The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Ravaged or Reimagined? Transfer Portal at UVA; UVA's 2024-25 Roster Transferred To Major Schools

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

The Jerry & Jerry Show headlines: Ravaged or Reimagined? Transfer Portal at UVA UVA’s 2024-25 Roster Transferred To Major Schools Odom Signing Transfers From Mid-Major Schools Odom Cleans House With UVA Coaching Staff Is There No Loyalty In College Hoops Anymore? Did UVA Burn National Champion Kyle Guy? With Pay-to-Play, Is Odom Expected To Win Now? How Much Are UVA Hoopers Earning Per Year? Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air Jerry Ratcliffe & Jerry Miller were live on The Jerry & Jerry Show! The Jerry & Jerry Show airs live Tuesday from 10:15 am – 11:15 pm 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, guys. My name is Jerry Miller and thank you kindly for joining us on the Jerry and Jerry show. Absolutely enjoyed connecting with you guys through the I Love Seaville Network on a talk show that features the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer Jerry Hootie Rackliff, the namesake of JerryRackliff.com. He in person just enjoyed his 51st straight ACC basketball tournament. That says something right there, ladies and gentlemen. A lot we're going to cover on today's talk show. We sit less than two miles from the John Paul Jones Arena in Scott Stadium, two locations that have a significant amount of activity happening now and in the near future. Spring football, the spring football game guys should be front and center.

However, the new cycle for Wahoo Nation is dominated by the transfer portal and either the reimagining of Virginia basketball or as some fans are calling it the ravaging of Virginia basketball. We're going to unpack that today on the Jerry and Jerry show. We'll talk this story line. A lot of Virginia's former basketball players from the 2024-2025 roster are transferring to major college basketball programs. Jacob Kofi, Southern California, Andrew Rode, Wisconsin, and of course Isaac McNeely at Louisville. And a lot of the players coming in are from mid-major programs. I want to unpack that theme with Hootie Radcliffe. And of course we're going to talk the Kyle Guy News. The

beloved Kyle Guy, a national champion, is not coming back as coach, as an assistant coach at the University of Virginia. Was he burned by UVA, or is this part of college basketball today? All that and more, Judah Wickhauer behind the camera, studio camera that had two shot. As we welcome a man that needs no introduction,

we encourage you to visit jerryrackliff.com, the star of our we encourage you to visit JerryRackliff.com, the star of our show, Jerry Hootie Rackliff. My friend, good Tuesday morning to you. Good Tuesday morning to you as well. It's been a pretty active weekend. So active. So active. I don't think I've ever seen you wear that quarter zip and button down combo.

Looking sharp, my friend. Thank you, sir. And scatter shooting to start the show as we always do. Hootie Radcliffe, the show is yours. Well you know talk about questions from the fan base and I've gotten some that have asked if these guys were so good and go into all these major programs how come Virginia couldn't get a winning season out of them. I think it's a fair question. And that is a fair question. And I don't I don't have an answer for that. But maybe they're better individually than the the some. Maybe it's coaching. Maybe it's coaching. Maybe it's a little bit of both. Maybe it's how Tony Bennett left.

Yeah, it could be part of that. A lot of people are blaming Tony Bennett for all this chaos to begin with. It's a, it's an unusual predicament. More so than, than any other coaching change I guess that we've experienced in years gone by just because of the way college sports are today with the portal in the NIL and the seemingly ability to move around freely in the college sports world without any difficulty. This is the newest guy that's coming to Virginia. This will be his sixth year in college basketball. It's his third school.

There's another guy. Duke Miles. Yeah, Duke Miles. There's another guy, the Jacare White guy. I think he's, this will be his fourth school, I believe. Maybe it was the other guy, Lewis. But yeah, it's just such a bizarre world we're in right now. And it seems like that maybe the house settlement might add some consistency to everything or a little bit more level playing field than what we've seen the last two years. But I don't know, everything is just in utter chaos right now.

And if you talk to all the veteran coaches, I even heard Gino Arrema on the way here today talk about it's just total insanity right now. Absolute insanity. Jeremy Wilson says he's watching the show in Cookville, Tennessee right now. We got Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, much of the Commonwealth, Pennsylvania, and Maryland on the show right now. Chad Wood, your comment is on deck. He was a part of Steve Isaac's single wing successful rushing attack and the Jefferson District, Chad Wood, your comments in a matter of moments. I got so much I want to cover with you.

Andrew Rode is going to a big time program in Wisconsin. Isaac McNeely, a big time program in Louisville, which may be the benchmark of how the transfer portal and NIL can turn a program around in one year. Louisville. The scuttlebutt on Twitter and some of these social platforms has Isaac McNeely earning north of two million dollars to play for Louisville. Multiple quality, I guess content creators, influencers are saying that is a two million surpass threshold for McNeely, which we can't blame if he's getting paid that much money. Absolutely not. Jacob Colfee is at Southern California.

