This is it, folks. Georgia Tech has reportedly laid an offer on the table for Dave Braine that is in the $250k - $300k range, and Dave is expected to announce today whether or not he'll take it. The bad news is, Channel 10 reported that Dave was in Atlanta Monday night, and I'm pretty sure he didn't fly all the way down there to say no.

Many of you took my advice and bombed both Dave and President Torgersen with emails, pleading (a) for Dave to stay, and (b) for Torgersen to do his best to keep him. President Torgersen's replies to those who emailed him were simple and to the point: "Georgia Tech can afford that, and we can't. I've done everything I can, and the rest is up to Dave."

Your first response might be, "The hell we can't afford it! Where's all that money going that Will told us about in his latest Special Feature?" I mulled this over a little bit, and I think that perhaps Dave's salary doesn't come out of the Athletic Department coffers (which are currently full to the brim with a multi-million dollar cash reserve). If that's the case, then his salary is part of the general salary, uh, fund at Tech, for lack of a better word, and it's Torgersen's to decide on. And I'm betting that Torgersen doesn't have much to work with, and he's not lying when he says that he's done all he can do. I'm sure Torgersen wants to keep Dave as much as the rest of us do.

But I'm obviously in over my head when I try to discuss where the money comes from, and who pays for what. Remember, you can't see me, and that's why I look so smart sometimes. If you could see me, you might think otherwise.

But back to the subject. Greg Roberts, sportscaster for Channel 10 in Roanoke, is running around in Chicken Little mode, predicting that the sky is falling and that Dave will take GT's offer, even though Greg hasn't spoken with Dave Braine. Don't get me wrong - I like Greg, and I'll watch Channel 10 sports until the station blows up or quits broadcasting, but I didn't hear Greg offer up any hard facts or sources in his 6:00 news report. He offered it up as opinion, based on the poking around he has done this week, and the fact that Dave flew down to Atlanta. The problem is, Greg is right 95% of the time.

I'm hoping that this time, it's the other 5%. But I can't see how, with the kind of bucks that GT is talking, not to mention the cachet of the ACC and a great school like Georgia Tech. So we'll just have to wait with hands trembling to find out.

You'll note that I'm playing this conservative, even though everybody else is reporting that Dave's a goner .... that's a trick I learned from Yubrenal Isabelle. He taught me to play it cool until you hear for sure.

Let me take a few minutes to clear something up that still has a few people confused. My web site, HokieCentral.com, is completely different, independent, and separate from Hokie.com, Willie Jester's web site. Many people are operating under the assumption that I'm some sort of subset of Hokie.com, or that we're one and the same. Not so.

I can understand the confusion. Back when I started up my web site on NRVNet, and later, U.S. Internet, I had a "hokie.com" email address: [email protected]. It was a service that Hokie.com provided for me - my hokie.com email address forwarded my email to my NRVNet and U.S. Internet accounts. Throw in the fact that Hokie.com is run by "Willie," and HokieCentral.com is run by "Will," plus add in that for a brief period of time my message board was hosted by Hokie.com, and you've got the key ingredients for some misunderstanding.

But I never was and never will be part of hokie.com. I am HokieCentral.com, and he is Hokie.com.

While we're on the subject of the message board, it does not actually reside on my HokieCentral.com server. It's way out in Kalamazoo, Michigan, being hosted by Grassy Knoll on his www.grassy.com server. The reasons why my board is there are long and numerous, the key one being that Grassy is one of the few guys with the cojones to host cgi-scripted message boards. Most web-hosting services, mine included, look at you like you've got three heads when you ask them to host one of those boards. So mine wound up on Grassy's server, and he does a terrific job keeping it going (except for the occasional suicidal server hiccups like the two he has suffered recently).

There. Clear as mud?

The A-10 Hoop Report, in their Spring recruiting roundup, ranked the Hokies' basketball recruiting class fourth in the conference. Not bad, and probably pretty accurate on their part. Here are their Atlantic-10 recruiting rankings:

1. Xavier
2. UMass
3. Duquesne
4. Virginia Tech
5. St.Bonaventure
6. La Salle
7. St. Joseph's
8. Rhode Island
9. Temple
10. Dayton
11. George Washington
12. Fordham

Most shocking are the inclusion of Temple at #9 and GW at #11. I think Temple was placed there because they only recruited two players ... but one of those is a highly-regarded All-American-type, Mark Karcher. As for GW, they were in the running for four big-time ball-players (all Top 125), but they lost out on all four of them, effectively gutting the quality of their recruiting class. It's back to the Russian frontier for Jarvis and company, I guess. Anybody know if Alexander Koul has a little brother?

I just recently started receiving the A-10 Hoops Report via snail-mail, and I'm impressed by the depth of information it contains. More on them later, after I've looked over a few more issues.

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