This isn’t a failure to be dismissed lightly. The truth of College football recruiting is that most of the high producing 4 and 5 star athletes don’t give two hoots and a dried bean about the beauty of the campus, the great food, the challenging academic environment, or even the program’s emphasis on earning your degree. Most high value football and basketball players want to get drafted to play at the next level for the big bucks. That’s why they play. That’s why they leave early when they feel like they have gotten enough attention. It’s pretty brutally easy to understand.

This last draft was dominated by the SEC, with Alabama netting something like 10 drafted players (how a program gets more than 10 eligible players who also started significant numbers of snaps is a feat beyond me). Georgia had 7 drafted and Auburn had 6, The ACC draftees were dominated by Clemson (6), Miami (5), and four BC players. There were some others, but basically the draft concentrated on pulling players from what has become its minor league, the SEC. Close behind were the Big 12 with Oklahoma’s whopping 12 picks, and the PAC 12 with Washington pulling in a bunch.

The insults to the injury were pretty plain to see and almost like it was a direct slap by the NFL (including BA who didn’t even nod at Blacksburg from Tampa... disappointed BA...) at the Tech program. Old Dominion University had two draft picks, and even Virginia got two.

Any way that shakes, it’s something of an admonishment for a program that picked up 2 first rounders last season (both early outs for the Edmunds brothers - both got their degrees, BTW) and even Adonis hitting the supplemental, So, this was a real warning shot across the bows for the Virginia Tech Football Program. The performance last season was deemed as to be so bad that no draftable players even got a serious enough look to merit throw away picks in the 6th and 7th rounds.

It’s going to hurt recruiting, and it better light a real fire under some tails because another season like last season and Tech is going to drop off the conversational radar which also drops it off the NFL draft interest page. As was noted by a poster on the Facebook page, we made lots of highlight reels.. as the butt of the joke, unfortunately.

The NFL Draft is usually the cherry on top of a season’s work. Well the cherry wasn’t there, and the sprinkle of nuts was moldy.

In some news of the slim hope variety, there were a few Undrafted Free Agent offers to go out to various Hokies:

Kyle Chung is getting a look by the Chicago Bears.

Yosuah Nijman is getting a look-see by the Green Bay Packers.

Ricky Walker is going to the Dallas Cowboys for a lookieloo

And as a reminder that sometimes the UDFAs actually do get a look and make the team, Brandon Facyson was passed over for the draft, but hit the golden tone for the newly relocated San Diego Chargers (sorry, old AFL fan.. the Chargers are never, ever going to be the Los Angeles Chargers in my old brain).

So it can be done.

GOOD LUCK to Kyle, Yosh, and Ricky!

GO HOKIES!!!