The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - UVA Basketball Tony Bennett Contract Details; UVA Baseball Brian O'Connor Contract Details

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

The Jerry & Jerry Show headlines: UVA Women’s Tennis + Wimbledon Tournament UVA Basketball Tony Bennett Contract Details UVA Baseball Brian O’Connor Contract Details Hoos In The NBA? Wahoos & Summer League Virginia BBall Notebook: Recruiting, News, Notes UVA Football Notebook: Recruiting, News, Notes Wahoo Athletes In Upcoming Paris Olympics What Are You Watching In Paris Olympics? 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. Today's program, as always, features the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer, Jerry Hootie Radcliffe, his namesake website, jerryradcliffe.com, a website we are on every day. My favorite piece of content the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer produces is his scatter shooting column, and he's got one front and center on jerryradcliffe.com, a column that I've read, this is going to date me a little bit, for 24 years. A column that I had the pleasure of perusing before it was published in the newspaper as a lowly stringer, then staff writer, then preps editor at the Daily Progress. The Scattered Shooting column, my favorite of all the Hootie Radcliffe pieces.

Judah Wittkower, the director and producer behind the camera, but a critical component of all our shows. My friend, if you could go to the studio camera and then the two-shot and welcome the Virginia Sports Hall of Famer, Jerry Hootie Radcliffe. My friend, good Tuesday morning to you. Same to you. Don't describe yourself as lowly or whatever. Everybody on that staff played an important role

in producing what I thought during our time was the finest sports section in the state of Virginia. Well said. The section that drove the most readership and subscribership at the Daily Progress was the sports section, and it wasn't even close. And if anyone wants a glimpse of what it's like to be in a smaller town newsroom, the sports department, we were a motley crew that worked hard, we played hard, and I'll tell you what,

we burnt the midnight oil. Many of us leaving the newspaper at one in the morning on just about every day, working holidays, working nights, working weekends to give the community the coverage we felt they deserved. And that's what Jerry Ratcliffe is doing right now on jerryratcliffe.com. The scatter shooting column is out. My friend, it's loaded with information. And usually the scatter shooting column is front and center, especially when it includes Tony Bennett contract details, Brian O'Connor contract details, Wahoos in the summer league,

Virginia recruiting and Virginia football, basketball recruiting, notebooks and tidbits. But for this particular show, it's in the on-deck circle for Danielle Collins and Emma Navarro. Emma Navarro, 10.30 roughly today, she plays in the quarterfinals. You and I both watched her play Coco Gauff, the number two seed in the tournament and the second-ranked player in the world. And Coco Gauff, Hootie Ratcliffe, was at her wit's end.

She truly was. You almost felt sorry for her because she just became unglued the deeper they got into the match. It had to be frustrating because Navarro was so poised, particularly on that stage, knowing what was at stake and the fact that she hadn't been that deep in a major Grand Slam tournament before. And, I mean, she was, her game was flawless. Her poise was flawless. And she was like a human backboard.

I mean, everything that Goff attacked her with, she returned it and made, she was the one making Goff run all over the court and wearing her out and her placement and just dominated the entire match. She was so aggressive, and that's what golf normally is. She did a fantastic job of attacking Coco Gauff's forehand. Yes.

And forehand, the known weakness with Coco Gauff. And Emma Navarro, as the match wore on, just overwhelmed her on that side of the court. Cocoa Golf's coach, and he is sitting in the box watching Cocoa Golf, is Brad Gilbert, Andre Agassi's former coach. Right. The commentator and broadcaster, Brad Gilbert. And Brad Gilbert wearing a black hat. I don't know how I would describe a bucket hat.

Brad Gilbert's hat is trying everything humanly possible to reason with Cocoa Golf, get her to calm down, motivate her, encourage her. Nothing was working. right before bedtime felt the ire of a parent Cocoa Golf in this situation with ripping and complaining and yelling and screaming. And then Emma Navarro on the other side of the court, just cool, calm, and collected. Absolutely. And that speaks volumes to her being 23 years old and again at that stage with everything on the line she was just totally under control the entire match i only think i heard her shout once over one of the mistakes she she made she didn't like one of the shots but um that was amazing to me that she showed that kind of composure for that period of time and such a stage, as you mentioned. Virginia tennis is just absolutely on fire, ladies and gentlemen.

