I will get back on the horse as soon as I can, as I have much to discuss.

Brand loyalty prevailed as we purchased another Compaq this weekend.  I have not had time to set up our new toy, especially with the all-important Norton 360 to avoid repeat calamity, so until that happens postings still might be sparse.  Through the years, people ragged on Compaq as junky, but my experience has been great.  I never called tech support once with that baby.  Every computer has to die of something, and nine years is a great run.  Comparing the spec’s on the two machines, particularly in light of their prices, is insane.  I had 20 GB with the old dame, now I have 250 GB.  The screen is larger, better resolution, faster processing speed, and on and on—all out of the box.  Our first Compaq we custom built online and had it shipped to us just in time to be christened with three years of law school.  It made it through two moves, several vacations, three years of business school, and the usual wear-and-tear of the daily grid.

Considering how my wife and I (and someday our daughter) use our computer now for general computing and home use, this ought to be sufficient, but who knows?  Nine years later, Compaq still packs their units with AMDs, which were virtually no name chips back then.  I should know:  I owned Intel stock up to and through the tech bubble—and then watched AMD eat Intel’s lunch for a few years before I dumped my stock—so I am no chip snob.  And our new Compaq cost nearly 66% less than our first.  Man, purchasing power is tremendous in a recession.  Interestingly, our first was ‘top-of-the-line’ because I paid up for the better AMD chip, higher RAM and a CD / DVD burner upgrade, and if I purchased a similar top-of-the-line model (different brand, equivalently modern bells and whistles) off the shelf, I would almost eclipse the original’s $1100 price tag.

One other note:  I did a quick netbook look-see and there is no way I could get one, not at current prices.  Other than weight, netbooks have no distinct advantage.  The components were like toys.  They are products that, if they were about $100 cheaper, I would consider purchasing as a first computer for a pre-high schooler who required one for school.  You get so much more in a full-size laptop for only $50 to $150 more that it is no contest.

So do tune in from time to time as I get the new laptop up and running, all the old data transferred or archived, and all the software and presets just so.  It will take weeks, but time to move on.  I cannot wait to blog on it.

With the emphasis on appearance de rigueur for anyone in any industry, I was surprised to see so many individuals—designers, engineers, vendors, contractors—forfeit this opportunity. While at the PDC Conference two weeks ago, an event many in the health care design and construction industry circle on their schedules annually to network and learn, I saw way too many golf shirts and sockless loafers.  Yes, this was San Diego.  Yes, this was not the office, and for many a virtual vacation and therefore they packed as such, but we have outfits for that.  There are times to kick back by the pool in something comfortable, or sidle up to the bar after hours in a less-than-stuffy ensemble.  But we had CEOs in attendance, doctors, high-powered executives, men and women making big bucks that did not look the part.

I am not one to push appearance, especially at the cost of substance; companies with eye candy at their booths were discussed and exposed for such ploys.  However, it is essential to look the part when you are meeting far more strangers than friends at these conferences. Arguably, only the hospital adminstrators were not actively selling as much as the rest of the attendees, but even they were networking and recruiting future talent for their facilities. By my estimate, fewer than 20% of attendees were dressed in business attire or dressed appropriately for an interview.  Every meet-and-greet is an interview. Every continental breakfast.  Every coffee break and concurrent seminar people are seeing you and judging you, your company, city and state—everything on your name tag.

I firmly agree you should not pre-judge someone based on appearance, but guess what, most of the human population does, including me.  Appearance matters.  We pre-judge whether we will like someone before they utter one word…and liking is very important prerequisite to earning someone’s business.  I like wishing it did not matter what we wore or the kind of car we drive or where we live.  Deep down and among friends, it does not matter, but most conference attendees are not drinking buddies, yet, and they only know what they see. When you can take a relationship to the level of deep friendship, over time the superficial aspects—where you went to school, what kind of car you drive, how much money you make, the brand of clothes you wear—mean little to nothing.  You like the person, not the window dressing.  You are an equal among peers.

The key to remember at a trade show is, although you may be among professional peers and a handful of true deep friendships, sales skews things. The person doing the selling may be a peer in knowledge, age, experience, etc., but the buyer has the power. In order to make a sale, you must impress the buyer. So much in sales rests on first impressions, appearance, friendliness and trust, that I ask:  why would you not want to appear as favorable as possible?

