CHARLOTTE – When Virginia football players walked into the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte last December ahead of their school’s second-ever appearance in an ACC Championship Game, they waited with baited breath.

This nervous energy did not come from speaking with media members, or from anxiety about playing on the Carolina Panthers’ homefield for the first time.

No, some of the Cavaliers’ excitement came from the possibility of something a little more unexpected.

Virginia players, on top of being ready to play, were simply excited to see the stadium’s elevator doors, after head coach Tony Elliott had promised they would be decorated blue in honor of the ACC Championship Game.

These were not any regular doors, Elliott told his players. These doors signified status, a successful season, and a landmark of working towards a goal.

“I cast a vision for the players that you want to go to the ACC Championship Game because they decorate the elevators,” Elliot said at the ACC Kickoff event in Charlotte Wednesday. “They’re like ‘Nah coach’, and I’m like ‘Yeah they decorate the elevators, it’s awesome!’ And then we get to the ACC Championship and they didn’t quite decorate them like they did back then and the guys were like ‘Coach! We were looking forward to the elevators.’”

At the Kickoff event held at the Hilton Charlotte Uptown, Elliott said the ACC-logo clad banners decorating the elevator doors are more like what he remembers.

“See boys, they do decorate the elevators nicely for big time things!” he told his players, six months after the initial disappointment.

Elliott remembers the decorated elevators and all the inner-workings of the ACC Championship operation well, after winning seven conference titles on staff at Clemson, first as a running backs coach, and then as a co-offensive coordinator for seven years. 

After winning the Broyles Assistant Coach of the Year Award in 2017 and helping Clemson to its first two national championships in over 30 years, Elliott was hired as Virginia’s head coach in 2021.

In 2025, in his fourth full season with the Cavaliers, Elliott led his program to an 11-3 record, along with the championship game appearance, making the best finish in team history.

As he got deeper into his tenure as Virginia’s head coach, ahead of the prolific 2025 year, Elliott started to understand the importance of casting a vision for a season, even if it is as simple as helping players visualize the doors they could be walking through on the way to play in a championship game. 

This idea, he said, came from a man he calls his mentor and friend– a man who happens to be the winningest coach of all time in the ACC.

Elliott’s propensity to vision casting came from Dabo Swinney. And it started with “Swinney-isms” like decorated doors.

“Those little things, (like the doors) I’m starting to now recall them,” Elliott said. “I can kind of go, ‘Oh now I see why coach (Swinney) put such an emphasis on that,’ maybe able to connect some dots.”

The commitment to casting a vision remained the same even in defeat last season, after Elliott’s Cavaliers left Charlotte and the elevators with barren doors without a victory, and took home a painful loss to Duke, despite being heavily favored.

In the locker room after, which most likely sported some ACC decorations, Elliott knew what to do, drawing from years of experience. 

He needed to cast a vision.

“True story, I remember we just lost the ACC Championship, like ‘what am I gonna do?’” Elliott said. “I’m gonna go in there and cast a vision for where we’re going next. And so just a lot of those things I’m able to carry with me and help me continue to move the program forward.”

Swinney and Elliott, for the second year in a row, will not have a chance to match up this season, as Clemson and Virginia are not scheduled to play. But, theoretically, the Tigers and Cavaliers could meet up in the ACC Championship Game.

“Wouldn’t that be fun,” Elliott said.