Tech can't realistically promise even a playoff appearance at this point. Plus, VT's facilities are nice, but they're not the penultimate luxury that places like Clemson and Alabama are. That yet again goes back to the financial difference between programs.

Tech also doesn't recruit enough of the truly elite talent to make it worth the while of players who could go early. It'd be easier to convince someone who was pretty good to stay if you could say "hey this year we have the best QB recruit in the whole country," or "half our receivers were top 5 in the country." Normally when someone on VT leaves early, they were among the best players, and no one on the roster was going to end up being more successful than they were, because that elite recruiting for VT is too sporadic to fill out a depth chart.