? Okay, I'm on it, I'm on it.

So I call him back the next day, and he says, okay, now I'm going to tell you who the number one guy is on my list, but the only reason that I put him number one right now is because he's taken a couple of teams to the Final Four. He says, that's Ben Hallin at UCLA. He says, the guy that I really think is the best coach in this league is that young guy at Washington

State, Tony Bennett. So again, it affirmed everything that I was here. Everything that he said after that didn't really have importance to me. I heard what I wanted to hear at that point in time. John Oliver, as I said, worked very hard behind the scenes. John was already working on how do we

get an audience with this guy. Everything that we knew about him pointed to sounds like he could be a perfect fit this is this is what we're looking for the first once I was able to break the story the first guy I called to get comments about him was Dick Vatale and what he echoed just what you said. He says he's a perfect fit for the University of Virginia. He'll do incredible things at UVA, and just raved about him on and on. And I called some Pac-12 coaches, and they all said the same thing,

just to echo your thoughts. And it was just one of those things that we just had a gut instinct, just based on everything that he had done, style of play, character, personality, all those things lined up that this was a guy that could be successful here. So after the announcement, just a flurry of incoming criticism, what are you doing and all that kind of stuff and then it was guys like Dick Vitale

Terry Holland, Wally Walker people that know basketball people that know coaches people that know the University of Virginia all were saying pretty much the same thing boy that looks like a great hire for the University of Virginia absolutely fantastic and guys we'll get to your questions here

I see dozens of questions for Craig Littlepage, even a question from Richmond asking if Mr. Littlepage, does he still drive that slick blue SUV with the orange trim? I remember that vehicle. Are you still driving that, Craig? No, but I am driving a blue SUV. It's a different SUV. It doesn't have the orange pinstripe on it.

But that was probably around 2014 Burrus, who at the time was a special assistant to John Castine, the president of the University of Virginia. And the next time I see Gordon, I'm going to ask him if he still has that. It was a Tahoe, as I remember. John Blair watching the program at Stanton. James Watson, the UVA graduate, watching the program as well. About this question, can you offer some insight and perspective on navigating the academics and athletics at the University of Virginia? Because they go hand in hand. As we were talking, you know, in the beginning of the show, not all universities have those, I don't want to say challenges,

because in the grand scheme of things I think it's a it's very beneficial for the student athletes having to navigate the academics as well but it's certainly a dynamic that's considered well I would say that the very first thing from my standpoint as an administrator and as the director of athletics was and I would tell any athletics director that is taking over this kind of job, the very first thing that you want to do is to establish expectations with your coaches. And whether that is a new coach coming in or whether it is the continued message that you want to perpetuate over time in your coaches' meetings on a monthly basis this is what we expect of all of our students our student athletes in particular and this is what your role must be

in terms of recruiting student athletes is that they have to understand coming to the university of virginia you're expected to go to class You're expected to pursue a meaningful degree. We would anticipate that you would want to remain in Charlottesville for significant amounts of time during the summer months to take courses that can either put you ahead academically, where you can lighten your load during the academic year, or in some cases where you may have to catch up for different reasons, and those different reasons, we have a lot of kids that go to Olympics and international competition, and some of those take place right at the beginning of the academic year, and they may miss two months, and as a result, they have to make up almost a semester's worth of work.

So they have to make a commitment to doing it every day during the academic year, but they also have to make a commitment that I might be around here once classes end until August 1 before I ever get a break. More questions coming in. And who do you jump in any time you want? I'd love to put in perspective the flipbook of baseball. I was working for the best boss I ever had in Jerry Ratcliffe when Brian O'Connor was hired. And you touched on baseball, the stadium. You mentioned that it needed a lot of work when Brian O'Connor was hired. And I'll put it in perspective.

Hootie Ratcliffe, I believe, was on the recruiting beat. Andrew Joyner, who was the baseball beat writer at the Daily Progress at the time, was also the lacrosse beat writer. He was covering the lacrosse team, and Coach Starge's teams were contending for national championship. I was a little old guy, fresh out of UVA, on Hootie Ratcliffe's team. He said, I want you to go cover the hire of this new coach. He's going to lead the baseball team. His name is Brian O'Connor. And we went over to the press box and the press box at the time, at the state, it wasn't even Davenport. And I forget what it was called. The press box could

basically hold about 10 people. Jeff White was there. I was there. Coach O'Connor was there. One SID was there and no one else, and there was not much room in the press box, and we're talking with Coach O'Connor, who's fresh from Notre Dame, about baseball and his expectations, and you could tell he had this incredible zest for being around student-athletes and wanting to coach, a competitive drive. And he was hungry. He didn't know much about the conference yet. Right, right. I mean, he was fresh from Notre Dame. Let's cut to the chase.