Anthony Robinson, the big man who I'm extremely high on, goes to Xavier to play for a Patino in the Big East. I mean, Hootie, these are big time programs that this roster is going to and what's coming back, a lot of people are saying is not the equivalent here, Hootie. Yeah, well, I don't know how you gauge that. Just because somebody's at a mid-major doesn't mean that they're not a really good basketball player. I mean... Perfect example of that is the guy who was the NCAA tournament MVP, the Florida Guard.

Yeah. He transferred from a mid-major and now was the best player in March Madness. Yeah. And, you know, throughout watching college basketball all season, a lot of guys I've seen have incredible performances and seasons came from mid-major schools to play for major universities. So I don't think you can brand them not quality basketball players just because they came from mid-majors. They might have gotten overlooked in the recruiting process. They might have been late bloomers. They, people that developed later. I mean look at Andrew, the difference in Andrew Rode in one year

for Virginia. I mean he came from a tiny school in the Midwest and that first year he just didn't play well. And then this past year, he's played lights out, and now he's going on to another big school. So I don't think you can brand a player just because he is a mid-major guy, that he can't play really good basketball in high-major basketball. Jeff Morris watching the program in Henrico, Virginia.

Viewers and listeners, you have questions, put them in the feed. We'll relay them live on air. Chad Wood from Crozet, we've seen players average at UVA. We've seen players play average at UVA and move on and shine in other programs. Not sure there is one particular answer to what you guys are talking about. I think he's right. I think it's just a convoluted, clouded NCAA college basketball ecosystem we live in. One that certainly is no longer about amateur play and playing for the love of the game. And one that frankly, and it's tough to say, is about chasing the bag of money. Yeah. And we've seen guys here play, have decent seasons, but not incredible seasons, and go on to the NBA and transform into

completely different basketball players. Hunter is a guy, I mean not Hunter, the guy that's playing for the Phoenix Suns now, that just left here. Ryan Dunn. Ryan Dunn. Yeah. A hunter clone in a lot of ways.

I mean, he couldn't throw a ball in the ocean when he was here, and now he's lightened up making threes like crazy in the NBA. I mean, that's just one example of guys that have gone here and become scoring stars in the NBA. And speaking of the NBA, Reece Beekman gets his first start. Yeah. DeAndre Hunter. 14 points.

DeAndre Hunter with the Cleveland Cavaliers, looks like the sixth man of the year. Ty Jerome is back and healthy. This statistic I saw on Twitter floating around, I'll relay to the viewers and listeners. And then Renee Pettiford, your comments are on deck. Reese Beekman, Danny Neckel, we appreciate his tweets. Reese Beekman, Neckel tweets, was the ninth different former UVA player to score at least 10 points in an NBA game this season.

That's amazing. Beekman was the ninth different former UVA player to register at least 10 points in an NBA game this season. Only eight other schools have had that many, or have had more. That's pretty impressive. That's impressive. That is absolutely impressive. Renee Pettiford, she says she's watching the show

from the hair salon. She says, Hootie, you're looking very sharp. Thank you, Renee. She's at the hair salon watching the program right now. Has a couple questions for the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer. She says this, do you think that Ryan Odom's first year, this is where expectations are, get ready for this, Hootie. This is where fan expectations are.

And she knows basketball like the Pope knows holy water. Yes. Okay. She says, Hootie, do you think that the reboot of UVA this year will be like Louisville's reboot this past year? And then she also asked this question with the guys that are transferring, I believe the players did not like that Ron was fired, and that's why they left.

So it's a two-part question. Well, I think there's probably some truth to that. A lot of those guys had a strong allegiance to Ron and the coaching staff. And I'm sure a lot of hearts were broken when those guys weren't retained. And a lot of guys on the roster might have said, well, if I'm going to play for a new coach,

I might as well as go play for somebody I don't even know. And maybe some of these guys, when they got worked out by Ryan and his associate head coach, Griff Aldridge, is that right, Aldridge? Yep. Maybe they didn't like what they saw. Maybe they didn't feel like they could fit into that system very well, and decided to go somewhere where they'd fit in better.

That's usually a big factor with players who are looking at a portal or looking to be a free agent in the pros is they need to have a, they need to fit the program that they're going into. And so that might have also been a factor, but it may be that Ryan Oden, Ryan Oden may not have wanted some of those guys back because he didn't feel like they were a good fit. But, yeah, we'll never know because we'll probably never get to talk to all those guys again. Maybe McNeely. Maybe McNeely might say, and if he gets paid, he's getting paid $2 million, she'd be crazy not to take it and take advantage of that situation.

But what was the other part of her question? The other part of the question is the expectation Louisville. Well, I think that's to be determined because we don't know what's to come. They're just in the early stages of filling out this roster. They still have a couple of weeks left before the portal closes. So there's going to be a lot more activity over the next 10 days, I think, before we find out what this team is all about.

