Doug Doughty

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One of the duties of a beat reporter, either spoken or unspoken, is to monitor websites devoted to the teams he or she covers.

As a result, somewhat regularly I’ll visit the sabre.com or rivals.com, particularly during times of crisis.

One of those occasions followed the announcement Jan. 17 that four UVa football players were not enrolled in school, most notably Jameel Sewell, the Cavaliers’ starting quarterback in their last 22 games.

As I might have imagined, many of the UVa posters chose to invoke the name of archrival Virginia Tech, complaining that the Hokies never seem to have any academic casualties.

That’s not entirely true, as one might guess. Roland Minor, projected to start in the secondary for the Hokies this past season, did not meet NCAA eligibility requirements this season. (He could have returned to school but not play).

Many supporters will argue the academic merits of their respective schools but, on one point, there can be little debate.

As reported in The Roanoke Times last week, Virginia football has had five different academic coordinators in five years.

At Virginia Tech, where two coordinators are directly responsible for football, Colin Howlett is in his 11th year as an advisor to the football team and Sarah Armstrong is in her fifth.

Armstrong works with the freshmen and Howlett handles the upperclassmen.

Chris Helms, director of student-athlete academic support systems, is in his ninth year overseeing the entire academic support system.

It’s called continuity. Plain and simple, Tech has it. Virginia does not.

If there’s one area where Virginia might want to emulate the Hokies, this is it.

When I wrote about the five academic coordinators in five years, I knew that didn’t sound good. I’ve since spoken to a coach who explained why it’s a problem.

“When you’ve got new people all the time, they don’t know the deans,” he told me. “They don’t know the professors. They don’t know what courses to take. They don’t know what courses not to take.

“Sometimes, they don’t even know where the buildings are. For instance, you would try to take classes back-to-back on opposite sides of campus.”

“The best people for these positions are former student-athletes, but these jobs are seen as steppingstone positions. Academic advising is not seen as a destination.”

Perhaps, if the pay were better, it could be. When Virginia needed a strength coach for football, it went after the No. 2 strength coach at Florida, which had just won the national championship.

By the way, I hear good things about Adrien Harraway, elevated to head academic advisor by UVa last summer, but it does not appear as if the Cavaliers conducted a nationwide search for that position.

If academic support people aren’t paid at the same level as strength coaches, then maybe it’s time to reconsider priorities. We always hear about student-athletes flunking out of school, and not just at Virginia, but is anybody ever dismissed for failing to do a 30th repetition at 225 pounds?

I’m not here to say that Tech’s academic advisors are making a fortune, but they probably feel like they’re making a difference and that everybody is on the same page. Head coach Frank Beamer meets weekly with Howlett and Armstrong, and the assistant football coaches do their part.

My research indicates that head coach Al Groh isn’t the problem at Virginia, although, at $1.96 million per year, he needs to be part of the solution. The biggest problem, I’m told, is the disconnect between the academic side of campus and the football program.

“Jocular” John Casteen, the UVa president, loves Groh enough to have given him the big contract, but how much support Groh has outside the president’s office, I don’t know.

I’m not sure a football coach should be cozying up to deans and professors, but somebody needs to bridge that gap.

There’s little Virginia can do right now to match the stability that Tech has in its academic-advising team, but, if your football coach is making nearly $2 million, then it’s inexcusable to be low-balling the academic advisors.

IF THE “JOCULAR” JOHN reference is over people heads, it comes from a piece that USA Today wrote about the Virginia-Virginia Tech football game Nov. 24 in Charlottesville.

“The chief theoreticians behind the modern athletics rivalry are sports writers and people who sell T-shirts,” Casteen wrote in an e-mail to USA Today. “Among persons with less obvious motives and with more important things on their minds, this athletics rivalry is more jocular than serious.”

Does he really believe that? If so, Casteen is as clueless as he is condescending.

Casteen and Tech president Charles Steger (“The University of Virginia, by most measures, and I would concur, is the finest public university in the nation,” he wrote) are full of respect for each other, but I don’t think a majority of their fans feel that way.

As Tech fan Scott Newman was quoted in the USA Today article: “UVa reached out [after April 16]. Everyone here appreciates that. But what we want now is normalcy. And what could be more normal at Virginia Tech than hating Virginia.”

VIRGINIA TECH CONTINUES to pursue a half-dozen or more uncommitted football players for the class of 2008, including Leon Mackey, a 6-foot-4, 275-pound defensive end from Newark, Del., who was on the way to Blacksburg on Friday from Hargrave Military Academy.

Mackey already has visited Florida State, North Carolina and N.C. State.

The Hokies are continuing to recruit 6-6, 215-pound Beaufort, S.C., defensive end Devin Taylor; Lakeland, Fla., wide receiver T.J. Lawrence; Fayetteville, N.C., tight end Dwayne Allen, and in-state prospects Marcus Davis, Randall Dunn and Joe Jones.

AS OF 1 P.M. FRIDAY, there’s been no word out of Virginia on the status of defensive end Jeffrey Fitzgerald, said to be leaving UVa according to sources cited by Daily Progress reporter Jay Jenkins in an Internet piece.

It has been common knowledge for more than a week that UVa was at risk of losing Fitzgerald, but he is involved in a delicate situation that nobody will discuss on the record. As long as Fitzgerald was enrolled in school – and he may still be enrolled – most reporters were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That’s not to blame Jenkins because Fitzgerald’s status has gotten considerable play on rivals.com and thesabre.com, although, clearly some posts were being eliminated as soon as they went up. The issue wasn’t going to go away.

What can be said is that the loss of Fitzgerald under any circumstances would only add fuel to a combustible situation at UVa, which already has lost one underclassman to the NFL Draft (Branden Albert), four underclassmen to academics and at least one recruit (Ugo Uzodinma) to defensive coordinator Mike London’s departure for Richmond.

Consider this: Fitzgerald has been better in his first two seasons than former defensive linemate and 2007 ACC defensive player of the year Chris Long was over the same period.