No ACC football team has struggled more in recent years than the Virginia Cavaliers. They haven’t won a bowl game since 2005, and they haven’t even been to a bowl game since 2011. Then there is the 13 game losing streak to arch-rival Virginia Tech.
This has been a directionless program for years, that made the mistake of over-scheduling in the non-conference. Since Virginia last went to a bowl they had a OOC schedule that included UCLA (2), Oregon (2), Penn State, Boise State, and TCU. The Cavaliers went 1-6 in those games. The first sign that Virginia appeared committed to improving their football came with the end of Mike London era. Virginia hired the well respected coach of BYU Bronco Mendenhall who was brought on in 2016.
Mendenhall went 2-10 his first year, but I don’t think you can judge him too much on year one. This was a coach who averaged 9 wins a year in an 11 year tenure at BYU.
Virginia now has made a move, that appears to further solidify that the Cavaliers are going to make a major investment to improve the quality of their football.
From the DailyProgress, Virginia has begun the process to build a new football operations center. In addition there will be other athletic facility upgrades.
A proposed $55 to $60 million football operations center for the University of Virginia was added to the capital plan during the June Board of Visitors meeting on Friday…
…The new football center would house an expanded academic suite for tutoring individuals and study groups in UVa’s pursuit of reaching 100 percent graduation of its football players. Also planned for the building would be a lounge and meeting places for players, which would promote team relationships, locker rooms, coaches offices, a weight room, and state-of-the-art football specific equipment and training.
This was a move that was long overdue for the struggling Cavaliers, but now that it is finally made, it is certainly a step in the direction.