Because right now it's loaded up in the back court. There's only one guy in the front court. And you know they're with all with all the people in the portal and all the money that they've got to play with they're out there they're probably in it for some some big-name guys I would think and trying to get them to visit or at least get them on a zoom to talk about you know and show them what the program and the campus is all about. So it's too early to say at this point. We'll have to wait and just see what all the pieces are that they collect before we can get to the expectations, I think.

A lot we've got to cover today. Here's a question that many of the fan base wants to know. It's a public university. Does the NIL compensation get made public? How much are these players making? I don't think it is. I've seen other public universities, and I don't think anybody's divulging

that kind of information. I don't even know if you can get the tax forms through Freedom of Information Act to find that out. But I don't think they have to divulge it. And if they don't have to, they're surely not going to volunteer it because we know how UVA is when it comes to being transparent or rather non-transparent. They're not going to offer up anything.

Claudia Garrett Morris watching the program, Vanessa Parkel in Earleysville, Logan Wells Claylow watching the show. Viewers and listeners, let us know your thoughts. We'll relay them live on air. The Kyle Geick storyline is frankly a tough pill to swallow. We've got a national champion. We have arguably the face of a generation for Virginia basketball. I can say that with confidence conviction if there's a player that is the face of Virginia basketball Over the last generation. It's Kyle guy three huge free throws made

You know the the all shucks kind of looks An undersized guy that has a massive heart, that is a big time performer, especially in crunch time, and frankly, a national champion here. A guy who quits a professional career in Europe, comes to Charlottesville with his wife, with kids to complete a degree and to join Tony Bennett, his mentor, and learn the profession of coaching by his side. After he quits playing professional basketball in Europe, in the middle of his prime, in the middle of his prime,

he heads to Charlottesville, finds out Tony Bennett is gonna surprise everyone with resignation, stays on staff, because he's pursuing his degree with Ron Sanchez, Jason Williford, Coleman Wilkins and the others and has a tumultuous up and down campaign. The expectation was perhaps Odom would give Guy a chance to stay. Marty Hutloff, NBC29, friend of the program, love Marty. Nothing but love for Marty Hart. My boss at one time when I was working at NBC29, Marty Hartloff, only, I'd say top four

boss, you're number one, clear cut number one, Jerry Racklepoint, that wasn't even close, and I'm not just saying it because he's a cross for me. He reports on press conference day that Kyle Guy and some of the other coaches are getting retained. We find out yesterday that Kyle Guy is no longer part of the staff. The question fan base wants to know, did he get burned or is this just part of college basketball today? Well, we don't know because he didn't say in his departure Twitter, he just said he

was leaving. He didn't describe the circumstances and I don't know of anybody that's talked to him directly since then. There is a rumor floating out there among the fan base that he was offered an opportunity to stay. I don't know what kind of offer it was. If it was for the same position that he held under Sanchez and Bennett, or if it was an opportunity to become more of a full-time assistant coach. All that's unclear at this point. But if he was offered an opportunity to stay and he decided that's not

what he was looking for then Yeah, it's a decision he had to make for him and his family It's always a tough decision to leave a place that you love and And he does he does love UVA. He made that pretty clear. So we don't know at this point. And I'm sure that in the coming days we'll find out, get a clearer picture of what transpired there. But I think it's too early to make a judgment call on that because we just don't know the facts. Great commentary from Hootie.

I will highlight this. Friend of the program and a viewer and listener, James Watson, posted on Facebook, and he follows UVA basketball as closely as anybody, lamenting Kyle Guy's departure from UVA. In the comments section of Mr. Watson's post, another friend of the program, who I have tremendous respect for, Ahmad Hawkins, who's the color commentator for Virginia football. He highlights that he also

heard that Kyle Guy did not take the offer here. He highlights in that same comment, I could be wrong, but he is in a lot of ways confirming what you have heard circulating that Kyle Guy was given a shot to stay. I'm going to ask this question, this is just a question by trying to read tea leaves here. You got a man that is trying to finish his degree at UVA. You got a guy that has a wife and kids, a town that he's beloved in, Charlottesville, where he won a national championship and cut down nets. Are we to reasonably, just thinking out loud, he turns down and offered to stay when he has a wife and kids and a town that loves him for potentially no job opportunity right

now? That's a hell of a lot of risk. It is. I mean, he could always go back and play basketball and make a decent living. I don't know if he wants to do that and what kind of compensation he was getting before. I'm sure he could land somewhere as an assistant coach with all the connections he's made over the years, but You know again, I don't know what kind of position he may have been offered here the position he had before Was very low-pay. Yeah, it was and You know he wasn't really an assistant coach viewers and listeners we need to highlight that yeah, I mean he participated in practice and, and, uh, you know, he was at the games

and in the huddles and all that stuff, but he couldn't go out and actively recruit. Like a full-time assistant does. And well, can you highlight some of the things that you, and I hope I'm not speaking at a turn and some of the things that you wrote about Kyle Guy with, with his title, can you highlight that? Yeah, well, I don't know exactly what he did. I think it is something about player development or in life, life skills. I think was his one of his monikers, monikers and just I guess trying to be an advisor or a counselor or whatever to the players.

