Virginia AD Carla Williams makes the case for why now is the time to go all-in on football

Virginia athletic director Carla Williams sent a letter to fans last night, and she didn't mince words about where the league is headed and where investments should be made.

"College athletics is in a new era where winning, national visibility and financial strength are more closely intertwined than ever before," Williams wrote. "Success drives visibility. Visibility generates resources. Those resources fuel future success. The ACC's new revenue distribution model is built around that reality."

"Simply put, greater success and greater visibility create greater opportunity."

Thens she adds, "Football sits at the center of that opportunity."

The ACC scrapped equal revenue sharing starting with the 2024-25 year, part of the settlement that kept Florida State and Clemson in the league. Now 40 percent of the conference's base media money is split evenly, and the other 60 percent is divided on a five-year weighted measure of TV viewership, with football counting for 75 percent of that uneven share and men's basketball the other 25 percent. There's a success pool on top of it: $1.8 million for a bowl bid, $1.8 million for an AP Top 25 finish, and $4 million for reaching the College Football Playoff, with more for advancing. 

Projections have annual payouts ranging from roughly $35 million to $65 million per school, a much wider spread than the old $43-to-$46 million band.

Put plainly, the schools that win and get watched are going to pull away from the ones that don't.

Williams has reason to like where Virginia's trajectory is pointed. The Cavaliers just finished the best season in program history under Tony Elliott, going 11-3 and 7-1 in the ACC, beating No. 8 Florida State 46-38 in double overtime in September and reaching the ACC Championship Game before falling to Duke 27-20 in overtime. They closed it out by beating Missouri 13-7 in the Gator Bowl for a program-record 11th win and finished No. 19 in the final AP poll. Elliott was a finalist for National Coach of the Year.

That season shows up on Williams' revenue statement, not just in her record book.

Elliott has been building toward this since UVA hired him in December 2021 to replace Bronco Mendenhall. He spent 2015 through 2021 as Clemson's offensive coordinator and play-caller, running offenses that won national titles over Alabama in January 2017 and January 2019, coaching Trevor Lawrence and Travis Etienne along the way, and taking home the 2017 Broyles Award as the nation's top assistant. A former walk-on receiver at Clemson, he took over a Virginia program that would not reach a bowl in his first three seasons before it broke through in 2025. Now he has it ranked and paid.

Williams, one of the most established athletic directors in the country and now in her ninth year running the department, is telling those with deep pockets the math directly. The simple formula is; Win, get watched, get paid. Football is the key to all of that.

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