But it was just a phenomenal hire. National championship. The rest is history. Give us the Brian O'Connor flipbook. Well, and he was probably all 32 years old. He was so young. He was so young. He was so young. Because he has a baby face.

Yeah, yeah. So I had started interviewing candidates for the position. And I went to Charlotte, North Carolina to interview a couple guys. And I think I might have gone to Atlanta for a day to interview two guys. And then at the tail end of my trip, I was going to Cincinnati, and I had made an appointment to meet Brian O'Connor, who was in the midst of a long recruiting trip himself, and we agreed that we could meet together at, I think it was a Doubletree Hotel at the Cincinnati Airport.

And I told this story at the time. This isn't something that was contrived after the fact, but I remember telling the story that within 15 minutes of me talking with Brian O'Connor, the thought came through my head, I'm going to hire this guy. This is our guy. I just had something that went off inside that made me feel as though this was a perfect person to take over the program. So when he was introduced, when Brian was introduced weeks later at the press conference to announce his hiring,

I told that story. And he came up and says, well, I wish you would have told me before, you know, the actual offer of the job because I spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about whether I was getting the job or not. But here was a guy who was absolutely prepared in every area to take over the baseball program at UVA, and whether it was selecting a staff, delegation of the staff, recruiting, how to set up recruiting, what territories, what areas were important in terms of having a presence, University of Virginia having a presence there, how to schedule in the non-conference

in particular. You just went down, and he had a playbook what we call playbook which was basically a coach's guide for how they would run the program and it was almost like flip the page he had it all set and at the end of the interview we probably talked

close to 90 minutes or so I just went away feeling as though we could end this thing right now clearly we had to go through the formalities of bringing him in to see the university, to see the ground, see the area. See the stadium. See the stadium. His wife came with him. Cindy. And I flew when we got done with the visit, I flew back with them because I wanted

to spend as much time with Brian and Cindy to make sure that they knew of my personal commitment to get this program going. Because if you remember, we were a baseball program that was 500. I think we had gone to one NCAA tournament back in the mid-'90s and so forth. But, again, I just had a gut feeling about this guy being really special, and thank goodness he's done what we all would like for him to do here as the head baseball coach. We should put in perspective, he took a chance. He took a risk coming here.

Yeah. Because this was a program that, you know, left a lot to be desired. How's that? Yeah. Here's another great part of the recruitment of Brian O'Connor to the University of Virginia. I get a phone call one day in the office, and my administrative assistant, Becky Davis, says, Craig, I have Mr. Paul Maneri on the phone I knew who Paul was I said oh that's great so unsolicited he had called me and I was told to

expect his call as I remember it now because I had a notepad with about half a dozen questions on it and so he says you know Craig I'm calling just to tell you a little bit about Brian. He's been my right-hand guy, and he does everything for us in recruiting and pitchers. He's great. He'll be, you know, a great fit for the University of Virginia. And so being the conscientious young director of athletics, I was probably AD at that time for two years, and I said, well, Paul, let me ask you this. And I, you know I had the first question.

And he gets halfway through his answer. He says, Craig, I'm just telling you, hire the guy. I said, well, Paul, I got these other questions. I said, there's question two. And again, he answers part of it. He said, Craig, I'm telling you, hire the guy. Two more questions and finally he gets a little frustrated. He says, Craig, I'm telling you, hire the guy.