I don't think that pays a whole lot of money. He could probably make more money playing basketball in Europe or somewhere, but Absolutely, he could. So I don't know if he was hoping to maybe be advanced to a full-time assistant coach or if they just offered him more of the same. And if he couldn't become a full-time assistant coach, I could see why he might not want to stay here because if you get in the right program a full-time assistant coach makes some pretty decent money. Steven O'Dwyer watching the

program he says the NIL compensation should be made public especially now that the University of Virginia is going to have a hiring freeze and not offer bonuses to faculty and staff. Jim Ryan wrote a letter to faculty and staff at the University of Virginia about a week ago. And in this letter from the president of the University of Virginia, the seventh president of UVA, he highlights that because of headwinds associated with Trump's administration and potentially no federal funding

or diminished federal funding for the school, the university is going to, A, not offer cost of living raises to staff, that's 3%, at least put them on ice or freeze them for now. B, they are going to put on ice and freeze performance based bonuses. C, they're going to put on ice discretionary spending for departments tied to say expanding a biotechnology lab. And O'Dwyer, Stephen O'Dwyer makes I think is a very valid point. If President Ryan is telling everybody at the University of Virginia, look, you don't

get a 3% raise and the 3% I'll cut to the chase doesn't even keep up with inflation. The 3% that's being offered to staff. I mean, frankly, they're losing money year over year if it's a 3% cost of living raise. And then if they're not getting the bonus, they're really losing money here. He says, if you're not doing this for the bread and butter of the university, the rank and file,

we should know what these 18, 19, 20, 21, and 22-year-olds are making to shoot a basketball into a hoop. Well, I totally agree. I'm all for complete transparency when it comes to every facet of the university, including the athletic department. And we really get none of that. And that's nothing new. That's been going on for decades.

I don't know how many times over the span of my career here, I tried to get the athletic department budget and what they were spending on this and that and the other and how much money they were raising. And I would always get put off by it. and said we'll get back to you on that or I'd have to look at some numbers or something and very seldom did I ever get a straight answer on any of that stuff and it's I think it's probably worse now than it was back then but yet like, like you said, it used to be when they would hire a new coach or something, they would give you the terms of the contract at the press conference or in a press release.

Now you have to get it through the Freedom of Information Act. Which is bogus. And so, if they don't have to divulge the NIL money, they're certainly not going to do it. And if they can hide behind walls that it's a person's income, not from the university, but from gifts to the university, I don't know all the ins and outs of that, but most schools don't divulge that information and I guarantee you that if Virginia doesn't have to, they're not going to. Bob Schada watching the program. Bergwood's finest Bob Schada. The mayor of Avache watching

the show. Olivia Branch watching the program. The Queen of Keswick watching the show right now. This one comes from Kentucky. Hootie Radcliffe. Isaac McNeely rumored out here well over $2 million to play basketball for the Cardinals. Didn't you boys want a chance to keep this guy on your roster when you're bringing other players and paying them north of a million dollars? Seems to me McNeely's worth more than what you're paying those guys to come to UVA. Well, I would have thought so. I would have paid Isaac, the whatever the going rate is,

to keep him here. I mean, he's a beloved player. He was the face of the program, really. He was the face of the program, really. He was the face of the program. And one of the all-time great three-pointers in UVA history, shooters, and just a great kid. He and his family are just high-quality, good people. And I know he loved it here, but he probably didn't like the way things ended. Haven't had an opportunity to talk to him. So we don't know his feelings about certain things, but I mean, think about it this way.

I said, yeah, nearly gets recruited from West Virginia to play for Tony bet. Before his third year, the guy who recruits him quits. Then the guy that's coming in to be the stopgap or the interim who he has an affinity for, Ron Sanchez, along with Jason Willifer, along with Wilkins and Coleman, the assistant coaches, the entire staff, they get, they go through a professional divorce when Sanchez is in a hotel room in Charlotte after the ACC tournament finding out from an athletic director that he loses his job. Another season the entire roster is completely in peril, unsure of what's going on. Uncertainty spooks anything. Wall Street

yesterday, uncertainty spooked the markets. Uncertainty with college basketball spooked Virginia's roster. The entire roster enters the transfer portal. Everybody, the only guy that Carter Lang, right, and he redshirted, who transferred from Vanderbilt, the SEC, the St. Anne's-Belfield product, goes to Vanderbilt, plays his freshman year, says, I want to go back home to Charlottesville and play for Coach Bennett, is persuaded to redshirt, now is the only guy left on the roster. I mean, this is insanity. This is like a soap opera. It's total insanity. And echoing what R.E.M.A. said today.

He said, you know, he said, we're in the NCAA tournament and the transfer portal was open. He said, can you imagine the NBA playoffs going on and the free agency is going on at the same time? Yeah. He said, you know. Scottie Pippen's kid enters the transfer portal while Michigan is still in the tournament and he's playing for Michigan.