Perhaps most shockingly, we had a lot of designers at the PDC—people who are creative, who care about aesthetics and the way things look from all angles. Yet few cared that they did not look their best or did not stand out. I choose to ignore the style aspect because people have different ideas of what constitutes business attire or dressed up. But too many spent little or no time designing their appearance, and it happens a lot.

I think a man needs to be comfortable to perform his best, and maybe a lot of these folks are not comfortable in dress clothes, specifically when the environment is begging for something else. It is easy to dress down and give in, to blend in with the rest of the polo shirts, jeans and deck shoes in attendance. Still, the salesman in me could not not dress up. Luckily for me, a suit, tie and nice shoes feel good. Even when they do not, at least I can rally for a few days at an important event like the PDC. I am ok knowing I may be overdressed but when the crew heads out, I will never be turned away at a restaurant, forced to wear a loaner jacket, or shunned to a back booth out of sight. Someone might even tell me I look nice, which will elicit a conversation and I might meet someone new. These are not bad things. No, I may not have inked a contract at the PDC because I dressed up, but I sure tried my best. And I like my chances next year.

It was my third time in attendance, but I am constantly amazed at the scale of everything at a large conference:  entire hotels booked solid and people occupying every available open spot—lobby, hallways, pool, bar, lounge, restaurant, gym—and likewise at the convention hall; every table, booth, computer, patio chair, hallway or bathroom seemed filled with people.  I thought about the manpower it takes to get one of these things to run smoothly, and San Diego was a great host. 

When it comes to big events, it is hard not to get a little amped up.  The sheer scale of everything can be overwhelming at times.  If you are not a people person, it would be torture on a massive scale.  If you are the gregarious type, you would be giddy to the nth degree.  Folks who travel probably see it as a break from their hectic schedules to stay in one place for three or four days.  The rest of us totter between awe and annoyance, depending on the event and time of day.

I then thought about each individual’s job who works at any convention center spot.  For attendees, even for those whom it is old hat, it is hard not to get a little juiced because of the buzz of activity.  I recognized it would be very difficult for me to work in an environment which took a lot of adrenaline to execute, expecially if it happened all the time.  For conventioneers, you might attend one or two or a few a year.  For hotel employees, especially in San Diego, it happens almost every week of the year.  Imagine that:  your job is responding to a series of humanity floods; just as one convention ends, you are checking in the next set of guests.  Similarly, the convention center cleans up after one mess only to make things pretty for another onslaught.  And maybe the second shift janitorial staff would not feel the rush associated with the crowds and the hype, but surely greeters, counter staff and servers would.

This strength would be hard to maintain, like always being happy.  You would like to be happy all the time, but it would wear you out.  And besides, it is normal to have emotional fluctuations.  Status quo for daily living is not ecstasy for most of us.  There are probably a handful of jobs that are constantly hit with wave after wave of large scale stuff that needs dealing with judiciously, and with particular verve or aplomb.  I think of waitstaff at certain restuarants, and there are others but probably not as many as you think.  To always have to work at a supercharged level with no down time to recover.  It would be like Superbowl Sunday or Election Day every day, or the lunch hour rush that never flagged.  But maybe they see it as old hat, like an air traffic controller or  a soldier at war must approach their jobs.  The only way to survive without cardiac arrest at a young age would be to be calm, but that would fly in the face of the energy or pace required for some of these jobs. 

I was a banquet waiter at the largest hotel in my hometown for a summer.  It was a demanding job most of the time because during the summer months, most Saturdays and Sundays we hosted four wedding receptions each day (we had two banquet halls).  There were basically two rounds:  the 1pm-to-5pm reception and the 7pm-to-closing reception.  Even servers like myself were affected by the charged atmosphere.  The music, people, emotions, dress, history, families, relationships and potential for nearly anything to happen all fed the hype.  I would come in at 11am and immediately work on setting tables and cleaning silverware knowing the place would be nuts in less than two hours.  After the first wedding we tore down everything, cleaned, and built it back up again as quickly as possible.  The later reception would often go past midnight, which meant sometimes I would not leave for home until after 2am.  On Saturdays I would have to get up and do it all over again the next day.

This kind of pattern only worked because I was off most of the rest of the week, except for the odd Kiwanis Club luncheon or class reunion.  Surviving the hype was all about resting up for the big weekend.  I could not do it every day or even five days a week; there was just too much energy invested to recover quickly enough to repeat the effort daily.  When I was at the PDC, I imagined how the convention city employees do it without amphetamines of some sort.  It is a tiresome topic on which to think.