And this is the point that he made, hire this guy, you will never regret it. Period, exclamation mark, whatever. And that has stuck with me. Paul was here broadcasting a game this past baseball season, and we had a chance to visit a little bit. And we recalled that conversation, and I think he could remember that he was a little

frustrated because he just wanted to get to the chase cut to the chase hire this guy and he said hire him you will never regret it a lot i love it and he was and coach o'connor was just um baseball hall fan yeah college baseball hall fan yeah uh yeah pa Paul Manieri, we had him on a podcast a couple of years ago. It was when Virginia was getting ready to play Tennessee in the College World Series. And Paul was in his last year at LSU. Well, actually, he had announced that was it for him. They had been eliminated by Tennessee. And he broke the – nobody at the time knew it,

but LSU was looking for a new head coach to replace him, and he had recommended to his people to hire Brian O'Connor. I don't think anybody knew it. Maybe some of the ADs did, but nobody else out in fandom had a clue. And he broke it on the podcast that Brian had turned down the LSU offer. And it was in the New Orleans paper the next day about him talking about it on our podcast, which was pretty cool. After Brian's first year at the University of Virginia, and we won maybe 44 games, something like that. In the prior year, the team had won 23, 24, something like that.

But it was a remarkable turnaround. We get to the tournament. And Brian calls me on a Saturday morning. He says, you know, Craig, what are you doing today? And this is like May. What are you doing today? And this is like May. What are you doing today? I said, yeah, I'm just doing stuff around the house. He said, you got 30 minutes to meet with me.

I said, sure, you want to talk over? He says, no, I'd prefer to meet in person if we could get together in the office. I had a little bit of an idea as to what may be up. So we meet later that afternoon. He says, I got a call from an institution that is ready to send their private jet up to pick Cindy and me up. I can probably triple my compensation and everything. I was getting a little bit worried, but he says, I don't want you to worry about it. I'm not here to ask for anything for myself. He says, you guys have given me an opportunity. I haven't

accomplished what I came here to accomplish, and I'm staying here until I get done what I came here to do and why you hired me. He says, the only thing that I would ask is that if there's a way that you can help me keep my assistant coaches. So, I mean, here was an opportunity that he had to leave and make a heck of a lot more money and to leverage it. He says, you know, all I want is an opportunity to keep my staff together. And he ended up being able to keep his staff together for 15, 16 years or so. But that is a demonstration of the character. We saw that with Coach

Bennett. He did the same thing. Tony turned money down, right? He donated money at the same time. Yeah. As the director of athletics at the time and now as a retired guy, to see those examples of

character and really taking seriously their role within higher education and here at the University of Virginia, that's big time. It is big time. How about this question for you? We've talked about a lot of incredible moments, I mean iconic moments in UVA athletics history. I mean, we're talking the type of moments here that shaped UVA history that you've been a part of. Tough question for you.

How about some of the low points of the career, of the tenure at UVA? Were there any? Any regrets? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we had the unfortunate deaths of several student athletes, which those are, there's no way that you can anticipate how the other student-athletes on that team, how the other student-athletes in the department, and how the university as a whole is talking to my retired friends in the business, when we talk about the difficult times, you know that there are going to be obviously or hoping for a lot of wins. You know that there are going to be some losses along the way.

But when it comes to the loss of a young person who might be somebody that you look at as a future leader, that's a difficult thing. I would say that those were probably the most difficult situations at all. Clearly there were specific games that come to mind. Actually, my wife and I were watching a game over the weekend, and she recalled this, and I had been thinking about it as well. And it was an ACC men's basketball tournament game, probably in Tony's second year. We were playing the University of Miami.

I might not have the numbers exactly right, but we were up by maybe 10 points with a minute 20 to go, and we lost that game in overtime. And that was, and I'll never forget, there was a timeout with about a minute 40 left in the game, and at the time we may have been up 10 points at that point, and I left my seat to work my way to the locker room because I wanted to be there when Tony and the team came in and I'm standing in the locker room and I'm hearing cheers and moans and everything else

and I went out into the hallway outside the the locker room in the Greensboro Coliseum to watch what was happening and my heart was just sinking with every missed opportunity, whether it was a free throw, whether it was a turnover, et cetera. But that was one moment that's fresh in my mind because my wife and I were just happening to talk about that over the weekend. Yeah, I remember that game. We couldn't inbound the ball. Couldn't inbound the ball.

Yeah, it was a rough ending for sure but on the other hand think about a bank shot by I can't remember his first name Thompson in men's basketball

Darius Thompson at Wake Forest or the Louisville finish turned the Forest. Or the Louisville finish. Turned the whole season around. Yeah. The Louisville finish. Yeah. And there's a story behind that, too. I was on my way to New York City, and I had driven to Washington.