Yeah. He said, I know there's players on my roster that were in the Final Four and they've got one foot out the door before the tournament's even finished because of the transfer portal, Unlimited and NIL and everything else. And so, insanity is the proper word because college sports is in chaos and I just don't see how it can sustain itself.

I know they're getting high ratings on TV and all that, but I think there's a lot of people out there turned off by this. I am, even I am just... I'm turned off by it. I've never had less passion for the NCAA tournament than I've had this year. I watched very little of it and I even forgot the Final Four was on Saturday until the Duke game came on because I didn't have anything else to do. But I think there's a lot and I know, I know some other people who are passionate, very passionate about college sports and particularly college basketball.

They didn't even watch the tournament. They just, they're just totally turned off by the whole scenario. And it's sad because I never thought it would be like this. Well, it's college basketball and March Madness, in my eyes, and viewers and listeners, maybe you can relate to this. March Madness was the purest form of amateurism and amateur athletics that was out there.

You have a tournament with 60 plus teams, where it's win one game and you move on. When you only have to win one game, anything in sports can happen. When it's a series, best of five or best of seven, the best team is probably going to win. But when it's win one game and you move on, anything can happen. That's why you see a VCU go to the Final Four or a George Mason go to the Final Four and that hope is something that we cling to and why we watch because anything can happen. You had four number ones in the

final four. You had chalk in the final four. We had a sweet 16 and a lead eight that was dominated by heavyweights and the expectation and the Cinderella story seems to be over. I'll paint a picture. VCU and George Mason makes it to the Final Four because a coach can take a class from freshman year to sophomore year to junior year to senior year, and by the time their fourth years are seniors, they become a gelled unit. And this gelled unit can overcome athletic deficiencies

versus a blue blood major program. by being a gelled unit. They may not be the most athletic guys, might not be able to jump out of the gym like the Kentucky's or the UCLA's or the Duke's or the UNC's, but because of the experience playing together they can beat that athleticism, especially to win one game setting. That's over. And if you're a talented player in a mid-major program, why would you stay at a mid-major school as opposed to chase it a bag of money? Yeah, well you all saying the best team doesn't always win. That's going to be diminished in the future. I think we're seeing some of it

now because there are very few upsets in the March Madness throughout the entire stage of it. A lot of people had like only three misses on their prediction sheets and stuff. So, used to be able to go through those things and it looked like a battlefield. Everybody was marking off the misses in red. You knew to pick a 12-scene over a 5 the red. Well, see over a five scene. Exactly. And I wonder if those days are over.

I think those days are over. Um, comments are coming in quickly. This question is coming in from Nevada. This is all right. We got this. I think I have 15 states. All right. I think this is the first time Nevada has ever asked a question.

This one is, uh, this one is for Jerry Ratcliffe here. What would be the thinking of not keeping any of the Virginia coaches on the roster, especially a school deep in tradition? Well, we don't know that there's not any. They haven't announced the entire coaching staff at this point. So far it's Griff Aldridge and then the three assistants from VCU. So that's five people. I think they can have seven full-time assistants if I'm not mistaken and like a staff of ten or might even be eleven. We would cross Jason Williford off the list here, right?

I think, yeah, I think Jason's, I think his contract was due to run out after this season anyway. And I don't know what that meant his status was going to be. Even had Ron been retained, I just don't know. I know his, Ron's, and I think one of the other assistant coaches, maybe two of the other full-time assistant coaches, contracts didn't run out for yet another year. So I don't know that, but I guess there's still possibility that somebody,

at least one somebody could still be retained. Again, they're probably so consumed with the portal right now that there's, he got his general staff together that he knew and he was pretty certain he was gonna bring those three guys. First thing he did was Griff Aldrich. Yeah. His best friend and basketball. He knew he probably knew that before he even accepted the job. Yeah that's the Logwood head coach, Quit Logwood came to UVA to be the associate head coach. He was previously a lieutenant for Ryan Odom at UMBC and some other stops. He said no to Longwood, came to UVA. First thing

Odom did was Griff Aldrich. Yeah. And they go back to their plane days at UMBC was cut short because Longwood came knocking at Aldridge's door and offered him a head coaching position and he couldn't turn that down. So I think they knew that if they ever ended up in the right place that they would probably work together again. And so, you know, once he had him secured and he was pretty confident, I'm sure, that he was going to bring those three main assistants from VCU. They had been with him at other stops and that formed a nucleus of his coaching team. I think once he got those four in house, he probably figured, well, I can do the rest as we go,

but we've got to focus on hitting the portal hard because we've got to replace an entire roster. And that's incredibly time consuming to go through nearly 2,000 names and see if they fit your style of basketball, if they can get into school here. Some of these guys only have one year eligibility remaining, just like football. Yeah, the kid that's transferring from Oklahoma, Duke Miles, is legitimately a six year, is

playing college basketball for a six year, guys. Yes. Six years of college basketball basketball this Duke Miles kid. And so it's so time-consuming I can see why he might have put the other stuff on temporary hold or maybe trying to figure that out as it goes along but. I mean what's Virginia have right now? Do they have three commitments? You got a short window now to fill out that roster because it closes on the 24th. Yeah.

