Column: As silly season rages on, keep your head on a swivel

Trying to process everything that happened in the “life” of UVa football over the course of roughly 24 hours between Sunday and Monday afternoons is quite the endeavor.

With the exception of that run Bronco and Co. went on several summers back when they got like 11 commits over the course of 72ish hours, not many periods of time have been quite like the end of the weekend/start of the week.

Daijon Parker was in.

Tony Muskett was in.

John Paul Flores was out.

Garett Tujague was out.

Nick Jackson was out.

Malik Washington was in.

DJ Jones was in.

That period between 2:57 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, when Parker announced his choice, and 1:21 p.m. on Monday, when Jones went public with his, was one of the wackiest, head-on-a-swivel timeframes in recent Wahoo history.

And as is the case sometimes during what has truly become college football’s silly season, it left many fans unsure of what exactly they’re supposed to feel. And why.

In getting Parker, the offensive lineman from Saginaw Valley State, and Muskett, the in-state quarterback from Monmouth, the Cavaliers did their offense a huge favor. Not only is Muskett the kind of signal caller that the roster desperately needs, but Parker is the kind of help the line needed…especially now that Flores has decided to spend just one season in Charlottesville before making his next move.

Of course, who coaches said O-line is now TBD as Tujague has decided to follow Robert Anae to Raleigh, linking back up with his former OC on the revamped NC State staff. The formal announcement for the move came Monday but the rumblings were aplenty all day Sunday. From the outside, it seems an odd move for Tujague given how things played out with Anae during the last couple years of his tenure at Virginia but at this point the water under the bridge is moving rapidly forward.

Which is why it was good for fans to have the addition of both Washington, a talented receiver from Northwestern, and Jones, the three-star 2023 commit who will sign next week, to consider.

With all due respect to Tujague and Flores, the loss of Jackson, a three-time All-ACC linebacker and UVa legacy, was by far the toughest blow for both the roster and the psyche of Hoos everywhere.

All of these decisions in one way or another exemplify the non-binary nature of silly season, but none more than Jackson bidding adieu.

He was the heart and soul of the Virginia defense for years and the team itself for at least this season. He was not just the guy racking up all the tackles—he finished fifth in the ACC and 35th in the nation in that category despite the last two games of UVa’s season being canceled—but he was the guy who led the group in every discernible way. He was the centerpiece of a Virginia defense that rebounded this past fall. He was the center of it. Literally.

And now, he is looking to graduate in May and use the additional year of eligibility granted him by the NCAA following the tragic deaths of three teammates.

Could he return to UVa? Absolutely. Is it likely? Probably not. Is this about UVa? Probably in some way, shape, or form. But it’s bigger and more nuanced than that.

Which makes answering the question some (if not most?) fans want to jump to even harder: Is this some sort of referendum on what he thinks of the new staff?

And that, dear reader, is where the complexities of each of these decisions in the Transfer Portal Era ™ make things incredibly difficult to dissect, synthesize, and move on from.

Take the example of Olu Oluwatimi. His decision was pretty clear: He wanted to go play for a team that would run the ball. He took what he heard from NFL scouts and decided he needed to put more run blocking on film so he could help himself at the next level. One Outland Trophy/Rimington Award combo later, it’s fair to say it’s worked out for him.

Maybe in the past, most guys were like him. They had one very clear reason for leaving a school. But take a look around the transfer portal. There are plenty of dudes who were getting plenty of PT playing for schools having plenty of success who have decided to bounce.

Why?

Well, maybe the better question is the answer: Why not?

It’s simply not as simple as most think it must be or (worse) worry it could be. Surely there are players who are tossing their names in the portal because they want a new position coach or maybe even a new position. Surely there are guys who don’t get along with this head coach or that. Surely there are guys who want to go to different parts of the country or play in different schemes or who just want to play or who—and this gets lost in the shuffle—want to get a free education from a great school.

No shade to Saginaw Valley State or Monmouth but Parker and Muskett are doing what Oluwatimi, Bobby Haskins, and perhaps Jackson have done/will do: They wanted a “better” challenge.

Sometimes the “reason” is clear. Ryan Swoboda (UCF) and Joe Bissinger (SMU) wanted to be closer to home. Oluwatimi wanted to run the ball more. Bryce Perkins wanted a chance to play quarterback.

Sometimes guys want to move up a “level” be that up to the Power 5 or up to the better leagues/schools.

Sometimes guys move “over” for fresh starts, like Jelani Woods or Washington.

There are a whole host of reasons why folks leave one school and jump to another. That’s the case for players and coaches alike these days. But much like trying to figure out why a high school recruit picks School X, trying to drill into the why can be a fool’s errand.

Or, more often than not, a Rorschach test.

And there is a lot of that going around UVa football right now when the reality is this: Very few decisions are about one thing. And even if it is about just/solely one thing, it’s probably not the one thing you think it’s about. And it’s almost certainly not about the one thing you think it should be about.

There’s a longer conversation to be had about the way traditional recruiting and transfer portal recruiting fit together and how schools should allocate resources between the two. There’s no doubt that transfer portal recruiting has exploded in ways that we still haven’t likely gotten our arms around yet. (The NCAA could really help everyone by moving the early signing period up, maybe even substantially).

But if you see a name come across the wire (that’s what it’s become, in a lot of ways), trying to get a true grasp of “why” probably includes a lot of nuance that the current landscape just can’t handle.

After all: Correlation does not imply causation. And that’s the case no matter how fast our heads are swiveling.