I was going to take an early flight the next morning to go to New York City. So I get to the hotel around 5 o'clock, grab dinner, get back to the hotel, watching the game, and the game is not going well against the University of Louisville. And with about two or three minutes left in the game, get my stuff on, I'm going to go work out and everything. And 90 minutes later, get back to the room, and I'm watching highlights, and they're talking about this incredible shot that Virginia makes to win at Louisville. No, no way. That really didn't happen.

But that was one of a long string of great games that we have had against the University of Louisville. And if you look at the numbers, the University of Virginia's record against Louisville, and not just in the last couple of years, but over the course of time that Tony has been our basketball coach, I mean, it's nothing short of phenomenal. Yeah, Rick Pitino said that Virginia was his kryptonite, and he certainly had that right. Yeah, yeah. I was at that game

and I was sitting and my seat was on the baseline right in front of that whole scenario with the whatever part of a second was left. I still don't believe it. I saw it live and right in front of me and it's still hard to conceive that that happened um you also when you were an assistant coach for terry holland uh experienced some of the greatest times in virginia basketball history with ralph yes what was that like People ask me what it was like covering those teams, and I said, you know, I never covered the Beatles,

but I imagine it was probably like covering the Beatles because you guys were a national phenomena. Everywhere you went, people wanted a piece of you. I remember going to Tokyo with you guys and people just following Ralph and the team around, even into the men's room one time. He still has some of that je ne sais quoi around town now. Yeah, he still does. But, I mean, it was like it was almost automatic you were going to win.

It was just by how much. What was it like being a part of all that? Well, it was fun, but at the same time there was an element of pressure because we were always expected to win and Ralph was expected to make every shot and to get every rebound and to block every shot

and so forth, which obviously is unrealistic, but to have the level of interest focused on our program and clearly it came because of Ralph and Ralph was just so good at kind of pushing some of that attention to his teammates pushing some of that attention to the university and as much as we had journalists in all the different forms of media to come to those games, to come to our practice, to talk to Ralph, in so many situations it wasn't about Ralph, it was about the team and it was about the University of Virginia.

And the story of Ralph coming to the University of Virginia, A. B, the story of him staying at the University of Virginia for four years, getting a degree, living on the lawn, is one of the most significant events in the history of the number of media requests either to get to the game or to come to practice, to get 15 minutes with Ralph or to have that amount of time with Terry. And it always made a transition into, okay, we had the conversation with Ralph. Let's talk to Ricky Stokes, let's talk to Lee Raker and Terry Gates about this guy that's such a phenomenal player and human being. And some of the most important times of my career in athletics, coaching or administratively, were during that period of time that Ralph Sampson was here at the University of Virginia. That must have been one of the most intense recruiting wars of all time

when you guys were up against Joe B. Hall from Kentucky and Dean Smith and some others. But that had to be just intense. You probably had trouble sleeping at night at times. Well, the reason that we had trouble sleeping at night is because we were traveling virtually to every Harrisonburg high school game, whether it was in Harrisonburg or whether it was in Stewart's Draft or, you know, you name it. If he was playing, we were there and we developed I think a great relationship with his family a great relationship with the staff there at Harrisonburg High School and the other part of the the Ralph Sansa recruitment was understanding the challenges that every student athlete were going to have academically, we wanted to make sure early on that the university was going to be firmly behind Ralph and the program in this endeavor.

And I'll never forget a conversation that Terry and I had with John Castine, who at the time was the dean of admissions. Obviously, John went on to be the president of the university. But it was right after Ralph's junior year, that was after his sophomore year in high school, we made an appointment with John, and we talked about this unusual situation that we had of the very best player in the whole country one hour away, and we thought that we might have an opportunity to recruit him at the University of Virginia. And we wanted to

make sure that we didn't get too far down the road without John hearing the whole story of who he was, what kind of young man he was, what the intel was that we were getting from the teachers and the counselors and the principal, et cetera. And I remember John having a folder in front of him that we had given him, and he goes through the folder and he's looking at grades and he's looking at recommendations and this, that, and the other, folds it up after about five minutes. And he says, this is exactly the kind of young man that can be successful here at the University of Virginia. Let's get him.