Fortunate to have yet another program not only contending on the national level, but producing talent that's capable of contending on a global level. Swimming program is a perfect example of that as well. We have golfers playing in the U.S. Open, three of them. The athletic department across the board is just so impressive. We will give you updates on Emma Navarro's

match today on the Jerry and Jerry show. It should start in the next eight to ten minutes. We're following it on our in-studio television, so stay posted there. A not-so-sweet finish for Danielle Collins. Still, she makes it, what, to the fourth round? Yeah, the round of 16. Round of 16.

And it was a tribute to her to do that as well. And, I mean, she's had an incredible year. Maybe it's the best year she's ever had. Also, we'll be on the U.S. Olympic team with Emma Navarro. She's enjoying just a banner year.

Danielle Collins, her career winding down, Hootie. Looking to start a family, Danielle Collins. Yeah, I suppose so. And I'm sure that's very hard to do when you're trying to play on the circuit like she does. So good for her. I mean, she's earned everything she's gotten. And she came up the more challenging way.

She, I don't think she came up through the country club systems and the great tennis schools and all this stuff. I think she had to scrap for everything she got playing on public courts and everything coming from a modest background. And so I think that's what's made her such a fierce competitor. They call her Danimal because sometimes she comes at you pretty hard. She's extremely aggressive. She's tenacious. She's bulldog. And it's not just with the people she's super alpha. She's extremely aggressive. She's tenacious.

She's bulldog. And it's not just with the people she's playing against. It's her own team, her trainers, her coaches. You speak to her coaches. You speak to her hitting partners, her trainers. And she knows one speed, one level of intensity. She's not there to make friends. She's there to perform at the highest clip possible.

I've spoken with some of her previous hitting partners, and they said she's a challenging person to work with, but the reason she is at that level of intensity is because she's one of those athletes that has to play that way to perform. You admire that. She came in hungry and she stayed hungry all these years. I think that's the mark of a winner. Absolutely. Wimbledon, a fantastic showing for the Wahoo tennis program. Navarro has Jasmine Paulini on center court. Quarterfinal match.

This is set to kick off anytime now. We'll follow it. There's a match right before hers that's going deeper in the second set than expected, so it's slowing the start down. But we'll give you updates if it starts during the Jerry and Jerry show. Other topics we've got to cover on the program,

including some of the lead items of your scatter shooting column, the Tony Bennett contract details, Coach Bennett, the Tony Bennett contract details, Coach Bennett, the second highest paid coach, it looks like, in the Atlantic Coast Conference, behind John Shire, which I found startling, over $7 million, more than $7 million a year for the Duke basketball coach.

Yeah, and before we go there, Emma's 3-0 career-wise against Paulini, and she's favored to win today's match and has been established as the second-highest favorite to win Wimbledon. So that's pretty high cotton. That's very high cotton. Very high-con. But, yeah, I was a little surprised that Shire is making north of $7 million a year, we've been told. We don't know that to be exact because Duke is a private school, and they don't make those salaries public.

But there's usually ways to find out and uh what i was surprised is that and i don't know how accurate this is but hubert davis making 2.6 million a year uh he might need to get a new agent you're saying you thought that was you thought that was low i thought that was low and tony benn low. And Tony Bennett's making more than $4 million a year, and that's going to go up as he continues on. But certainly he deserves every penny of what he gets being the second highest paid coach in the ACC. Some people might argue he should be paid maybe more than Shire because, you know,

what's Shire done? Exactly. What's Shire done? That was my surprise, is what has John Shire done? The Cavalier skipper Tony Bennett, as Hootie Ratcliffe reports, has some pretty nice little bonus structure set up here. Let me highlight some aspects of the scatter shooting column. If Tony Bennett is still UVA's coach on March 15, 2025, he gets an additional bonus of $400,000. He gets an additional $1 million bonus if he's still the coach of March 15, 2027. Another $400,000 if he's the coach March 15, 2029. And another $1 million if he makes it to March 15, 2031. 2031, not that far away. If he makes it all the way to 2031, we're looking at $2,800,000 in additional bonuses, Hootie.

