Elliott
Tony Elliott has made outreach an early priority at Virginia. ~ Photo courtesy of Matt Riley/Virginia Athletics Media Relations

As Virginia football coach Tony Elliott sat down with the media Thursday, a blue and white V-Sabre hat rested on his head. The ball cap, of course, is often a staple for coaches. There are quite a few symbolic hats on Elliott’s head these days too, though.

Holding many roles, or wearing many hats as the old saying goes, comes with the territory at the top of a major college football program. For Elliott, he’s navigating those duties for the first time. After considering but bypassing other jobs in the past, he accepted the UVA head coaching position in December.

The Cavaliers needed a new coach after the unexpected resignation of Bronco Mendenhall. The former coach often discussed CEO type duties that come with a head coaching job and Elliott had observed the same working under Dabo Swinney at Clemson. He served as an assistant coach and offensive coordinator for 11 years with the Tigers before his arrival at Virginia.

So far, wearing more hats has been hectic - Elliott joked about having an assistant that always tells him where to be next - but he felt prepared for that part of the job.

“It’s good. Part of the reason I was patient transitioning from Clemson to becoming a head coach is because I observed, and I watched, and I talked to Coach Swinney about it,” Elliott said. “I could see that’s a huge part of the job and I wanted to make sure that I was at a place where I was ready to be fully committed to that aspect of it and give up some of or delegate some of the responsibility from a truly football perspective to my staff.”

One of the key roles a head coach must fill is outreach. Elliott called it connectivity.

The premise there is simple. College programs need support to be successful and that cannot come from a single stream of people. Elliott made sure two important groups connected with the program this spring.

One: football alumni. Past players such as Heath Miller, Aaron Brooks, and Chris Long have visited with the program. Jackson Matteo, now the head coach at nearby Woodberry Forest school, brought some of his players to a recent practice. Obviously, assistant coaches Marques Hagans and Chris Slade played at Virginia as well.

A contingent of former players is expected in Charlottesville this weekend for the Blue-White Spring Game as well. Elliott will spend time with them on Friday night and before the game Saturday. Kickoff is scheduled for 4 p.m. at Scott Stadium.

“It’s been fun as a former player,” Elliott said. “How cool is it that I get to see Heath Miller and Aaron Brooks and Chris Long, guys that were a little bit before me or around my time that went on and played. To see them come back and just the passion and energy and love they have for this place. I think for us to get to where we want to go as a program, we’ve got to be connected.”

“That’s one of my objectives I talked about. How do I want people to describe this program?” he continued. “I want us to be a program that acts, first we’re authentic, we’re connected, we’re transparent, and we’re about service. That connectivity that I’m talking about is being connected to the past because I think these young men that wear the V-Sabre right now, they need to understand the responsibility that they have to perform to a certain standard based off the guys that came before them. The connection between those two groups propel you into the future. It helps us in recruiting because now we can identify the type of young men that need to come in and carry the legacy forward. I’m excited about [Friday] night and Saturday a little bit before the game, I’m going to have a chance to engage with those guys. My message to them is really simple. This isn’t Tony Elliott’s program. This is Virginia football and Virginia football encompasses everybody. ”

To Elliott, everybody goes well beyond football alumni. Another key group he brought in to spend time the program was the University faculty. The Cavaliers welcomed the faculty to a practice session and then had brunch with members afterward. Elliott called it the Faculty Appreciation Brunch.

The new Virginia coach thought it would be beneficial for the players and the faculty to see each other outside of the normal classroom interactions. Elliott walked on to the football team at Clemson where he earned an engineering degree. In fact, before he entered the coaching ranks, he worked as an industrial engineer at Michelin.

“The message to the faculty - we had a faculty appreciation practice and then brunch - is first of all this is the University of Virginia, we’re all on the same team,” Elliott said. “Our roles may be different, but it takes all of us for the University to move forward. That was my message to them. Then I wanted the faculty to be able to see these young men in their environment and then also the players to see the faculty away from the classroom to realize hey they’re people just like you. And also to reinforce to the faculty that I understand they’ve worked their whole lives to be in that position and I’m trying to create a culture where our players respect that and they want to be engaged in that and that we can have a working relationship and that we need each other to move forward.”

Elliott said he’s always been a team guy and he called the faculty day the inaugural brunch, meaning the beginning of the activity not just a single meal. He’s been similarly active with alums through examples like a Black Alumni Weekend cookout. These connectivity initiatives do not seem like first-year coach one-off choices. He said he does not want people in silos, but joined. That may have some Virginia fans ready to give a yell for dear old UVA.