Wow. That's absolutely fantastic. And that was all that we needed. And then for the next year and a half or more, it was constant trips, multiple trips every week over to see him wherever he was playing. We had a spy, a neighbor, who would give us a heads up on who it was that was making a visit. So if Lefty Giselle came in, we would get a call the next day, Lefty was here, by the way, or Joby Hall, Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge are here. So we knew exactly who was coming in just about with 100% certainty. But it was an exciting time, and to be a part of that certainly was a great feeling, particularly when we heard the answer that I want UVA.

That's a great story. So many questions coming in here. Let me see if I can highlight some from the viewers and listeners. Here's an interesting one. Would you offer perspective who else was on the short list on the basketball hire if Coach Bennett had said no? No, I wouldn't do that. Primarily because whether it was during the period of time I was the director of athletics or now the work that I do in executive search, when I go into a search, I promise any prospective candidate complete confidentiality. So if a coach that we might have interviewed for the position or shown interest in made a statement, I mean, that's fine. I would not make it. So the other part of that is Tony Bennett, for probably 10 years, had a part of the story of him coming to the University of

Virginia. And I never talked a lot about the hiring of Tony Bennett, and he told this story that when he told it to a group of donors about 2016 or 2017, I was hearing this story for the first time, and the long and short of it was that when he and his wife flew back home after visiting the University of Virginia, on the ride he told his wife, when we get back to Pullman, I'm going to call Mr. Littlepage and tell him that I'm staying here at Washington State. And Laurel basically said, well, you know, Tony, it's late. When we get back, he told Mr. Littlepage that you would call him tomorrow morning. There's no need to call him tonight. Let's talk about it.

Let's pray on it. Get a good night's sleep, and if you want to remain at Washington State in the morning, I'm all with you, but you shouldn't make a decision like this on the plane ride. Sure enough, you woke up the next morning, I'm ready to go to UVA. And I didn't know that until, as I said, almost 10 years later. We've gone, Hootie, almost an hour here, and we got to get his perspective on the transfer portal and the NIL. I mean, do you – the purist in me finds it at times disheartening,

and why I find it disheartening is one of the things I love about college basketball is the third or fourth year or redshirt senior playing on the team and watching them develop throughout their career in Charlottesville or throughout their career in any program. I understand it's today's basketball. We look at the current team, which you have. It's today's college sports, not just basketball. Today's college sports.

You have Beekman, you have McNeely, and you had Dunn returning for this team. Outside of that, almost the entire team is new. Your thoughts, open-ended question on the transfer portal and on NIL and today's college sports. Well, part of the question that I would talk about first is why we're here. And why we're here in part is because of inaction that started back in the early 2000s, like with the transfer topic. There have been committees and working groups that have been talking about transfer regulations and modifying transfer regulations for decades. And we just could never build a consensus strong enough with a package that met all the different variables, which is understandable.

But at some point in time, you've got to make a decision. So we had this set of NCAA rules that separated football, basketball, and I think it was hockey, or maybe baseball, I can't remember what the but football and basketball in particular were separated from the standard regulations. So the standard NCAA rule used to be that if you transferred, you were required to have a year in residence at the school that you moved to. All right? In every sport except football, basketball, and hockey or whatever it was, it may have been baseball, you could apply for a waiver

and have immediate eligibility. And that was one of the reasons that this whole thing about the transfer came up. You know, why are these different rules for these different kids? Are you disadvantaging primarily ethnic minority kids, primarily, again, football and basketball, versus kids that play golf and tennis, et cetera, et cetera? And these working groups and committees would talk about it. They'd come back and, well, that doesn't meet the need. Anyway, the inaction resulted in then coaching groups and others calling for Congress,

calling for, when we get to NIL, the state legislators to get involved and these other outsiders and the minute that you put decision-making in the hands of folks that aren't practitioners and understand the rules and understand the issues then you get what we in my opinion what we have right now which is a hodgepodge and And I am a traditionalist. I'm an old-timer. College athletics, whether you like it or not, is an integral part of higher education.

The things that are being done right now have very little connection to education, which bothers me. Same. And, you know, whether it's you can transfer in the middle of a year, it doesn't matter when you transfer, you can transfer multiple times. And none of this movement helps kids get an education and then earn a degree. So that's where I come from when I talk about the transfer topic in particular. A thousand percent with you on this.

