Corn got an OC spot at Sam Houston after VT, I'm sure there's a lower tier program that would accept Fuente. His reasoning for not wanting to coach is valid, hell it's hard being a fan sometimes with all this new stuff...
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Man to go from head coach of a P5 program taking over from a former National Coach of the Year who brought the program to the National Championship Game and multiple major bowls and conference championships with at the very least conference title expectations of his own performance to being so far out of coaching he can only get a radio job is one hell of a downfall
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Or....he has so much money from said previous job he has no need to work that hard/deal with all the new bullsh*t in college sports and this keeps him close to home where he has daughters in high school. I believe his daughters are big into volleyball and knowing the schedule my brother keeps for his daughter in high end volleyball that's a huge commitment in itself.
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Yeah.... based on his buyout alone he could be sitting on $400k a year in earnings if he simply put those funds in a money market account at current rates. Why put up with the shit storm if you don't have to.
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This. If I had his buyout the only thing that would bring me back is ego and/or a whole lotta $$$. He may have decided that he's got enough and that the stresses that come with the HC job simply aren't worth it.
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Yeah it's shocking, unprecedented really. On a personal level, I don't really blame him. Being a head coach in college has to be an absolute shit job these days, so if you have the money to do what you want and not have to coach again, good for you.
But, typically most people in that profession are pretty proud and aspirational. They just move on to the next challenge. Fu basically just fell off the face of the earth. Definitely not cut out for major football coaching if he's just done.
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But, typically most people in that profession are pretty proud and aspirational. They just move on to the next challenge. Fu basically just fell off the face of the earth. Definitely not cut out for major football coaching if he's just done.
Yuuuuup. To just not take any other kind of coaching jobs and settle into radio, man it just looks like a guy who doesn't have the stones to be in the position we hired him to be 10 years ago. Not wanting to play the game anymore puts our inability to give any ounce of a shit in recruiting while he was here in a completely different perspective. When the going got tough, he bailed.
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Or he just got rich without having to work anymore for it, and bailed. I know how I'd be with that kind of bank account, and even radio commentary would be more than I'd bother with.
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Most successful coaches- and people for that matter- aren't wired that way. Fuente took over a program in Memphis that had zero support/facilities/good players. Total dumpster fire. Lazy people don't do that. Hungry people do that. Any coach at his level didn't get there being lazy or resting on their salary. I doubt he just mailed it in. I just think he couldn't adjust to a bigger job.
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Well, I'm definitely lazy, I'll own up to it. At least until I get hungry, that is. But of course, I understand your point and agree with you about successful people being driven.
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They made building a program so much harder! In a way I love it, but it's so much more daunting even with Virginia Tech. I'll give it to them that they got some aspects annoyingly accurate. In my first season I whiffed on all but like 4 of my initial recruiting board with Clemson and Penn St reliably beating me out. I also lost a number of transfer portal players for various reasons (brand name, playing time, championship contender), but portaled a bunch of good replacements that have me at # 5 in the country now.
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Typically other jobs would eat into his buyout, so if he got paid $1.5 mil to be and OC in his last year of buyout then VT pays 1.5m less. But if it's last two years then VT pays 3m less.
I doubt we wrote in a clause for radio announcer.
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He is just either A) Lazy, B) enjoying time with the kids, C) tarnished by how badly he failed here, D) living of the invested buyout, E) All of the above.
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I'm not above Fuente bashing by any means and I think if the guy really wanted to coach again he'd find a place to coach. I just don't think he wants to coach right now. Did VT break him? Maybe. Was it Covid (he seems pretty set on continuing to blame Covid, even half a decade later)? I don't know. But I genuinely believe that he just doesn't want to coach. I don't think color commentary is really his forte but I guess he'll try it out for a season and then make up some excuse to quit if he doesn't like it.
I just don't really see it as a downfall so much as he just isn't interested in dealing with the new era of college football. I don't really blame him. It's not enjoyable as a fan - I can't imagine how much more of a PITA it is as a coach. Coaching wasn't an easy job to begin with - now, unless you're at one of the bluebloods, it's 100X harder than it was before. At some point, things get to be so difficult that there remains little to no joy left in them. I think Fuente reached that point. I think he still loves the sport and would like to be connected to it in some way but the juice ain't worth the squeeze as a coach for him and I'm fine with that
I'll still make fun of him though. I gotta try to catch a TCU game to hear his "color commentary" - I'm sure they'll ban plastic water bottles in the booth.