Do we, are there three transfer? Today is the eighth. Are there three transfer portal commitments? Happy birthday, Wendy. Happy birthday, Wendy. It's your daughter. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you have three transfer portal commitments? Yes. There's three transfer portal commitments on this team. They are all guards. You have the kid who went from VCU at a high school committee. He's a senior in high school right now. Silas Barksdale. This guy, it looks like he's a freak athlete here. Like six, seven, six, eight with a massive wingspan. Like a junior burrow type. Yeah. Junior who can jump out of the gym. Okay. In fact, junior burrow even

said this guy has more upside that I did as a senior in high school. He said, and I read JerryRackliff.com here, first website I visit every morning. Junior Burrow said, I was more refined offensively, but this guy's got more upside than I do. Probably pointing to the man's length, his reach, and his athleticism, his explosiveness. And Junior coached him in AAU.

Right, he knows it. So this goes a long way for Burrow to make that comment. So you've got a senior in high school that's on UVA's roster and Silas Barksdale. You've got a point guard from St. Anne's Belfield Academy and Chance Malleroi, who may be the most talented guy on the roster right now. But he's a senior in high school.

The chitter chatter is this guy's making $1.2 million in NIL compensation. You've got three guards transferred to UVA, including one who's a six-year. These are all marksmen from Bonisphere. Carter Lang, I hope he stays. He showed some upside at Vanderbilt. He's got roots to Charlottesville,

went to St. Ann's-Belfield, played with Chance Mallory at St. Ann's-Belfield. played with Chance Mallory at St. Ann's-Belfield. He's a physical presence in the front court. But outside of that, the roster is wide open, and the portal is about to close. And by the way, you still need to hire a general manager. The chatter has staples. I was going to ask you about the general manager spot.

You go to VirginiaSports.com, and you click the men's basketball roster, and there's no players listed. When you go to VirginiaSports.com and you click the men's basketball roster and there's no players listed when you go to VirginiaSports.com and you click the roster. There's not a single player listed right here. Yeah, that's a... What's going on here? That's a frightening aspect, isn't it? What is going on here? I thought Tony Bennett had it hard when he had replaced 60% of his football roster.

And by the way, spring football is right around the corner and no one's even talking about it. Yeah. Well, you know, you don't have a coaching change in basketball that often. I've been here since 1982. And I think this is what, the fifth or sixth coach that they've had. So not counting the interim coach,

but that's not very many coaches. So it's a big deal. And college basketball is still a sport where Virginia, if they get the right guys in here through the portal can still be- Top 15, top 10 program. They can, they can make some noise in just one season. Yeah. Uh, it's harder to do in football.

Can't do that. And so there's a lot of focus on what's going on over at JPJ and, and trying to land the right people to, to get this to become a competitive program again. This comes from Michael Murphy in Baltimore. Isaac McNeely went to Louisville, whose preseason rank number three, he'll get a ton of NBA exposure, plus $2 million plus is a lot of incentives to turn down. Michael Murphy, I agree 100% with you. I do not fault Isaac McNeely to go to Louisville at all.

Oh, not at all. Not at all. He's got to watch out for himself. He would have probably made some good money here. He probably would have made that. I bet you they matched it. Maybe. Yeah, but it's Louisville and to his point, this is one of the top teams in college basketball now. And Virginia's, and that just shows you, if you get the right person into Louisville. What you can do. You can get things turned around because they've been wandering in the wilderness since Patino was booted out the door and that's a proud program and they have incredible support. A lot of people who do you realize is this Louisville if you live in the Louisville area,

your pro franchise is Louisville basketball. Absolutely, and that's a pretty good size city. It's a massive city. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got Big Brother, Kentucky, right around the corner. 75 miles away.

And there's nothing more that they want to do than keep up with Big Brother. Yeah. And they've got money to do it. Steven O'Dwyer makes the comment, they should be forced to take a year out if they enter the transfer portal and it should count towards their eligibility. Bring back the love of the game for each of their schools and want to play for the schools and not the name that's on the back of their jersey.

I love the idea. Yeah, well, there's been a lot of proposals out there. You can transfer once for free. And then after that, if you transfer, you do have to set out a year. And it does cost you a year of eligibility. I don't know what is going to be settled upon, but they've got to do something. It's just madness right

now that, I mean, we're seeing people hop from one school to the other every year. I mean, nobody, what's it going to look like 20 years from now when you have a basketball reunion and none of these guys have played at your school for more than one or two years. Are they ever going to come back or have any association with your, your basketball program or your football program or, uh, you know, are all those days over to where there's just no pride and sticking around at a school and well ask this question here. Is the day of hanging an athlete's jersey and the rafters now done? That's a really good question. Like because nobody's sticking around long enough to make a difference. If people don't stay around long enough, do we no longer retire jerseys and retire numbers anymore?