How does a school that prioritizes academics first, you know, continue to compete on the national scale with perhaps other schools that do not? And furthermore, I mean, you got, you got, I was, I was looking on reading one of the newspapers, who the Georgia quarterback just bought a $275,000 Lamborghini. Yeah. Did you see that? I did see that. A $275,000 Lamborghini. You got some athletes that are choosing not to go professional because they make more money coming back for another year through NIL staying in college. How does a university compete in this world?

University of Virginia compete in this world? Tony Bennett and Tony Elliott and Coach Mox and others probably could give you a more definitive answer. But my quick answer is there are enough great kids out there who themselves and, in addition, their families value education. And that value the hard work that goes into not only getting an education but becoming proficient in your given sport. So there will be players, student athletes out there that will buy into that sort of program. The problem is that there's always the lure of

a program where I can get a good education as well, but also be compensated handsomely to play my sport. And the question is whether you have strong enough leadership in your program, your coaches in particular, that they can, first of all, identify those young people and whether they have a track record of being able to develop those people. And the problem that I see is you have a program that is development-oriented, and you put two years in or you put three years in,

and just at the time that they're ready to participate and contribute, and somebody takes them away for a different opportunity and for X number of dollars. And that's difficult. I think that we're still kind of waiting to see how this thing all works out in the end. But I always think that there will be a market, there will be a pool, I should say, of young people that are going to value education and value the kind of experience that you can get at a place like University of Virginia. And I just hope that that doesn't change. Same.

Where do you think all this is headed, Greg? I mean, we hear rumors all the time about a mega conference, a new realignment where there's X amount of schools that'll be like the nfl etc some schools won't be able to compete because of the pay for play uh it's just so many crazy things out there where i'm sure you you probably hear more stuff than we do because of your contacts through adss around the country. Where do you think all this is headed? Or the super conferences?

Super conferences, et cetera. Yeah, the thing that I hear the most about right now is whether there's a way to separate major college FBS football from all the other sports and all the other schools that don't play football at all or don't play FBS football. And that would then require that college football at that level be a completely separate entity, just kind of off to the side and I don't know who makes the rules and everything else. And then there's preservation of the existing programs that are playing all the other sports, again, with football kind of off to the side. I haven't studied it enough, talked to enough people to completely understand how feasible that is,

but it would seem to make sense because right now decisions about football are driving realignment, are driving the spending binge that many schools are on, are driving so much of what's going on, it would be a shame six years from now to look at college athletics without March Madness. Yes. To look at college athletics without the College World Series, whether it's baseball or softball. Or rivalries. The rivalries that have changed and have been impacted by this. So again, being

old-fashioned and more of a traditionalist, I think that the best hope for being able to preserve some of the good things that we see and love about college sports is to maybe take football and have it

be kind of a standalone entity. Again, I'm not advocating it because there's not a formal proposal that gives the details, and the devil is always in the details. But it sounds like something that could possibly work and, again, preserve the good things that we feel about so much that we see in college athletics. It makes sense. It makes perfect sense.

And that might be the best of the scenarios that are out there for college purists and fans. I mean, how about this one? Did you ever think you'd see an Atlantic Coast conference that was coast to coast? I never thought that. Not only are you the Stanford of the East, but you'll be playing Stanford. They're in the same conference. Yeah.

But to think, and this is why it's really sad, to think that a school like Stanford University and all that it stands for and the excellence that it has stood for, the school that has won the Director's Cup, which speaks to broad-based competitive excellence in athletics, didn't have a home, didn't have a conference home. It just doesn't make sense. Cal Berkeley is another great school. Not only a conference home, but in a lot of ways, in some ways, disregarded, which is crazy. Yes.

Because that's, as you've indicated, that's the pinnacle of well-roundedness. Yes, I agree. Southern Methodist is another great school. But we'll see what happens. There are a lot of smart people that are talking about it. The president, Charlie Baker, NCAA president, is floating a number of different ideas and concepts. in college athletics have to start moving more assertively to make decisions instead of asking legislators and Congress and these other entities to help us. So hopefully we'll see something move in that direction that the practitioners can really get things together. Is there anything we missed today that you wanted to talk about that we might have overlooked? No.