Yeah, it's just a longevity clause. I like how they structure it that way. Yeah, in the contract. I think Brian O'Connor has a similar longevity clause, maybe not as high as Bennett's, but still impressive. And plus, both of these guys get the normal bonuses for being Coach of the Year, ACC National Coach of the Year, getting their team finishing in the top 25 or their progression in the NCAA tournament and all those sorts of bonuses and things like that. So good for those guys.

How about the Brian O'Connor tidbits? The contract details. Chris Graham did a Freedom of Information Act, which you highlighted in the Scatter Shooting column. He gets a nice little pay bump, a deserved pay bump. Absolutely. And that puts him in the top 10 highest paid baseball coaches in America, which... I'm shocked he's not there. Yeah, me too. Because he's the winningest coach in college baseball since coming to UVA. And it's mostly him and the SEC coaches. Right, right.

Yeah, he did get a nice little pay bump up from a little bit more than $700,000 a year to $1.4 million, I believe. Almost a 2X pay bump. Yeah, that's pretty sweet. Yeah.

And very deserving. What he's done with Virginia's baseball program is unparalleled. And, I mean, part of it is rewarding what he's done, but also part of it is to protect yourself, to keep him in your fold because we know other programs have come after him in the past. There was a rumor that Texas A&M approached him this year after the season. There's been some questions about how accurate some of that reporting was, but particularly on the salary, they were claiming he was offered, which was, I think, a little way over what it really was. But, yeah, you want to keep guys like him and Tony Bennett happy.

Frankie Bourne says, good morning, Jerry and Jerry. Frankie, we love when you watch the program. Thank you kindly for watching the show. Kevin Yancey says, good morning, Jay Thrice, with a nod, a tip of the cap to Judah Wickauer. He says, Mike Martin has to be in that conversation as well. The gentleman from Waynesboro, Kevin Yancey, watching the show. We're talking the contract details of Tony Bennett and of Brian O'Connor. Make a legitimate argument. Maybe your two best coaches at the University of Virginia, and there's a

laundry list of fantastic coaches at the University of Virginia. The Brian O'Connor package, think about this from a reward or significant standpoint. Last year, he's paid $717,111 per year. Now, a three-year extension, $1.4 million, making him one of the top 10 highest paid coaches in the nation and pushing his contract through the 2031 season seven years from now. Thank goodness. Yeah, he and Tony Bennett both have contracts through 31. And those longevity clauses are certainly

nice incentives to keep them coaching for sure. kudos to Carl Williams for locking up both those guys for another five, six years down the road. Do you see these two guys having

name recognition on their respective playing surfaces, potentially? It would certainly be warranted, I think. I still think Terry Holland should be honored in some way as well for what he did

for Virginia basketball. Certainly, Tony Bennett is deserving of any kind of recognition he gets in that line and so is Brian O'Connor I mean Virginia baseball would not be Virginia baseball without his efforts and what great representatives for the University of Virginia both those guys have been. They've been role models to kids and coaches all over the country. Never any controversy, just they do everything the right way. Virginia baseball guys in great hands so is this basketball

team on your scatter shooting column you had some Virginia recruiting information some tidbits some golden nuggets for the basketball team and many of us locally that follow the prep scene are very curious to see what happens with a lightning quick point guard from St. Ann's Belfield right here in Charlottesville, Virginia, Hootie. Yeah, Chance Mallory, 5'9", point guard at St. Ann's Belfield, has been dynamic going back through this past season and maybe even before. But he really flashed on everyone's radar this past year. He had a phenomenal year at St. Ann's and was scoring an incredible amount of points. I think he averaged like 26 points a game, had over 40 at least once. And, you know, he has narrowed his choices to six finalists and plans to visit all six schools.

