Dwight Vick interviewed Frank and Shane Beamer as part of his ongoing Vicktory Life Legacy Spotlight series.
There are too many great life lessons and anecdotes to summarize, so it's worth watching the entire interview. From a football perspective, it was interesting to hear Frank's assessment of why the Hokies came up short against Florida State in the national championship.
"I go back to the '99 national championship game and the one regret I have as a coach at Virginia Tech is we didn't get back, and win it. In that game I thought we were good enough to win it. We had good enough personnel to win that game. I thought back to the nineties when we played Florida State a lot, and knew how great a talent they had. And that influenced me into some of my decisions during that game. We faked a punt, didn't get it, and now you give up field position. We faked a field goal, didn't get it, and gave up field position. And we didn't have to. We were good enough to beat 'em straight up. I believe if we had kicked the ball, played field position, I think in the end we would have won that. I'm disappointed in some of my calls in that game. And then I'm disappointed in the fact we never got back to win it."
Comments
Our starters were as good as their starters, our back ups were light years away from theirs. They were rotating their Dline the whole game and they pulled away in the 4th because they played less minutes.
Also we needed someone better to cover Warrick.
Our QB was better than their entire team...still gutted by the manner of our loss we totally outplayed them that night
I feel like this summarizes VT football from 1998-2013
Pretty sure 2015 can be added to that list.
Agree. Seems like CFB VTF was always 1-2 injury bug attacks away from greatness. Getting 4-star performance out of 2 and 3-star talent is very impressive and an absolute testament to his legendary coaching job and staff. But it takes time to develop, and a single injury equates to a steep drop off in performance.
CFB made some unusual decisions in that game for sure. Finishing with a TD on the opening drive would have been huge. Vick kept us in that game. C. Moore was invisible.
Vick turned the wrong way on the handoff at the goal line on the opening drive or else it would have been a TD.
That and Stith running into a lineman downfield on what could have been a long TD run.
The Michael,Vick experience was awesome, but so was the Peter Warwick show. Cover up Warwick, and Vick could have been the difference.
The one thing we couldn't account for was Peter Warrick. It was very clear, especially late, that our secondary had no answers for him.
Warrick should've remained suspended and not play.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1999/10/08/fsu-standout-wa...
I believe the joke goes that the quote from Bowden was "a felony ain't an NCAA violation". I'm sure that is probably not an actual word for word quote but still pretty much captures the attitude towards that situation.
Still amazes me he was a mediocre pro. Watching his tape, it felt like no one stayed in his zip code.
Things are crazy like that... When you're on a team loaded with talent I think it can be easy to either get lost or blow up since no one can really key on one guy.
I agree with Frank on the fakes. He was a great coach, especially back then which was his heyday, but he made a lot of gambles that he didn't need to make. The fake FG, the fake punt, going for 2 and missing it twice. Special teams were pretty much hurt us all game long with the blocked punt and kick return for TD.
I know FSU was just running out the clock the last half of the the fourth quarter but we outgained them by around 150 yards. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to see what happens if he had coached like we were playing Rutgers and not FSU. Instead of treating every possession like it was do or die, count on the players to make plays and get the ball back. Instead we were going for it all the time and the success percentage on those gambles was closer to 0% then the 50% that you'd expect.
That game was the introduction to the Michael Vick experience for the world. We had a really solid team, no doubt. Most of our ones matched up well with FSU. But Vick put VT on his shoulders in the game down the stretch. Defensively we really had few answers for their passing game, Old Man Weinke and Peter Warrick (luckily Laveraneus Coles was suspended or we would have been in major trouble). Corey Moore was completely neutralized by their OL in that game. I remember as frantic youngin asking my dad where was Corey Moore the whole game.
The bigger what if in VT history to me is if Vick had returned in 2001. No doubt in my mind we run the table and beat Miami in Blacksburg and head to the Rose Bowl over what many consider to be the greatest college team ever assembled. Vick, Suggs, Jones, Davis show would have been too much to handle.
Or if he hadn't hurt his ankle and been unavailable for the Miami game in 2000.
Vick turns the correct way on the first drive, it's 46-36.
Hit the FG, it's 46-39.
Hit the XP instead of going for 2: 46-40.
One drive to win, could have made all the difference.
I have to not think about this game too hard, because there's so many little what ifs that could've gone the other way. Y'all have mostly covered those here
Weren't our starting CB's both out when Peter Warrick really turned on the jets? IIRC, it was true freshman Ronyell Whitaker trying to cover him through most of his big plays because Austin and Midget were both out after suffering ankle injuries. Curiously, if you watch the tape, you see instances of FSU wideouts diving at their ankles earlier in the game...I'll never believe it wasn't intentional.
I seem to remember thinking during the game Corey Moore looked like he was being held an awful lot and it wasn't being called at all. But that might have been alcohol fuel O&M glasses.
I do think the wrong turn on the handoff affected us, including Beamer. We score there instead, maybe Frank's mindset is "we can handle these guys" instead of whatever tailspin got into him and the rest of the team, and we don't end up in a 28-7 hole like we did.
2000, the defense seemed a bit out of sync. Not certain we'd have won the championship if we'd been able to knock off Miami. 2001 - we'd have been undefeated with Vick at QB and baring some kind of meltdown game, would have been hoisting a MNC trophy.