On a warm August day in 2022, Coach Tony Elliott stood on the Lawn, handing out ice cream from a cardboard box. He smiled through the awkwardness of chasing down strangers for a favor — to come to Scott Stadium and support the football team at its next game.
Three years later, on a muggy September night in 2025, Elliott witnessed Scott Stadium erupt as underdog Virginia upset No. 8 Florida State in double overtime. The same coach who once begged for student attendance witnessed the 4th Side at full capacity. Off the back of this monumental win, Elliott was named national coach of the week, and the now-No. 19 Cavaliers have taken firm residence in the national rankings for the first time since 2019.
This may have been a first-of-its-kind game for the current student body, but for Elliott and Athletic Director Carla Williams, it was the culmination of something bigger — belief stacked on belief.
Williams was hired as Virginia’s athletic director in late 2017, vowing to rebuild the football program for long-term success after former Coach Bronco Mendenhall stepped away from the University.
Williams had accepted the job before ever setting foot on Grounds and entered an anomalous situation — a Power Four school with a proud tradition of athletic excellence but the only one among the major conferences with no dedicated football facility. In short, Virginia did not have the resources to achieve what she envisioned for the program.
“You really have to start from the sub-surface and build up that infrastructure, change the culture,” Williams said on her podcast series. “You have to stack years on top of each other to build something that is sustainable at a special level.”
From her first week in Charlottesville, she pushed football to the center of Virginia Athletics’ priorities — not at the expense of the Cavaliers’ Olympic sport success, but rather in service of it.
“Football is the engine that drives the entire department, which drives the community, which allows us to have all the other sports and allows them to thrive.” Williams said on the podcast.
In Williams, Virginia had found an athletic director who was willing to invest all means necessary into the football program — the only piece left was choosing who to lead it. In December 2021, Williams found the coach she believed would align with her vision — Clemson offensive coordinator Tony Elliott.
“After talking to Tony, it just became clear that he was the right person,” Williams said.
That sense of fit was mutual.
“When I finally made my decision [to take the job] I felt like there was an alignment between myself and Dr. Williams,” Elliott said. “[Williams and President Ryan] believed in who I was as a person, not just the success that I was associated with.”
Elliott presented a lofty ambition at his introduction.
“My vision,” Elliott said, “is to become the model in college football.”
A key piece in that pursuit manifested in the $80 million Hardie Football Operations Center, unveiled in June 2024 — a facility that finally looks and feels like the standard for an aspiring ACC champion program. It centralized the program’s necessary facilities and signaled to prospective recruits that Virginia intended to compete.
“I knew that the facility was in the works and Dr. Williams said, ‘I'll make sure within two years that it's done for you.’” Elliott said. “And she fulfilled that promise.”
Despite this influx of resources, the early years of the Elliott era were characterised by unprecedented adversity. His first campaign was cut short by tragedy, when Lavel Davis Jr., D'Sean Perry and Devin Chandler were fatally shot on Grounds in November 2022. Virginia canceled the remainder of its games that season as the larger University community came together in a moment of grief.
In 2023, the Cavaliers went 3-9, the third-worst record among all Power Four teams. In just the statistics, it was the kind of performance that often leads administrations to seek a change of head coach.
And yet, Williams never wavered in her support for Elliott, despite a record which gave her every reason to. She believed the same patience required for the building of new facilities also applied to the build of a program recovering from unimaginable tragedy.
The program began to spark flickers of hope after upsetting No. 10 North Carolina in October 2023.
“What you saw," Elliott said postgame, “Is just a group that believed.”
Many within the Cavalier fanbase did not share this same patience. After a 55-17 loss to Virginia Tech, which marked the end of the program’s 2023 season, claims such as “Fire Tony Elliott” began to circulate in online echo chambers. Local columns torched Elliott’s postgame “this one’s on me” refrain and questioned whether anything would change under his watch. Message board threads on Williams’ performance as athletic director racked up hundreds of scathing replies, blaming her department’s spending priorities and lack of direction and communication.
Still, Williams and her staff continued to quietly chip away behind the scenes — hiring new coaches, implementing new programs and expanding the recruiting trail.
Boosters must have been galvanized by the multitude of investments during Williams’ tenure — by 2024, a fundraising pool and donor matches reportedly added around $30 million to the football roster budget, allowing the program to effectively pursue highly-touted recruits. But Elliott was not done.
“Now’s not the time to let up on the gas,” Elliott said, reflecting on their 2025 fall camp. “We see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we’ve got to sprint through the finish line.”
This tunnel needed more than just a vision — it needed players. That facet came with a transfer portal haul before the 2025 season that ranked 26th nationally, infusing new life into a struggling roster.
“We're finally at a place where we should be, and need to be, not just for our football program, but for our entire athletic department to thrive,” Williams said.
Now this cohort of Cavaliers is sitting at a 5-1 record, just one win away from bowl game eligibility with six left to play. Three of these games will be at Scott Stadium with the Cavalier faithful in attendance, following the crowd of 50,107 that attended the Florida State game.
So, belief begot facilities, facilities begot recruiting, recruiting begot competition and competition led to renewed belief. Williams’ and Elliott’s plan carried a large bill, but that Friday night was the payoff, where for a few glorious hours, Charlottesville felt like the center of the college football universe.
As fans stormed David A. Harrison III Field, Williams took a knee in the far endzone. This was the vindication that both she and Elliott needed, dreamed of, prayed for. Together they built the culture, the facilities, the roster — but most importantly?
“At the end of the day, it’s all belief,” Elliott said. “The heart of a champion doesn’t mean you’re perfect … but you believe beyond your circumstances.”
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