Nova Hokie 95: Let’s get the main point out of the way first — this is necessary. Completely, totally, 100% necessary. I don’t think anyone can look at the numbers and look at the college athletics landscape and NOT agree that this needed to be done. That said, while I’m fully on board with the action, I don’t think it was done in the best way. I think there were some minor slips that have made the road ahead a little bumpier. I’m a communications guy, and the communication on this wasn’t ideal.

With all the rumors around, we knew there were going to be people upset; that was a given. Some people would win, some would lose, and those that lose would be mad. It’s human nature. We saw it with the first seat reorganization, and it was expected here, too. What I saw, however, was that more people were confused than were upset. Yeah, we still had upset people — but the number of confused people was extremely high. To me, that says that the athletic department didn’t do a good enough job communicating things. And when some of those confused people are the top donors — that’s never a good thing.

Over the course of the past week, the message boards have been full of suggestions about “They should have said X” or “They could have done Y.” And many of them are good suggestions, so it’s not like these ideas couldn’t have been figured out and implemented beforehand. A couple that jumped out at me personally when I first read the page — why was the seat calculator so generic? Let me enter in the number of seats I have, the money I donate, and where my seats are. From there, tell me my minimum donation. I appreciate that they put the color-coded chart up there, but for the most part I don’t think people care where they might be able to sit; they care if they’ll still be able to sit where they’ve been sitting. Period.

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