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I think you've nailed it here. Fuente strikes me as very much in a Gary Patterson mold in terms of program building and what he wants to deal with in CFB. Patterson was a legend and was forced out/left TCU because he couldn't manage the transfer portal & NIL stuff. I can very easily see Fuente being similar here - especially as a guy who coached under Patterson. It's not why he was in the business. Compound that with basically having to restart with another G5 level program (there were rumors he was considered for the UAB job a couple years ago) to build back up and I'm sure he and his family don't think it's worthwhile.
It's definitely weird seeing a coach do this - they're all wired so differently from most of us. In a weird way I commend him for being able to put his competitiveness in the back seat and just be with his family.
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was forced out/left TCU because he couldn't manage the transfer portal & NIL stuff.
I'd go even earlier in the changing college football landscape... Peterson wanted to be a ball coach. Since the Saban-ization of college football, there's no room for being a 'ball coach' at the P4 level - you gotta be a CEO.
Or you go to the G5/6 level and be a ball coach, but that sounds miserable.
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Did VT break him? Maybe. Was it Covid (he seems pretty set on continuing to blame Covid, even half a decade later)? I don't know. But I genuinely believe that he just doesn't want to coach
I do think this is part of it... 2020 was grueling on and off the field for the football.
Then, instead of being swiftly put out of his misery, he hobbled back to VT as a lame duck coach in 2021... He was hated by the fanbase, knew that there were millions of dollars being raised for the next guy that he was unable to tap into.
I bet that two year period did a number on him and his family...
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I think it would have been a lot better for everyone if he had been fired after the 2019 season. Or, at least told that he had to replace Cornelsen or find another job himself.
I think there's a reasonable chance that if he'd left Tech in some way in 2019 he'd still be coaching today. There's no guarantee that we'd be any better or worse if that had happened since Whit seems to struggle with making football coaching hires but who knows
I just think that keeping Fuente around for another few years was detrimental to both him and VT
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He should have been put out to pasture after the 2019 Duke game. Not just because that game was an abomination where Coach Cutcliffe of all people ran up the score on us, but with the absolute disaster that came out shortly after about the way the 1999 team was treated that week and during the game. There were enough red flags at that time to close a coastline, and we only hurt ourselves that much more by not pulling the trigger then, when we absolutely should have.
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If we had lost that next week to Miami, I think something would have happened. Hendon Hooker and Jerry Kill saved his job in 2019. The heat was even ratcheting up in the national media - I remember on Gameday the morning before the Miami game the whole panel was calling out Fuente saying it just wasn't working at VT.
Honestly, I think after how badly 2019 went, then the Baylor flirtation which blew up in Fu's face, yeah I strongly think he was checked out in 2020 (then dealing with COVID) and 2021. Just going through the motions at that point.
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I also distinctly remember at one point during that 2019 Duke game broadcast after we were getting crushed, we finally put Hooker in who clearly looked more athletic and capable, and it cut to a shot of Mike Vick and Coach Beamer shaking their heads talking about what they were seeing on the field and trying to cover their mouths (likely knew the camera was on them.) I knew at that point Fu was in way over his head.
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Sitting in the stands that night, I was beyond pissed. Again, teams not named Ohio State and Alabama lose games. They do. I am fully aware that we won't go undefeated every year. The frustration for hokies fans is losses like THAT one- for the past decade, we lose to way way way too many dogshit teams. Way too many. We are a signature win for ODU, Liberty, Neil Brown, Dino Babers far too fucking often. We will never beat Miami any time soon, games with Pitt and BC are coin flips AT BEST- and name something those 2 programs have done? its fucking maddening. We were a 7 OT miracle away from never beating fossil Mack Brown on his return.
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we're all wrong once in a while, bar. Don't beat yourself up over it :P
edit to add:
and in fairness, it wasn't really so clear cut by the end of 2019 either. The flags were there but there was also the midyear renaissance that kinda threw us off the scent a bit. By the end of 2019 I was definitely confident that Cornelsen wasn't the right guy for the job he had(in fact, I thought he could have been canned after 2018). I was less sure on Fuente - I think going into 2020 I was disappointed that he hadn't parted ways with Corny but Fuente still had some rope IIRC, so long as his offense went ham in 2020 (which, clearly, it did not). I think by the end of 2019 I was sort of at a place where I thought Fuente could save his own job if he parted ways with Corny but if he bet his job on him he'd have to really outperform expectations to keep my faith. He didn't part ways with him, he did bet his job on Corny, and Corny subsequently stunk it up, predictably, so then by the middle of 2020 I KNEW Fuente wasn't the right guy but then "optics" made it hard to fire him (I still think we should have anyway, optics be dammed-but that's a different story). And to think, if Fuente had just gone out and gotten a competent OC after 2018 (which, I think most of us could tell by then that Corny wasn't it) our entire program trajectory might have been different.