The daily sine wave of life’s activity is my recourse for without the lows, for perspective, there would be no highs.  So hats off to all those who work at a very high energy and attention levels, every day, every week.  You earn a pampered vacation of some sort in my book.  In a world of hype, you sustain the unsustainable.

…Self-storage units are offering three months free with sign-up

…Eighteen-wheelers on Interstate 95S, which I travel for 22 minutes each way on my daily commute, are so scarce I rarely see more than a few out-of-state license plates each day, when it is not unusual to see a dozen or more foreign tags in one morning

…Toyota is offering 60 months (!) free financing on new car purchases

…Gyms, social clubs and other membership-driven organizations are waiving pricy intiation fees

…Bars are having pink slip / layoff drink specials (present one to get your discount) similar to rejection letter specials in college towns right around this time of year

…Winn-Dixie has a menagerie of wines, including high-end bubbly ($50 retail), on sale every week, sometimes 30% off

…Auto mechanics are peddling tires in pairs:  buy a pair, get a pair free

…Dairy Queen, some of the cheapest eats around, closes its only local location as it did in Fernandina Beach

…You have to pull teeth to get someone from a bank to call you back for a mortgage or refinance quote, as was my experience, because banks would rather curl fetally around their cash than try to make money

…Burger King has been “closed for rebuild” (so says its marquee) for over three months with no sign of construction

…”Negotiation” is a common-enough part of the purchasing process that it is recognized in Consumer Reports’ annual Buying Guide

…Papa John’s closed its only local location, as it did in Fernandina Beach; when a pizza joint cannot make enough dough, pun intended, to stick around…

I suppose it was bound to happen.  I tend to think of myself as slightly more savvy than the saps that get caught in the Nigerian spam phishing schemes, but the more time you spend on the internet, especially browsing, the more likely you are to catch something.  I was informed that the particular “rogue antivirus software” that infiltrated my hard drive has been known to inhabit even the most reputable sites on the Web like the WSJ where I am a frequent visitor.  Web surfing does have a parallel to promiscuity and STDs:  if you visit the unfamiliar often enough, you will contract something you were not looking for even if you use protection.  I wanted to deny anything was wrong and sheepishly took my computer in to the doctor, as if admitting your computer caught a virus was akin to admitting you spend your web time in the dregs and dark corners of cyberspace.  Not true, my computer doc, told me. 

The thing that gets me is computer diagnostic charges now cause the consumer to make the old value assessment on service versus replacement.  I never thought I would actually weigh the possibility of purchasing a new computer for $400 versus sinking 1/3 the cost into a virus removal and operating system verification / reload on my nearly nine-year-old computer. 

As cool as it would be to chuck the Compaq dinosaur (pre-HP merge) with 512 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drive for something many, many times sexier, the green side of me speaks up louder to keep something that works working for its natural life.  This is a core belief of mine, which I consider sustainable thinking.  Reducing consumerism for consumerism’s sake is being green.  My computer still works for what I need it for; why trade up?  The same goes for my car, and my clothes, and most everything else in my life.

I use things until they fail.  I wear socks until they are hole-y, then darn them and wear them out again until they develop holes in places that either cannot be fixed or hurt when I wear them.  I develop strange relationships with things that have lasted, things I initially did not care for, but because I have cared for it for so long, I begin to become attached to the item. 

My footwear is a good example.  I wear them until they truly fall apart.  I may buy a pair of shoes for work and it could take years for me to really like them, for them to finally fit my foot like a slipper.  I had a pair of Florsheims that I reluctantly bought out of need than because they were what I was really looking for.  Now nearly seven years later, they are on their deathbed and I cannot pull the plug.  Likewise, just when a t-shirt gets broken it, when it hangs on your body just so, it develops its first hole; there is no way I throw it away.  I may not wear it in public, but I cannot euthanize it.

This preservation first philosophy can be taken too far.  I held onto my last car, a Chrysler LeBaron (RIP), a little too long. My mechanic gave me a frequent customer discount card I was there so often. A part of me saw the car, which looked ok from the outside and knew it had miles left on it. However its innards, save for the battery, were gone. I had entire systems going on me—brakes, ignition, suspension—but to me it still seemed cheaper than the alternative. In hindsight, I kept it two years too long, and it cost me thousands that could have gone toward a gently used replacement machine.