Virginia, of course, is one of those. Miami, Clemson, Virginia Tech, Villanova, and Tennessee are the others. And he and Nate Ament I guess it's a mentor a meant not sure he was a five-star and ranked the number seven player in the country at any position which would make him if he would come to Virginia he would be the highest rankedranked player to ever play for Tony Bennett. Yeah. And he's neared his list to Virginia, Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, Tennessee,

Michigan, and UConn. So both of those guys are set to visit UVA the weekend of September 13th, 15th. And, I mean, wow. You would hope to get at least one of those guys. And if you could get both of them, what a recruiting coup that would be for Tony Bennett. Chance Mallory, guys, a 5'9 point guard. If you haven't had a chance to see some of his highlight reel,

some of his mixtape, it's allxtape. It's all over Twitter. It's all over Instagram. It's all over the web. The man, when he's playing basketball, Chance Mallaroy, I know he's in high school, but he looks like a man among boys when he's playing. He's playing at a level of quickness and speed that just is noticeable to the eye when you see him playing. He's got body control. He's got quickness. He's got handles. He can finish around the rim despite a 5'9 frame.

He utilizes unorthodox finishing ability with various Englishes and spins, finishing under the hoop so his shot doesn't get blocked. He's got a teardrop. He's got a floater that keeps his shot from being blocked. He has a good jump shot. He plays both sides of the basketball. He seems to be a Kihei Clark with a little bit more offensive polish. Yeah, and incredibly

quick. Like Kihei. Yeah, maybe even quicker. Which says something. It does. And I mean, he's just he's developed so quickly and really brought his game along. I mean, that would be awesome if they could find a way to get him into the Virginia fold because especially being a hometown kid. And Amint is a Virginia kid.

He's from Warrington. So what a dynamic pair of recruits that would be if you could find a way to somehow steal them both because obviously they're in great demand. And Ament has had a pretty impressive summer so far. His last three games he's had 24-8, 32-13. He had six out of ten three-pointers in that game. And 41 points, 27 rebounds, and six blocks

in one game a couple weeks ago. So both these guys are capable of putting up big numbers. This is the class of 2025 for those that are asking online. This is the class that 2025 for those that are asking online. This is the class that could, in a lot of ways, leave, you know, be on the roster for Coach Bennett as he heads to that 2031 season, which he's under contract through. So we'll follow it closely. We got football recruiting news to highlight as well in today's program, which is in Hootie's scatter shooting column. The football recruiting rankings are starting to improve after an extremely slow start, Hootie. Yeah, it was a very slow start,

and some of the early recruits really weren't eye-popping because Virginia was beating out, I thought, lesser programs for the services of some of those guys. And, you know, sometimes you can make a judgment about the quality of recruit that way. Sometimes you can't because it's more about the coach's eye and whoever's recruiting you, and they feel like that you can fit into their system, particularly at the position they're recruiting you to play.

But in recent weeks, some of the guys they've gained commitments from, they've had five commitments in the past couple of weeks. Some of these guys are pretty big. They just got a guy recently that picked Virginia over Georgia. He was offered by Georgia. And now the latest guy, Corey Costner, a three-star from Baltimore, picked Virginia over Notre Dame, North Carolina, Michigan State, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

And, I mean, that's a pretty high caliber kid right there. He's a four star on three and the number 11 defensive back at his spot in the country. I think that's kind of a recruiting coup right there. His mom went to UVA, and he visited a bunch of these schools, even went to Carolina I think three times, but ended up a Cavalier. That's a really big recruit for Tony Elliott's staff. Your scatter shooting column had an interesting tidbit in it when you're ranking the ACC schools from a recruiting standpoint. You did a fantastic job of the 2025 recruiting class. Excuse me. This is the recruiting classes across the ACC. And you have Miami, Clemson, SMU, Georgia Tech, all the ACC teams ranked by media platform. What stood out to me was the positioning of SMU in these rankings.

You have Miami and Clemson, Florida State. These three schools are expected to be atop the ACC rankings from a recruiting standpoint. SMU is right there in the 247 rankings, their third. The on three rankings, their fourth. This is a team that's going to come in here and scare the bejeebus out of a lot of programs. Yeah, no question. I was surprised that Rivals had them ranked at number 34. But I don't know.

