Virginia football recruiting is handcuffed by admission rules

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Let’s face it. Virginia football is in a bind.

Here we are on the eve of National Signing Day and frankly, if you’re a Cavaliers fan, there’s not much to get excited about. UVA has 17 high school commitments — all 3-stars — in a class that is ranked No. 56 in the nation by 247Sports and No. 55 by On3.

Problem is, a handful will be ready to play in 2025 because they’re coming right out of high school.

The other major problem is that due to the extra year of eligibility due to Covid and the extra year of eligibility due to the tragic shootings, Virginia has an abnormal amount of players who will be leaving the program simply because their eligibility has expired.

A glimpse at the roster reveals there are 20 seniors and 23 graduate seniors, which makes up nearly half of the 85 scholarship limit (not counting the extra walk-ons).

How in the world is Tony Elliott going to make up for at least 43 players exiting?

The transfer portal, you say …

Ah, there’s the rub. This is not Colorado, where the program can bring in 50 new players overnight. In fact, Virginia has a major issue in replenishing its roster via the portal, period.

I asked Elliott point blank last week if he was handcuffed in having to rely primarily on pursuing grad transfers through the portal. I wasn’t the first to ask. Former Miami and Georgia coach Mark Richt brought it up to Elliott after the Pitt game during an interview on the ACC Network.

Richt probably knew the answer before he asked the question about how Elliott was handling the portal. Richt finally admitted that he had interviewed for the Virginia job (when he was the hot hire offensive coordinator at Florida State and UVA was looking for a replacement for George Welsh).

After Richt interviewed at UVA (Virginia tried to hire him before he left campus because it knew where he was headed for his next interview), he flew to Athens and talked to Georgia, a job he accepted, and remained there until Carla Williams fired him.

Richt knew the academics at Virginia would be an obstacle even then, decades before the transfer portal and NIL.

Elliott, who is a transparent guy, told me exactly what I already knew, but it was good to get him on record, talking about the situation.

I asked, “Are you handcuffed by the admission requirements when it comes to the transfer portal?”

This was his full answer:

“Oh, yeah. So the grad-transfer route is definitely easier for us in terms of getting them in. Still got to get the right guys because grad school is still challenging.

“Undergrad is a little more challenging because of the 60 hours that they’ve got to complete to get a degree from UVA.

“So even if there is an older guy with one year of eligibility left, I just don’t know — morally I don’t think it’s the right thing to bring a guy in that has to have 60 hours and only one year to do it. That’s pretty much impossible.

“And when you’re looking at the undergrad guys, you’ve got to make sure they’ve got the right amount of eligibility, and do they have enough transferable credits to get in and are they going to lose credits. If they lose, now you’re adding that on top of the 60 they’ve got to complete here.

“So it’s a little bit more of a constraint on the undergrad side. That’s why you’ve only seen a handful of those and more grad-transfer guys.

“We’ll look in both spots for the best players, but it is a little bit easier, so to speak, on the grad-transfer route because of the degree fields we have available and getting those guys in.”

How can a coach be expected to recruit in today’s college football environment under those conditions?

I don’t think this is an NIL thing. I’m told Virginia has added funds for football NIL and that isn’t the main issue. It’s the admissions.

Because the FCS season has ended, Virginia is reaching out to a ton of players already, and according to the grapevine, at least a dozen players have been rejected by UVA admissions.

I’ve also been told, and have confirmed some of this information, that two of UVA’s ACC competitors with very high academic standards do not have these same restrictions on transfers, and it hasn’t seemed to harm their academic reputation or cheapened their diplomas in any fashion, an excuse I’ve heard from Virginia grads for decades.

I guess it boils down to a couple of questions. What is the expectation from the top of UVA — basically the Board of Visitors — when it comes to football success? We’ve been asking that question for years and mostly the feedback we get has either been crickets or bullfeathers.

So, what is it? Throwing money on the program in terms of a new football home, a new videoboard, is nice, but not the solution. Does Virginia want to play ball or not?

Nick Saban couldn’t win here under these conditions. Nobody is going to until they remove the handcuffs.