Yet, economically it makes sense to toss sometimes.  I bent the fork on my mountain bike in graduate school.  It was a hybrid mountain bike ($350 new) that had seen better days.  She was actually stolen while I was an undergrad in Charlottesville and returned via a police sting to a pawn shop eighteen months later, but that is another story for another time.  The bike was beat and I sought a repair place to fix it.  When the repair estimate broke $150, I thought, no way; I can get a newer, higher quality bike for only a fraction more.  The bike repair man would not even make me an offer for parts. It hurt me, but I actually tossed an otherwise perfectly usable bike with a fatal bent fork flaw into a dumpster, and learned to leave earlier and walk faster.

I am not sure how much profit my computer virus doctor will make on my virus repair.  He has his right to his living, and I would not want to deny him that.  But it makes it a harder decision to fix rather than replace when the fix, deemed as relatively minor as far as requiring time, components or expertise, becomes such a large portion of the cost of a new, better item.  His work is guaranteed and I can imagine if I am not happy, I may end up with a new computer anyway. 

All around us consumer durables, things we buy that last multiple uses for years, like lawn mowers and cell phones are starting to cost too much to fix.  We must address the consumer aspect of the decision, but also think of environmental stewardship and figure out what the best overall decision is.  Why have our landfills overflowing with items brought to demise through minor dings just because the repair market is so expensive? In many cases, the responsible answer is to fix, find another use or find a secondary market (sell / trade it used) for it.  As you weave your way through life, weigh the green side of the story before you make your choice each time, and not just the greenbacks.

One tenet of a free market is that money attracts attention.  Where large dollars are thrown around, people will try to find ways into the business to get a piece of the action.  This is one reason why in the past ten years, we have seen private models, a.k.a. for-profit endeavors, in higher education. Here is the business case.  On the demand side, outsiders saw tuition rising, record numbers of applicants, increased competition for admission and more jobs requiring degrees. On the supply side, they saw universities with overcrowded dorms and classrooms, degrees that take longer than four years to complete, withering state support, shrinking endowments and land-locked, real estate hungry monstrosities unable to adapt or serve non-traditional students (age, work status, family status) efficiently. In some ways, higher education is overripe for the picking by a critical eye.

At the same time, articles started popping up that took things one step further:  if colleges cannot control costs and deliver a tailored, quality service, why go?  Practitioners, professionals, journalists and finally, families and prospective students started wondering aloud if college should be a fait accompli for 18-year olds across the nation. Is college necessary or are there other legitimate alternatives?  As Baby Boomers fretted over their 401(k)s, tuition, board and book costs took off, and they began to realize they did not have enough in the piggy bank for their kids.  Either the kids pay their way or parents take out second mortgages.  The dilemma:  is the degreed opportunity cost too high?

Many argue yes. Last October, Newsweek ran a cover story about whether college should take three years. That issue also had some collateral pieces, including a roundtable, that explored baselines of typical college students:  do kids enroll from high schools knowing more or less than the past, and are the essentials higher education should provide growing or shrinking? The positions were varied. Some administrators felt students were less prepared than in the past, others felt students were more worldly and had a greater grasp and utilization of technology that gave them an advantage. Some argued college should last longer than in the past because the expectation from employers is greater, and because the quantifiable amount of stuff a college graduate needs to survive had expanded. Interwoven in this was the role of high schools:  launching pads for the super-motivated where students acquire AP / IB credit which knocks out a year or more of core college curriculum requirements, or something else, a place to intern and taste-test careers prior to entering college for instance?  Even with a degree, many twenty-somethings boomerang back to their parents’ house, unable to find work.

If the cost is too high, should this mean do not attend college?  A vocal contingent says no:  higher education offers too many valuable intangibles, regardless of cost, to simply skip it.  Statistics prove college graduates earn more than those without one, and this multiplied over a lifetime equates to millions of dollars of lost income for non-graduates. College is a time for maturation, living on your own, intellectual exploration and access to thought leaders that would be otherwise inaccessible. College offers opportunities for research and close study with professors, as well as networking and social benefits.  Many careers require certain degrees for professional credentials or career advancement, and increasing regulation points to this as growing in numerous fields.

And then there are the trends outside the education realm that get overlaid on this debate which make alternative higher education (internet degrees, etc.) an interesting option.  I learned in a JCCI Forward issue forum a couple years ago, research has shown Generation Y (the Millennials) have a lot less patience for attending college to get advanced degrees than previous generations; they see big dollars in careers that involve little to no additional study (media, computers, software) after high school and think master or doctoral degrees are wastes of time. When the Baby Boomers retire, are we going to be short doctors, attorneys, architects, engineers, professors and the like? Also, average student debt coming out of school is at record levels. Students that pay their own way must juggle a combination of saving, working while in school, and taking out loans, as well as other strategies like piece-mealing semesters or taking courses online. Students with high debt are greater credit risks, which affect their ability to purchase a home or buy a car.