I think Rivals has fallen off a little bit in some of their recruiting. But anyway, yeah, SMU has been impressive. I mean, like you said, they're the third-ranked ACC team in the country by 2-4-7 and number four by on three, both in the top 25 recruiting classes in the country. And they're bringing on some serious talent. I mean, they flipped a four-star quarterback, a guy named Ty Hawkins, from TCU to SMU, and then they landed a four-star offensive tackle that tons of people were after, a guy named Odoms. That's just a sample of what they're doing down in Texas

in trying to rebuild this program to where they can compete for the ACC title. They're serious about it. I mean, they won the conference they were in last year, the American Athletic Conference, and were vying for a New Year's Six bowl game, nearly got it. And I think, I guess, Liberty got that spot. But the SMU people are so serious. We've talked a little bit about that last week, about how much money they've raised.

And they're just really excited about being a part of the ACC and bringing in new schools that people in Dallas aren't that familiar with except by watching them on TV and so having North Carolina Duke Virginia basketball rolling into Dallas and Clemson, Florida State football and Notre Dame. It's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It's a huge deal.

Questions coming in for Hootie Rackleff. Put them in the feed. I'll relay them live on air. This is a question that's to be expected, and I would expect this question is going to gain even more Steven momentum, who do you think that Coach Elliott is going to name a starting quarterback early so the fan base and the team can rally around one leader? That's a great question, and I've wondered about that myself. We haven't seen him since spring football, so I'm surprised that none of us had the forethought

to have asked him that back then. But I guess we'll have to wait until training camp in early August, which is just around the corner. Or we may be able to ask him down. The ACC kickoff in Charlotte is this month, actually, so we may be able to ask him down there. I don't know. It's an interesting dynamic we're faced with here. You have that aspect of whether you want to name a starting

quarterback early, like the question asked and give fans a chance to rally around that? Or do you want to prolong that competition through training camp to try to bring out the best in both Anthony Calandria and Tony Musket and see how far you can push them in camp to improve their game. I'm kind of leaning toward I think that he may wait until late. Really?

Yeah. I think it's going to be a fierce competition because both of those guys really want the starting job. We don't know whether that's going to carry over from last year since Musket was the starter, didn't lose his job because of injury. Even though Calandria made some great strides in the spring to eliminate some of the mistakes that haunted him last year and hurt the team. But it's part of his maturation as a young quarterback. I'm trying to put myself in coaches' shoes.

A lot of times you want to string out that competition and push both those guys throughout training camp and may the best man win. So you see it going deep into training camp before a starter is acknowledged or anointed? I think coaches prefer it that way because that way if you name a starter early in camp, the other guy may tend to coast. Well, maybe, but the guy that's not starting may not have his heart into it like he normally would. So I can't imagine either one of these guys backing off, but some strange dynamics

happen sometimes when a guy is named starter early. I think that's one reason he didn't name a starter at the end of the spring. He wants to see how these guys develop over the summer and some of the seven-on-seven drills and how they develop chemistry with their receivers and just how far they can improve their game. So I kind of believe just trying to read the coach's mind,

that a lot of coaches would like to string out that competition throughout the training camp. Kevin says SMU is going to be a fantastic team because of the NIL and the money the program has and what they can do for their roster and their athletes. 100% agree with you on that one. Kevin is correct. Logan Wells-Claylow, welcome to the program. Thank you for watching the show. This question's come in. Renee Pettiford watches the program. What is the defense going to do differently to fix what was a point of

concern last year? Well, that's a good question too. i think the defense is going to be very much improved i think part of it is is i'm sure that uh john rojinski is knocking on wood hoping that all these guys can stay healthy that hurt them big time last year because they didn't have a lot of depth and they were forced to play probably more freshmen than than almost any defense in FBS which could help them this year because now they they should have some depth because they have so many guys returning from injury and then all these guys that picked up experience as freshmen. So they should be a deeper

team, a little more experienced. They have some guys on that side of the ball jury that have played not only five years of football but six and even one guy is coming in for his seventh season of college football. How many times have we seen that in our lifetime? So there's no excuses for this defense to be anywhere in the same category as last year. There's guys who can play on that side of the ball and some really good guys. I think their secondary will be highly improved.

