Tony Elliott’s model program and the most experienced roster in college football

Coach Tony Elliott once said that his vision for Virginia football was to become “the model program in college football.” He emphasized the equal importance of education, leadership and service alongside winning at the highest level.

In order to bring his vision to fruition, Elliott and the front office have jumped out as the leading program across all of college football in one key statistic — experience.

According to Cody Nagel of CBS Sports, the 2026 Cavaliers lead the nation in combined starts, games played, total snaps, offensive snaps and are second in defensive snaps.

Virginia is so experienced, that the roster has over 3,000 more snaps than the second-place squad, Texas Tech. Of the Cavaliers’ regular season opponents, the closest is SMU, with 10,000 fewer snaps.

Experience matters. There is a brobdingnagian physical difference between an 18-year-old freshman starter mere months removed from high school and a 25-year-old longtime starter who has spent years in a college weight room. There may be an even bigger mental difference, as the pressure of playing in a 60,000-seat Power Four stadium is not the same atmosphere as high school football.

Back to Virginia — many of its combined 39,158 snaps have come within the program. Longtime veterans such as Noah Josey, McKale Boley, Will Bettridge, Dakota Twitty, Daniel Sparks and Xavier Brown will have spent half a decade with the Cavaliers. The buy-in, Elliott says, is essential.

“I think that building a championship culture starts with making sure that you have alignment and a vision,” Elliott said back in his introductory press conference.

At first, that vision was not clear to all. Virginia went 11-23 in the first three seasons under Elliott, which did not make the program an attractive destination for the top players in the transfer portal. The transfer portal is an arms race. Losing can prove fatal for a head coach.

But as the Cavaliers struggled, Elliott stayed grounded through his core values. He used practice time to preach about effort, accountability, toughness, leadership and other traits — which he admitted could occasionally take priority over fundamentals and schematic details.

Enormous progress was made.

Elliott led Virginia to its most wins in a single season in 2025, finishing atop the ACC standings and coming just a few plays away from earning a spot in the College Football Playoff. The question is, then, how far can the Cavaliers go in 2026?

Part of Elliott’s vision is handling success, which includes managing both internal and external expectations. It also includes building upon previous seasons. This is where the roster’s wealth of experience becomes paramount.

Of the 28 graduate students on this roster, not all arrived at Virginia as freshmen — 22 of them started their collegiate careers elsewhere. Over half of those 22 journeymen are new to the program this year, coming from across the Big Ten, SEC and mid-major schools.

“[To win], you clearly state the vision and you are particular in the people that you bring in and make sure that they align with the vision,” Elliott said. “And then you stay grounded to the principles that you set in place for the players and the staff, and you go to work every single day, and you keep an inside-out mentality.”

The foundation is clear. As for the abundance of veterans, Elliott hopes they can lead Virginia to the first College Football Playoff appearance in program history — the next step for a budding program.

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