Regardless of higher education’s evolution, some tried-and-true guidelines remain even more evident:  unmotivated, unguided, entitled students are a drain to the higher education system and are not qualified candidates for college.  No ubiquitous online university or small, liberal arts college with a low student-to-teacher ratio will ever fix that. Higher education is a complex system and product, and more than the sum of its parts, but also an investment with an expected payback. I am curious what the future holds, and how the college experience will be defined for my daughter seventeen years from now.

My feelings were hurt; the profession of architect has been around thousands of years, unlike say, software developer. A survey should be taken to see what people believe architects do. Then I realized a lot of jobs could be cryptic:  do people think lawyers create law?  Do people think engineers operate engines?

The options to combat ignorance are two: aggressive public education, like a marketing campaign; or diligently embed architects in crucial societal activities where expertise will be valued regardless of title. People will have no excuse to learn and appreciate the profession when they interact with one every day.

Architects expect something magical to happen when they announce what they do for a living. Truthfully, people generally hold architects in high esteem, especially outside the U.S. where the profession is often seen as equivalent to an attorney or doctor, despite their general ignorance with the profession. It is a wholesome career—not mercenary or predatory, creation-driven, service-oriented and beneficial to society. Architects help make new things and do not prey off ignorance or information manipulations, inflict pain, or affect anyone’s credit rating or legal status. 

On an easy-to-understand, dictionary level, and maybe put too simplistically, architects design space. Architects do this by collating a user’s expressed needs, safety requirements (like building codes), human habitation needs and environmental issues, and then wrapping that in a container, a structure, that relates to the user on a functional and aesthetic level.  The design of the container, usually a building, is not the endgame (it’s about the space), but to get to that conclusion a new set of design challenges must be addressed, which include collating building technologies, understanding financial constraints, and the construction process. Embedded in designing both the space and its container are the soft skills required to achieve these two goals:  team building, coordinating the work of a group, negotiation, selling, communicating a concept, visualizing ideas, drawing, writing and diplomatically debating and defending a position.  An architect must be adept at most, if not all, of the above.

Believe it or not, in the U.S. an architect is usually more highly valued as part of any team (like a real estate team) that does architectural services as part of its repertoire, i.e. “bundled”, than as an individually licensed professional with his own shingle. Maybe this has to do with spheres of influence:  the more people affected, the greater value. As a teammate services are not questioned and value is inherent. This is reinforced daily by my ongoing relationship as part of a design-build practice. No wonder architects are marginalized in pay and not valued in our construction process—because few citizens are aware of an architect’s real value, especially the value that cannot be assigned a dollar value and compared to other apples and oranges in the world of commerce.

I believe architects, as value contributors to economics and society, are probably best when utilized behind the scenes. Architects should buy on the business a bit, and sell on the creativity. Instead of expending energy to educate the public, we should get to work. Volunteer, run for office, start a company, ascend the corporate ranks, organize, mobilize, manage—like some brand of Project Mayhem from Fight Club. Do not put the architectural service on a platter and ask, ‘what is it worth to you’. No, join other industries. Shape things in different ways. Deploy. To paraphrase David Kelley from IDEO, infuse everything with design thinking. Architects are more powerful as singular entities (within a heterogeneous team) than as a pack (of homogenous architects). They are less domineering and intimidating that way, more able to be accepted. Architects are idea-people, synthesizers. Who could not use that?

I believe architects and those with this knowledge base have extreme power to influence anything they touch in a positive way. Architects are not perfect, but if nothing else, better aesthetics anywhere in our environment is an improvement. If there is anything this world needs, it is more beauty and less banality, more people to think thoughtfully about the world around us and help implement other’s visions. Yes, the general public does not know, or possibly even value, design. So what. Architects should get to work on that. There are ways to elevate this and change the status quo. And to do it subtly, quietly, humbly.

Bayh also gracefully stuck Congress with a dagger while also defending the affront to his competitive side. He said just because he is leaving politics, he is not quitting life and plans to do something productive with his time which will give back to the American people—starting a business that creates jobs, teaching at a university, working for a charity—which is far more than Congress is doing for us Americans.  Wow.