They've got two of the highest rated safeties in the ACC according to pro football focus. And they've got a load of guys in the front seven with tons of experience and some talented freshmen and a couple of transfers that can really play football so i just think the fact that there's so much experience returns they can't help but be better and perhaps if they do have any unfortunate injuries that they'll at least have some experienced guys in there to fill in the spot very well son um questions on the football team let us know we'll put them in the feed

do we think that this football team uh going from summer into training camp if you had three questions to follow which would those three be do you have the offensive line atop that question list? Offensive line is definitely at the top of that list. I think Coach Hefferman is doing the right things and trying to bring that offensive line along. All these guys have experience. They just have to, and I'm sure they've worked hard in the weight room in the offseason to build their strength

and build their bodies to be able to take on some of the better defenses that they're going to run into but that's definitely they've got to prove it on the field and I think that may be the key to the whole season as to whether this offensive line can protect Muscat and Calandria

and open holes for Kobe Pace to run through. Yeah. And I think that's the number one question mark. I think number two question mark is special teams. Last year, that was a huge blow to Virginia. This poor performance by special teams all around. They have to do something to correct it. I think Tony Elliott has personally

invested more time in making sure that they don't have the breakdowns that they had a year ago, which cost them some ball games and made some games closer than they should have been. And that's something that cannot be neglected. I can't tell you how much emphasis they need to put on that phase of the football team. And number three, I'm not really sure what the number three question mark would be at this point because they have a lot of guys returning on both sides of the ball. I guess it kind of plays into the offensive line,

but whether they can establish a running game that they can rely on, which at times they had that a little bit last year when Paris Jones was at his best before he got injured out in Louisville. We're glad to see that he's progressing and he's still not quite back to 100% again. But they don't have a lot of experienced running backs in the program, so that's going to be interesting to see if they can establish a running game that can open up the offense and take a little pressure off the quarterbacks.

One of the things I'm going to be following closely is how the fan base responds to the program and how the fan base fills Scott Stadium. Yeah. I'd love to see Scott Stadium much more close to capacity because it has such an impact on recruiting. There were times where you saw it from the press box. I saw it from a seat, a bleacher seat as a fan, where it was a half-empty stadium at best.

Yeah, and that sends a bad signal to recruits for sure. It doesn't matter how well everything else is going if your stadium is half-empty. And plus, you're losing a lot of money for the entire athletic program. We've talked about how important it is. Football is the engine that drives the train financially, and for Virginia to be able to continue to be one of the top five

overall athletic programs in the country, it costs money. It's not cheap. They're one of the schools in the ACC that has more teams, men's and women's teams, than a lot of the other schools. Some of these schools don't even compete in some of the sports. So it is. It's very important. It's important to the players, too, because they feed off the players too because they feed off the crowd and they feed off the energy of the crowd and if you've got a stadium that's half asleep and and half empty it's it makes it difficult sometimes especially in a tough and you know

taking it off the football field in a tough economyempty stadium radiates or resonates even throughout the community with economics. Shopkeepers, merchants, restaurants, hoteliers, they don't see the boost of game day in full force with half-empty stadiums. So we want the fan experience on game day and throughout a game day weekend to be at close to capacity, if not capacity. Time will tell on that. Comments are coming in. Yes, we'll talk about the Olympics. John Blair, thanks for watching on LinkedIn. Yes, we'll talk about the Wahoos in the Olympics here in a matter of moments.

But dot the I's and cross the T's on anything you want to cover football-wise, Hootie. Well, you know, it's getting close to that time. I guess we should mention that in those football recruiting rankings that Virginia was number 45 by 247 and rivals and number 57 on three. That was before the Costner commitment, so they might climb a few spots in all three of those rankings. But, you know, football is just right around the corner, Jerry. I guess the signal for sports writers and media is that is the ACC kickoff,

which they used to move around the south to various golf resorts because Gene Corrigan wanted to put a huge emphasis on ACC football. Back during his tenure, John Swofford kind of went away from that, and now with the ACC headquarters in Charlotte, everything seems to be in Charlotte, including the kickoff. It doesn't move around anymore. It's always in downtown Charlotte. What's the ACC headquarters like? I haven't been to the new headquarters.