Again, I'm so happy with what has continued in terms of competitive success for the UVA program. Carla's done a very, very good job. Congratulations to Carla on her appointment to the college football playoff selection committee. That is huge, not only for the playoff, but it's huge for Carla and for the attention that that brings to our program here at the University of Virginia. So well done. I'm very happy with that. I'm just so pleased to see the continued success and contributions of student athletes beyond what they do in their sports. I just think that there are so many good things that are happening around the University of Virginia, not only within athletics but outside.

I'm so happy with the way that the community has embraced UVA sports. And as you know, having been around the university community for as long as you have, it wasn't always like that. Right. There was a point in time. I arrived here in 1976, and the sports program was much different, obviously, than it is right now. And there were people that just didn't feel as though the University of Virginia is somewhere that we should pursue excellence. And when I became athletics director in 2001, that was what John Castine and Gordon Rainey, who was the rector of the Board of Visitors at the time, said that we want excellence to mean not only academic excellence,

but we want excellence to be in academics, in athletics, in everything that we do. And I think that that was a great way to get our trajectory going in the direction that it has continued even today. We could sit and talk to you all day. I know, I know. We've got to be mindful of this man's time here. I'll bet there's a thousand questions out there. There are.

And I apologize to the viewers and listeners for the questions we're not getting to here. We have to be mindful of this man's time. It is incredibly valuable. How about we close with this one here, a little humanizing question. How does Craig Littlepage and the fabulous Mrs. Littlepage, what do they do on a Friday or Saturday night in Charlottesville when they want to relax and enjoy the community, maybe dinner plans or show plans or anything like that? Well, I mentioned earlier, we do love live arts. I am a member of the board of the Paramount

Theater. So this Friday night, for example, I'm going to a show at the Paramount. My wife and I will go to a show at the Paramount. We travel up and down the East Coast to many shows. Saturday we'll be going to a men's basketball game. That's a pretty important game against Wake Forest University. I think there's a women's game on Sunday, if I'm not mistaken. I'll have to go check the schedule. But we have our interests that connect to the university, but we also have friends and activities outside of the university and outside of athletics that are equally as important.

And obviously then there are – there's family and our children are adult children and we have a daughter that's a travel nurse living in Charlotte, North Carolina, another daughter that's a nurse in pediatric oncology at Sloan Memorial in New York City. Our son, the middle child, is in the family business. He's an assistant director of athletics at Temple University in marketing. And these are things that occupy us, give us great value. And it was interesting because when I was talking about and thinking about retirement, the one topic that my wife, Margaret, and I didn't discuss is where we were going to live.

And it was, you know, where else would we live? We don't know of any place that's better. And my wife grew up here. Our kids primarily grew up here. I've lived and worked here more than half of my life on this earth. And I've had friends say, well, did you guys talk about other places? No, we never had a conversation about it. We knew that this is where we were going to be.

And until the kids tell us that we've got to go to assisted living, we're living in Charlottesville. You are a joy to interview. This guy is fantastic. I'm going to echo one of the viewers and listeners comments from Stephanie Wells Rhodes. It's been a pleasure, Mr. Littlepage.

Thank you all for what you've done for our university. Wahoo wah. A gentleman that shaped the university as much as any. Craig Littlepage. For those that are asking, the entire show archived wherever you get your podcasts or your social media content. This man, Jerry Hootie Ratcliffe, set up this interview. The Virginia Sports Hall of Famer, 40-plus years on the UVAB. His 50th consecutive ACC tournament on the horizon.

That is a champion milestone event. 50 straight tournaments. I mean, I'm blown away just saying that, Hootie. There aren't many people that have done that. Right. Yeah, I didn't even think about it until we were talking about it last week. It didn't even hit me until he mentioned that. 50 straight.

He asked me when my favorite tournament was and I said, well, probably the first one in 74 and then he said, well, that's 50 years. I said, well, I never even thought about it. My favorite tournament, I remember getting out of school for the ACC tournament. My dad prioritized school, but he would let us out for the ACC tournament

because it meant so much to him. We've got to go. Craig Littlepage is absolutely fabulous. Give props to Judah Wickauer behind the camera. Allows us Mr. Consistency, undoubtedly Hootie, to do what we love, which is talk Virginia sports. Thank you kindly for joining us. You guys have a good morning and so long. Craig was fantastic.

He's going to tell us when the mics and cameras are all here. Thank you.