Many times people leave or are forced out of a situation, bitter and disheartened. Bayh is clearly none of the above. He leaves at the top of his game, in good health and ready to do something. I can tell he is an idealist. Fellow idealists do not want to be part of something that is wasteful and subpar when it can be meaningful and effective. Yet he acknoledged politics is about compromise for something rather than posturing for nothing.  Bayh acknoledged the system needs an overhaul and serious housecleaning of incumbents.

This is not the last time you will hear a political insider get disenchanted with not only their job, but the whole ugly system. This is only the first chapter in a long struggle to wrest back control of the democratic process in our country. Americans (and voters), we know, are unhappy. When the talking heads and flesh-pressers get fed up, watch out.  Stay tuned, folks; things are getting interesting.

Bennett’s boys are taking care of the ball, playing consistently, playing with confidence and even slam-dunking the ball—a small sign of attitude not lately seen at UVA. The team is unselfish, does not get into foul trouble and is pretty good at the free throw line. Three-point shooting percentage and scoring are up from last year, yet the team does not rely on or resort to too much gunning from behind the arc. The team runs pretty crisp set plays and even slashes to the basket off the dribble, fairly regularly beating defenders off the dribble. Overall, I have seen tremendous progress and growth. If Mr. Bennett can keep Landesberg from leaving early, UVA has a high ceiling for achievement in the coming years.

I find it surprising how new coaches in any sport are able to do so well with someone else’s players.  It is not like going to your neighbor’s shed and borrowing a rake, lawn mower, weed wacker and clippers and being surprised your lawn looks good; your lawn should look good because those are universal tools, not guards and centers and forwards.  College kids who play ball are fickle, with personalities, attitudes, and when a program turns sour, at least a little baggage. Taking over at a new school, a coach inherits players he did not watch play, he did not recruit nor visit with their families nor offer them scholarships.  He does not know them from Adam and is still expected to get them to respect him and play as a team representing a school at which he is the newcomer.

In UVA’s recent basketball history, the school has been pretty fortunate with new coaches since Jeff Jones’ departure. Pete Gillen did pretty well in his first couple years, enough to convince the school to give him a far too long and too lucrative contract given the short-term accomplishments.  In academic parlance, he gave a few flashy lectures, and got tenure. He had the advantage of an unfortunate departure by Jeff Jones for comparison, so UVA bought character in his case and tried too hard to forget the recent past. 

Dave Leitao picked up the pieces from Gillen and had some early success. Leitao had the advantage of following a really bad record in the ACC tournament and only two NCAA trips in about nine years for comparison.  Like Gillen, Leitao could recruit too, but his teams seemed to be hit or miss:  they opened JPJ arena with an invicibility streak, and were even co-champions of the ACC one year I believe.  They could shock a powerhouse like Arizona two games into the season, but easily go 5-11 in the ACC.  There was not a consistent, building body of work for Leitao. In academic parlance, he wrote a manuscript that got a book deal and was given tenure.

Tony Bennett seems to be solid, but ‘Hoos fans have seen this early success before in Gillen and Leitao.  What I like in Bennett’s team is his team has an identity (gutsy and defense-oriented) and seems fundamentally-sound, i.e. no 24 turnover games like the Gillen and Leitao years. And, Bennett has four recruits in the Rivals Top 150 coming in next year, mostly out-of-staters I believe; no five-star studs yet, but already this is progress. Jeff Jones had a pretty consistent tap into the Oak Hill and Hargrave Military Academy pipelines.  If Bennett augments his recruiting network with some local talent, watch out.

Jeff Jones’ formula as UVA’s coach fifteen years ago was far from a juggernaut, but I believe he maximized his talent and was always good for a shocker upset or two over the always-highly-ranked ACC gang of Duke, UNC and Wake Forest back in the day. He got sloppy near the end of his time judging player character, but also took UVA to the NCAAs fairly regularly with at least one Sweet Sixteen and an Elite Eight appearance in the mid 1990s on the back of an NIT Championship.  He was no golden boy, but a fair standard of recent success against which we can judge UVA head coaches in the post-Holland era.

Tony Bennett is on a familiar path of early success, so let us not be suckers or skeptics but realists:  we have seen this happen before and turn out poorly for the program and school.  Mr. Bennett is young and appears to be a classy gentleman.  I offer up my support to him and his methods, with patience—patience I hope the University also has before it opens its coffers for a long-term deal. 

Like many professors, he will want to know his future, seeking tenure, and be able to settle into the local groove.  First, he must prove himself one player and one year at a time. May he return UVA to conference and national relevance again in the sport.  And soon enough the Dance invitations will come.  Go ‘Hoos!