Not to the level where Clemson made it to the title game 3 years in a row or something like that. About the most optimistic I am is that VT could make the playoffs once in a while, like if everything lined up right with a senior-laden team and some big talent at the positions that touch the football the most. Think something like how Michigan State made it in 2015(?) or Washington last year. Good enough to win their conference, get a spot, but ultimately get flattened by a bigger program.

They're sort of a victim of their own success. As things like the Big 10 Network and SEC Network were coming online, adding even more financial fuel to a system that's already strongly tilted in favor of who has the most money, VT fans were happy cruising along with 10-win seasons, winning a (down) conference frequently, all with a coaching staff, facilities, overall football program that didn't cost nearly as much it should have 10 years ago.

Unfortunately, this has trained a ton of VT fans into thinking that they can get top-20 or top-10 results with top-40 or 50 level of money. Babcock's trying to fix this, Drive for 25 and all that stuff, but, even with all that, VT isn't gaining ground on Clemson--they're just losing slower than they were. Clemson and FSU in the ACC, many others elsewhere, have spent years, maybe even a decade or two, putting anywhere from $10-30,000,000 more into their program than VT, every single year. So yeah, when you look at the yearly donation total compared to them, that gap is smaller, but they're still outspending VT, the gap still grows bigger every year, just maybe 0.5% instead of 1% or whatever.

VT could start spending as much money on football as Alabama tomorrow, and that would be nice, but a dollar yesterday (or 10 years ago) is worth more than a dollar today, and today's dollar is worth more than 10 years from now, both in a literal and figurative sense. It would take a long time to dig out of the financial hole that VT finds themselves in, relative to teams that have the level of success that VT fans want to see them have.

VT fans love to pat themselves on the back for their support of the program, as long as it means showing up in the stadium, or standing around the College Gameday podium, or stuff like that. And they do have some fans who've given thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands, even millions, towards football, but every school has at least some of those. Everyone who's pitching in money right now, that whole population and their donation amount, you need to like, triple it. You need thousands more people stuffing cash into the athletic department even if they never attend a game in person, or their seat never improves, or whatever.

I think Fuente would be gone before something like that happened. Even if he never left the program, he might die of old age before it happened.