Or let's put it in a different perspective. If a young man chooses to commit to a university and stays freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years, that guy, if he performs well and has some glory and wins some championships, that could be the athletic version of Jesus. Because he's choosing to buck the trend of chasing portal money and attention and possibilities and staying the course at one school. That guy could be the anointed one for a university. Yeah. And it's spread into women's basketball too at this point. I mean the women's, and this speaks to the the pay scale on the WNBA

there's the there's the the the gal from Notre Dame as she was projected to go number two and the WNBA draft and she said I'm not going to the WNBA I'm hitting the transfer portal and saying at women's college basketball Probably make more she make that's why she makes more money than I think the the average for the WNBA is in the mid 70s, like 75, 76,000. And now they're going through arbitration. Some players like Angel Reese are threatening a lockout if they don't raise the pay. One of the things I need to highlight about the WNBA, and this is nothing about women's sports or men's sports, the WNBA loses money.

It literally loses money every year. So how do you pay the players more when the league loses money and is subsidized by the NBA? Well, it used to be like that in college basketball and it may still be. I don't know, but I know that women's basketball programs used to lose money and Pretty sure it's the networks the the networks and would They would lose money Televising women's basketball they they were that was part of the deal that they were they were forced to

Televise women's basketball even they were losing money doing so. Yeah it's I don't I wouldn't think that it's much different now. It's bananas and guys you want to hear something crazy and this is a question for Hootie. Spring football is the spring football game Saturday. Yes. The spring football game is Saturday. We have a head coach in Tony Elliott who is now the highest paid employee at the University of Virginia in total compensation. It's over four million a year. Because Tony Bennett's not here anymore, Ryan Odom is not making that much money, and the CEO of UVA Health, Craig Kent, was fired.

and the CEO of UVA Health, Craig Kent, was fired. Tony Elliott is the highest paid University of Virginia employee in total compensation. He is coaching for his life in his fourth year. His first three years, Tony Elliott, his coaching resume, the least amount of wins of any coach in any of the Power Football Conferences. That's true. 11 wins.

11 wins over three years, the least amount. He had to replace what, 50, 60% of his roster. Yep. You got spring football in the spring football game and no one is talking about it. Is that an indication of where apathy and interest is in football? Or is that an indication of how rabid the fan base is

with basketball? What's going on here? I think it's a little of both. I think with Virginia, in terms of football, you have a hardcore base of around 20 or 25,000 people that are gonna be there pretty much rain or shine, win or lose. The others, I think, are people

that are just waiting to see. They want a reason to get excited, and they want a route for a winner, and if they start winning again, those people will show up, and it'll be a bandwagon situation but Basketball I think basketball and again, it's we're talking about smaller crowds, obviously but I think basketball there's a

Little bit more Loyal I don't know if loyal is the right word a little bit more loyal, I don't know if loyal is the right word, a little bit more loyal of a fan base. The basketball fans weren't really shafted like the football fans were back in the early 2000s when they did the receding program and a lot of people were uprooted and I know UVA they've just formed a fans committee of some kind to try to Find ways to enhance the fan experience and draw more people I've heard there were some pretty good suggestions, but I Don't know what the world was I don't even know where we were going with this, but the apathy around the program. Oh yeah.

I think there is some apathy just because it's been a long time. It's been 2019 since they did anything significant on the program. Since Bronco-Madden Hall, Bryce Perkins. Yeah. They made it to the ACC Championship game, even though they got their doors blown off by Clemson, but, and played in the Orange Bowl. And that's pretty significant. And since then, it hasn't been much to get excited about.

I mean, that's 2019, the same year they won the National Championship in basketball and haven't won a postseason game since. So yeah, I think there's apathy around football and I don't know that fan bases get extremely excited about spring practice and spring games anyway. I mean, if you look back over the years, there's usually not that many people that show up for a spring game as opposed to some of the more traditional football schools that try to sell out their stadiums.

And that's why Deion Sanders and some other people have tried to do something that I wrote about as early as in the 1980s that and even Frank Beamer came up with the idea in the 90s is that for a spring game you should be able to scrimmage or play a game against another team that you normally wouldn't face on your schedule and try to get the fan base excited about the game and draw a good crowd and give the players somebody different to hit and then themselves. I think would add a lot to spring and you could make some money off of it. And the NCAA wouldn't let them do it. Syracuse and Colorado tried, really, they were going to do it. And Oklahoma, Oklahoma State were going to do it. And you got shot

down. I asked Tony Elliott about this early on this spring, and he said that he would be all in favor of doing that. You could play somebody that you normally wouldn't have a chance to play and create some interest, create some excitement. I love football as much as anybody in there. I can only remember two spring games in my career that I got excited about. And one of them I was coaching in, but I was an honorary coach against Warren Swain in 1989. And it was fun. And then the other one was at NC State when Monte Kiffin was the head coach and vowed to everyone in the Raleigh News and Observer that he was