I've been in every ACC headquarters from the old days in the late 70s, which was in an old brick building in downtown Greensboro. It looked like a warehouse. They moved it to the outskirts of Greensboro into a little village under Corrigan, and then they moved into the great facility they had there just off of 85, which was a fantastic facility backed up against the Grandover golf courses. So I was familiar with all those,

but I haven't had an opportunity to visit the new offices yet. So I don't know. It's in downtown Charlotte, but I don't know how they are. The ACC kickoff is around the corner, the official launch of the football season. Will you attend any of the ACC kickoff? Yeah, I'll be there. I think it's four or five days this year because now there's 17 football-playing schools in the conference.

So you have to spread it out. It used to be done in two days, and now it's going to be I think four days I believe is correct with a few schools each day so I won't be there for the whole thing because it's pretty costly hotel in downtown Charlotte these days is about $300 a night very cheap cheap. Not including parking. You're right. It's not cheap. I wonder if that might cut down on people being able to

stay for the duration of the entire thing as opposed to going down for a day or two. I'll be there. I don't think I've missed an ACC football kickoff since 77 so which is pretty pretty good awesome pretty good because they like I said they've had them all over the place from Wintergreen and the homestead in Virginia to Pinehurst and Asheville and some places at Grandover and Greensboro,

down to Kiowa Island in South Carolina, to Saddlebrook in Florida, to Lake Lanier just north of Atlanta. So they've had them all over the place. And it's usually fun. That used to be sort of the official trigger. And then for many years, once I came to Charlottesville, I was on the ACC tour, which was a rather unique thing where 30 or 35 sports journalists from the ACC would get on a bus in Greensboro and we would visit each ACC school for a day that would last a couple weeks. And if any, toward the latter

end of, before they stopped having the tour, if any ACC team was in one of those early season games at the Meadowlands or in Anaheim or various other places around the country, we would fly to those games. I remember being in a game at the Meadowlands one night flying to LA the next day and taking in an ACC game in Anaheim the next night so yeah it was kind of fun and it was kind of like a rolling fraternity for two weeks but it was a it gave you great insight into the ACC football,

and you got to know the coaches and some of their assistant coaches and some of the administration at each school, which is sad to say we don't have those kind of contacts anymore. What's the craziest thing you've seen on a trip like that? I'm not sure I can say that on the air. I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say that. I knew you were going to say that. You've seen some crazy stuff, haven't you?

It would make an interesting book and maybe even a movie. Yeah, I bet it would. I absolutely bet it would. Hootie, we have who's in the Olympics to highlight as part of your sky shooting column. And it's not just guys. It's not just swimming.

We have tennis players. We have rowers. We have a soccer player, track and field athletes. I mean, we have Paralympians. We have someone in equestrian. Virginia is well represented in the Paris Olympics. I will highlight this for you. One, two, three, four, five, six athletes in swimming competitions, two athletes in tennis competitions, two athletes in rowing competitions, one soccer player, female, one track and field athlete, two track and field athletes, shot put and pull vault, two Paralympians competing in it one in equestrian as well one playing a game called goalball I don't even know what that is

I don't know what goalball is either my friend but UVA well represented with current and former student athletes in the Paralympic suiting yeah it's an amazing list of people and that doesn't even include the young man from Western Albemarle who is not officially a UVA student at this point, but he will be there as well. And, of course, the head coach of the U.S. Women's Olympic team is Todd DeSorbo of UVA. So it's going to be Wahoos all over Paris for sure with that many swimmers in particular. As we mentioned earlier, Daniel Collins and Emma Navarro on the tennis team.

Heidi Long representing England in rowing. Emily Sonnet on the women's soccer team. Filip Mihaljevic, I think. I think you got that right. Croatia, representing Croatia in the shot put. He was a great shot putter at Virginia. The last interview I ever did at the newspaper, and I never got to write the story because my job came to an end before I got a chance to write it,

was Bridget Guy, who's now Bridget Guy Williams, representing the USA in the track and field in women's pole vault. She did great things at Virginia. Skye Dahl, a rising senior at UVA. USA rowing as a Paralympian. Matt Simpson, again, UVA law. Paralympian in goalball. Again, we'll have to look up what that is because I don't know.

