No market. Heck, the ACC didn’t even want Tech later on. It took the VA governor at the time to strong arm Tech into the conference.
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Blacksburg still in a higher TV market than Amherst is in. Would say it worked out pretty well for VT and governor definitely a main reason for that. 
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Can you imagine getting that kind of support from Raleigh for our program?
Lol.
Nevermind.
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Referencing UConn football, which lost to the Terps 50-7 last Saturday: 
VT is more like NCSU in VA.
We’re more like ODU or VCU. I doubt either of those schools see much in the way of the same level of state support.
FWIW, VCU houses the largest medical school in Virginia, so gets quite a bit of state funding. In fact, VCU was created in 1968 when the state merged the Medical College of Virginia (founded 1838) with the Richmond Professional Institute (founded 1917). And for a period - 1925-1962 - RPI was actually administered as the Richmond campus of the College of William & Mary.
And BTW, ODU was originally a campus of W&M as well - 1930-1962.
Yes. The Governor strong-armed UVA into NOT voting for expansion UNLESS VA Tech was included. Not sure how much UVA would have wanted Tech in the ACC otherwise.
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I’ve been to a few boards and the consensus from the boomers in the state of virginia makes it sound like vtech was more like ecu and jmu was the backup if you didnt get into uva in the nineties. but those could be some biased posters.
Find this interesting since there has been quite a bit of chatter that schools could scale back on so-called Olympic sports in order pay football and basketball players per the pending House settlement.
The big schools driving all this won’t have to cut olympic sports. It’s the rest of us that will.
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Perhaps not but definitely being mentioned in spite of all the money seemingly available to the P4 schools.
Certainly some P4 schools are going to have issues keeping up.
Michigan State, Michigan, Bama, UGA - those folks are going to have plenty of money and most of lucrative athletic sponsorships that will make it easy. Nike will make sure Michigan and Oregon and Chapel Hill have funds for their track teams, etc.
The next rung down are going to struggle trying to keep it all going.
Then the lower level P4s are in the same place we are. Very limited funds.
FWIW, Michigan State one of the P4 schools to have already eliminated Olympic sports - swimming and diving.
Well there you go, MSU is one of the schools WITH major money.
Money will destroy college sports completely, including opportunities for so many athletes outside of the two major revenue sports.
There will be hundreds of thousands of kids who could have gotten a free education and realized their dream of competing at a high level, but it will all be sacrificed at the altar of greed and an arms race in two sports.
Pathetic. I hate what things have become. They weren’t perfect before but at least some kids got to run track or kick a soccer ball in exchange for a degree. All of that is going to be ending.
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This too has already been happening to a certain degree. I attribute it more to Title IX than conference realignment. The SEC for the most part does not have men’s soccer. Half of the B10 doesn’t. But I agree that it’s probably going to get worse rather than better.
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When you start cutting these sports the US will suffer in the summer Olympic games. A lot of these schools provided training and proving grounds for a lot of summer Olympic sports/ athletes.
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Many of these sports can still exist as club sports on campus.