going to deliver the football by jumping out of the helicopter. Skydiving. Skydiving out of a helicopter and he was going to present the game ball and the state official said, no, you can't do that because you have to have X amount of jumps and experience to do that. And he said, I don't care what the rules are, we're gonna do it anyway. And so that was a big buildup for weeks. And finally I was at the game and

helicopter came over the Carter Bryce Stadium and could see Monty way up there waving an NC State flag and the helicopter kept getting a little lower and a little lower and everybody's wondering when he's going to jump. I guess the cops are going to arrest him if he did. He just kept getting lower and lower and lower and finally got about 10 feet off the ground. Monty jumps out of the plane with the football and everybody just laughs and goes crazy. But generally, spring football is just not much to get excited about.

It's an interesting time. Mark Brown says, and on top of that, you have the athletic department who basically leveraged season tickets against fans years ago. He said, if you don't give us more money, you don't get to keep your seats. Yeah. That happened, folks. That happened to my parents. It's been a major disruption. We've talked about that on the show before and they lost thousands of fans and never got them back. Our parents never came back. Yeah. I know. I get for years at the newspaper, I would get emails and phone calls about that

and still do every now and then. So people don't forget that easily and the timing of that was just terrible. Crazy times here folks. We got a men's basketball roster that doesn't have a single athlete listed on VirginiaSports.com. We have a point guard that's at St. Anne's Belfield Academy that's rumored to be earning $1.2 million in NIL compensation that appears to be the most talented guy in the roster and the face of the program. We have three guards that are signed to UVA,

including one that's a sixth year. We have no front court players outside of a senior in high school that initially committed to VCU and now has changed his commitment from the Rams to the Cavaliers to follow the head coach down Interstate 64. We have a young man who the community loves in Carter Lang that's trying out for the team. Transfer from Vanderbilt, birthed at St. Anne's-Belfield Academy in that gym as a basketball player. Will he stay with the team? Certainly hope so.

And you've got a coaching staff that is without an assistant coach that has any ties to the University of Virginia, at least for now. Ryan Odom is choosing an interesting, maybe curious way to launch his first month on the job at the University of Virginia. Is it a product of Ryan Odom's decision making, perhaps? Or is it a product of the times we live in, this wild west of college hoops, perhaps?

Hootie, any closing thoughts for your fans? And I always ask you, what's in the hopper at JerryRackliffe.com. Well, it's going to be interesting to see how he continues to put the pieces of the puzzle together. And there's, like George Wells used to say, there's more than a way to skin a cat. Whatever that means. I never figured that one out. Why would you want to skin a cat? We like animals on the Jerry and geriatric. Yeah, we do. But that's an old saying, but I never have figured out what it means.

But I'm sure he's got a plan in mind. It's not the first time he's done this. He's been around, this is his fourth or fifth program now that he's coached. So like any successful coach, they usually have a blueprint that they believe in and it's worked before and they trust their process and they know what they're doing and they go at it full force. I have a feeling that he believes that he can build a winner here and or he wouldn't be doing it this way. It's a,

unnavigated waters probably for him too, because I don't know what it was like when he tried to go into VCU and rebuild, but he was only there two seasons. And the NIL's only been really effective, I guess, for two or three years now. But he's not afraid of it. He embraces it. And they have a lot more money to play with now than they did before.

It sounded like to me that when they got Chikari White from North Dakota State, I don't think they were even on his final list and they swooped in all of a sudden with a big bag of money and all of a sudden he broke some hearts in Texas and Blacksburg because they thought they were going to get him. And so, you know, it just shows if you've got the money behind you, you can do some interesting things. Unbelievable. It's an unbelievable time. JerryRackliffe.com, first website I visit every single morning.

Guys, got a two and a half year old on my left knee. He's eating French toast sticks. I got my iPhone in my hand. I'm trying to balance the two and a half year old as he's throwing French toast sticks to the family German Shepherd Max while drinking my coffee while reading JerryRackliffe.com. You're pretty talented to be able to do all that at once. I genuinely, I swear to God, Hootie, it's like this. Kid's right here, got him right here, he's eating French Toast Sticks.

Don't throw those to the German Shepherd Max while I'm reading your website. That's me in the morning. I have a feeling your dog is the beneficiary. The dog has put on a little weight. He's put on a little weight as he gets a couple of French Toast Sticks every single morning. There's cinnamon French Toast Sticks as well. Jerry Radcliffe, guys, is the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer,

best boss I ever had at the Daily Progress. And his website, jerryradcliffe.com, is the website you want to read for anything UVA, athletic-related, jerryradcliffe.com. Judah Wichower is behind the camera, director and producer of the iLoveCVIL Network. My name is Jerry Miller. We appreciate you watching this program

and the iLoveCVIL Show guys is up at 12.30. So long everybody. Excellent marketing, that was fun. Thank you..