I've never heard of gold ball before, but I'm curious to see what that is. And then Will Coleman, UVA College of Arts and Sciences, who's a, well, he's not a varsity athlete at UVA, but he'll be competing in equestrian. And just a host of swimmers, Amy Canney, representing South Africa, Kate Douglas, Paige Madden, Alex Walsh, Gretchen Walsh, Emma Weber, all representing USA in swimming. So a lot of orange and blue there at Olympic Village. And the great thing about what we do, it gives us content coverage for the dog days of summer. Yeah, and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about last week about how UVA fans view the Director's Cup

and being so good with a complete athletic program like they have because somebody pointed out the other day, he says a lot of schools don't have anything to root for after basketball season's over. He said not only do we have great spring sports at UVA, but you've got guys competing in the NBA Summer League. You've got pro golfers on the PGA Tour. You've got all these people in the Olympics.

You've got Navarro and Collins playing at Wimbledon. You've got guys playing Major League Baseball. There's always something to root for if you're a Wahoo fan. And talking about baseball, we have a little bit of baseball news in the Golden Nuggets portion of the column, and we've got some Wahoos playing in the Summer League here. Five former UVA players are competing in the NBA Summer League. Armond Franklin with the Nuggets,

Reese Beekman with the Warriors, Jay Huff with the Magic. Ryan Dunn, of course, with the Suns. Kihei Clark with the Jazz. And Diakite's been picked up by the Brooklyn Nets. Kyle Guy playing European basketball. And, of course, Andrew Abbott is on fire with the Cincinnati Reds. Hootie Ratcliffe.

Yeah, we hope to have Kyle Guy on an upcoming show. We thought we were going to have him this week, but we weren't able to connect for today. But we'd love to hear his story. He was telling somebody was telling a part of his recruiting story

the other day on Twitter, I think, and he said well, that's only part of the story. And I said, we'd love to have you come on our show and tell us the whole story. And he said, I would love to do that. So we'll have him on soon.

And, yeah, Andrew Abbott is on fire again. I mean, he had one of the best rookie seasons for a pitcher in history last year with the Cincinnati Reds. And was dominating as a senior for Brian O'Connor a couple years ago. But he's now won four consecutive starts this season, six of his last seven. And through seven shutout innings, three hit the Rockies last night struck out eight walked only two as the Reds continue on a roll there they've got a really nice young baseball team and he's been a key figure on that on that club we're having uh the Ty Jerome comments come

in the feed get see if you can get Ty on the show as well, fellas. We'd love to get Ty on the show. Love to have Ty Jerome. Might be able to get him in here live because I know he... He's got a basketball camp. He has a camp here, yeah. So we'd love to get him in. Sometimes he'll bring in some of the UVA teammates that he...

Mr. Hunter and DeAndre Hunter. Yeah, so maybe we'll get lucky and get one or two of those guys in here. That'd be absolutely fantastic. Any other news and notes or tidbits you want to get out there, Hootie? I thought it was interesting that a guy who, he went to Princeton, but he did his, got his Master's of Business Administration degree here at the Darden School in 2006. A guy named Chris Patrick

has been promoted to the General Manager of Washington Capital. So Wahoos in hockey and everything else there's, they're everywhere So Wahoos in hockey and everything else. They're everywhere. Wahoos well represented across the sports landscape. Did we find out how Emma's doing? Her match is slated to start in

16 minutes. I'm following it closely on ESPN. 16 minutes for the Emma Navarro match. Go Hoos. We'll follow what she does in Wimbledon and, of course, the Paris Olympics right around the corner. My friend, your scatter shooting column, my favorite of all the columns you do,

JerryRackliff.com. Visit the website, JerryRackliff.com, for all your UVA news and notes. Judah Wittkower behind the camera. Hootie, the column,ed it on the show and is crushing it on your website. Thank you. It's always great to be with you for a little over an hour

every Tuesday morning. I think we have great chemistry and I think we're giving people something they don't get anywhere else. I concur 100%. I 100% agree with that. Find the Jerry and Jerry show anywhere you get your podcasting and social media content. We encourage you to visit jerryrackliff.com.

The I Love Seville Show is up at 12.30 p.m. Thank you kindly for joining us. For Hootie and Judah, I'm Jerry. So long, everybody. Thank you.