Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 14 No. 1 | August 2021

inside.hokiesports.com 5 As Ferris Bueller once memorably said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” That seems particularly prescient as it pertains to college athletics at the moment. The digital revolution was the spark that lit the fire that now rages all around the collegiate landscape. Platforms that didn’t exist 15 years ago give voices to the previous voiceless. That’s a good thing. Can it be uncomfortable at times? Yes. Can it be difficult at times? Absolutely. Can it be an opportunity for Virginia Tech? Without a doubt. I’m a child of the 90s. Born in 1979, I now realize that my age group was the last generation that didn’t grow up with smart phones in our hands. It puts us in an interesting position. Old enough to remember a seemingly simpler time, but young enough to have become adept at new technology and understanding its importance. I joined Twitter in 2007. Life has never been the same. Sure, there are times that I decry its negativity and instantaneous reactions, but ultimately, it’s the best format for me to interact with Hokie fans. Facebook, of course, was the first, and now there is Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. It is dizzying these days, but so is our world at large. College athletics are no different. When I got to Virginia Tech six years ago, things were humming along pretty steadily. Not much had changed in a number of years, and that was fine. Tech had surged into a place of prominence in the first decade of the century. However, I immediately realized that era was coming to an end. The obvious indicator of that was Coach Beamer’s retirement, but there were certainly many other clues. The yet-to-be-named Beamer-Lawson Indoor Practice Facility had recently been completed and stood as a monument to the facilities race that continues to the present. It was the first of many projects that have been completed since I arrived in 2015. Rector Field House, the Jim Weaver Hitting Center, a renovation of the Merryman Center, English Field, the Student-Athlete Performance Center and many more. Those are big, visible examples. As people, we are conditioned to find change off putting. As competitors, we must embrace it. I am just a small part of that at Tech, but it has been a challenge that I welcome. It didn’t go over well when we killed our Sunday morning television show. The reality was it was hemorrhaging money and was no longer useful in recruiting, which was its original intent. It was also familiar to many. Radio affiliates have been sold and replaced. Much of our content is now consumable on social media, which isn’t comfortable to longtime Hokies. I mentioned earlier that I’m a member of the tweener generation, which means I understand the need to adapt, but I also recognize the pain that comes from change and moving away from the familiar. I try to blend the old with the new. I’m not always successful. Some new ideas have failed and been discarded, but many have also stuck and kept us out front. As football camp opens, we will debut two new podcasts, one of which will feature Justin Hamilton and Brad Cornelsen. The other, a Hokie Sports Insider. That will blend with our Facebook Live shows and Behind the Mic. None of which existed three years ago. That content represents the new. This column represents the old. Magazines in print, newspapers and local news with Jon Laaser Behind the Mic: Adapt or Die have been dying a slow death for the last three decades. Radio isn’t safe either. I don’t like those facts, but they are facts. And we mustn’t fall behind while attempting to protect old mediums. The result would be catastrophic. I love writing this column, but I am not blind to the fact that it may eventually go away. Six years ago, I wrote 12 a year. Now it’s six. It used to be 2,000 words. Now it’s 1,200. The slow siphon. I get more comments about this column than anything else I do. But it comes to you in a form that is becoming outdated. I will always write though. I just hope when it eventually changes formats that everyone can find it. Inevitably that won’t be the case. That’s the hard part. The transfer portal. Name, image and likeness. The potential end of the amateur model as we’ve known it. Conference realignment. All things that have dominated the headlines lately. All things we can’t run from because they aren’t going anywhere. This present period will decide who is relevant in 20 years, just as innovation on the field made that decision 20 years ago as to who is relevant now. My message to you is this: we have the leaders in Blacksburg to strategize our way through these issues with the best interest of our student-athletes in mind. In fact, it has already been in process for quite some time. Justin Fuente foresaw much of this when he was hired in 2016. In attempting to be proactive, some of his decisions were unpopular. Whit Babcock has pushed our facilities and policies forward in an aggressive but necessary way to keep us at the forefront. Brad Wurthman has done the same with our external department and fundraising efforts. Those models have all dramatically changed just in the last four years. Those are just a few of the leaders propelling us forward. We had a slogan a couple of years back. “2020 Vision.” We collectively had our sights set on 2020 as the time when many of the behind-the-scenes efforts would begin coming into the light. Enter the pandemic. Disruption is a popular term these days. This was not disruption, it was devastation. The Student-Athlete Performance Center was done, but no one could use it and we certainly couldn’t show it off to recruits. Same for the state-of-the-art football weight room and brand-new team rooms. Our roster got devastated and you know the rest. We are only now getting back to normal, and you have already begun to see the results. When June 1st came so did the recruits. Along with a flood of commitments. We could finally let them in to see the work and its results. Father Time is undefeated and the acknowledgement that the past isn’t coming back is difficult. But Tech has always pushed forward and it is imperative that we continue to do that now. I don’t ask that you follow blindly. Dissenting opinions and varied ideas are as always, critical. However, I do ask for your faith in our leaders. On the field and off. You’ve always given it to me, and I will forever appreciate that. There will be missteps and wrong turns as we navigate all the issues of the day, but I wholeheartedly believe that we are heading towards a prosperous era—in so many ways. I also believe we will get there a lot faster if we all pull together. So, grab the rope Hokies, we will need all of you to get where we need to go. And when we arrive at our destination, hindsight will tell us we were heading in the right direction all along. See you at the finish line!