Virginia announces disbanding of football, doubling down on basketball

Eds. note: This article was originally published on April 1, 2015 as part of our April Fool's coverage.

Virginia Athletics Director Craig Littlepage announced Wednesday morning that the University would be undergoing some drastic changes to the structure of its athletics program. Specifically, he announced that the University would be cutting its football program and replacing it with a second Virginia Men's Basketball team. This comes on the heels of today's earlier announcement that Scott Stadium would be used to house a giant statue of Tony Bennett.

The details have yet to be worked out, but Littlepage said in today's press conference that, after negotiating with ACC Commissioner John Swofford, the two teams -- Virginia Men's Blue and Virginia Men's Orange -- would not be scheduled as each other's conference rivals, but would be forced to play each other at least once each year as a conference game.

"We understand that it's increasingly difficult for our fans to support our football program since that loss to Georgia Tech in 1995," Littlepage said in a statement released earlier today. "But we're at an all-time high in terms of basketball support, and we think it's important to capitalize on this before Tony goes back to Wisconsin while it lasts."

"Listen, if the NCAA Selection Committee is hell bent on ending our season early by underseeding Michigan State and placing them in an early matchup with us," Littlepage said, "then let them do it. Guess what, suckers? You only have one Michigan State and you've got two Virginiae."

When asked what would become of former Virginia Football Head Coach Mike London, Littlepage commented that, contractually, it would be extremely expensive to let him go at this time.

"But London's a really nice guy," Littlepage added. "And there is always room for the nice guys."

Through some investigation and tracking down sources, we found that London has replaced Ms. Kathy during the Newcomb lunch rush. We tried to reach out to London for content, but received only a note. "Busy. Saving my breaks until the end of the shift. Hope it carries over."

We also caught up with Littlepage to ask who he had in mind to coach the second basketball team. Taken aback, Littlepage responded, "We didn't really think about that. We just kind of assumed he'd do both?"

We spoke with Virginia Men's Blue and Virginia Men's Orange Head Coach Tony Bennett to find out how the arrangement would work.

"To be honest, I wasn't thrilled. The reason we play to limit possessions and reinforce defense is essentially to slow the pace of the game down as slow as the NCAA could tolerate. And we're getting pretty good at it, too. During one defensive possession against Harvard last year, I was able to pick up my dry cleaning before the shot clock violation was called."

When asked whether the NCAA would allow a school to have multiple teams, Littlepage responded, "We've reached an agreement with the NCAA to allow for this. Turns out, when you're the only school whose students actually take and pass real classes on their own, you get a lot of leverage."