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If I told anyone on this board in 2005 that we are bungling games in Lane against Duke, losing to ODU, getting embarrassed and laughed at by pitt, recruiting in the 50's etc you would be laughed off here. Fu was so bad, those things happened and he still wasn't fired.
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It was a wild time... With the benefit of hindsights, we saw that a lot of really smart people made a lot of poor decisions on how to handle it. The idea that a college football coach is supposed to have an informed take on how to handle covid is wild. University presidents were struggling with it.
I don't envy anyone who was charged with leading others during that 1-2 year time period.
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I feel like the current landscape of recruiting would actually be good for fuente if he is at a school that buys players and he can just call plays. They won't care that he doesn't have recruiting charisma when all that matters is the NIL check.
But if I am him I am totally doing a barista-FIRE type job and that appears to be what he found.
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I met the guy a couple times. Nice guy- seriously not an asshole and he loved VT. His issue was - like so many others- he thought he could "out football" and "out smart" the competition with play calling/film/etc. Not unlike Scot Leoffler. Fu was not interested AT ALL in kissing babies, kissing donors asses, and once he targeted a kid to recruit, the moment the handlers, high school coaches with GEDs etc started pressing his buttons, he wasn't interested. When he got an extension, that is when he felt he could dig his heels in on Cornelson and do things his way. That was his downfall. I said it on here and will say it again- when losing Mook Reyonolds kills your whole operation, when TSL changes their recruiting metric to try to make it look better than terrible, when Pittsburgh comes to the line and tells you what they are running and still have a record day, when ODU lights up Bud Foster and Charlie Wiles for 600 yards- you can't coach at this level. You simply can't. P4 football is competetive and yeah, you win some lose some- but the bullshit highlighted above shows you aren't close- you don't get it, its over your head. And that's OK- he's gone, but the guy that hired him is still here, and we are still sitting with a vegas O/U of 6 wins in year 4 of Pry.
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He did our bowl game with Minnesota on radio. He sounds just like - Justin Fuente... dry, boring, only comments on offensive strategy or the what the offense is showing the defense.
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He's a football nerd, through and through. I've made the comparison several times in the past - he's the real-life version of Eric Taylor. All he cares about is X's and O's and doing right by his players.
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I wonder if he could've coached at this level if someone else was doing the recruiting heavy lifting and handing him typical VT recruiting classes. He did pretty well with Beamer's players in 2016 (though Cornelson did drag him down). What drug him down more than anything was talent, the jimmes and the joes. He didn't want to recruit, and couldn't bring in the talent. But if he did have someone bring in the talent, could he have succeeded at VT? He didn't just forget how to coach, did he?
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If Devon Hunter was Aaron Rouse, Payoute was Josh Morgan, and Quincy Patterson was - hell- Kyrone Drones, we might not be having this conversation. He landed some good players but 90% of them never posted. Call it development, etc but his 4 star hit rate was awful.
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He couldn't be the head coach at this level if he had a recruiter doing heavy lifting because he still has to close. And he'd have to keep them too.
In game stuff I only remember the liberty timeout as a huge screw up. But the game prep wasnt good, but there were a number of times that we made adjustments and won, which is opposite of Pry who has not won a game when behind at half.
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Agree he was friendly. Not warm. Didn't have that magical way of making you feel special. But polite. Could hold a conversation.
when losing Mook Reyonolds kills your whole operation
I heard rumors shortly after Fuente was fired about how the whole Mook thing was handled... If I had heard those same stories in 2017 I would've been out on Fuente way earlier than I was.
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The source was Mook on a podcast - so take it with a grain of salt - but he basically said that Fuente just started ignoring him and giving the him the cold shoulder for half a year, then as soon as there was an excuse to kick him off the team, Fuente did.
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Mook, Kumah, Tre Turner couldn't stand him. The only starters that liked him IIRC were Rogers, McLaughlin, and the Edmunds- who like everybody because they are pros.
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Right - starting with overseeing a roster that had one fucking safety/OLB on it that could actually tackle... so when that kid gets pulled over with weed, you fucking defense sucks ass. Look at the root cause.. one good safety/olb on the roster.
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I know I'm in the minority, but I liked Fuente and think he was handed an impossible situation. You give Fuente, the resources that Pry has now and you likely have a much different outcome. I also dont blame him for interviewing for that Baylor gig. He likely knew what kind of budget was needed to build success and knew he wasnt getting it here.
Saban walked away from the game and it wasnt because he didnt think he could coach anymore. This isn't me comparing Fuente to Saban. It's me saying being a college coach is an even more brutal job today than it was in the previous generation and there are very few people that are going to be successful at it and there are even fewer that will want to do it for long term.
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While Fuente was in a bad position, he still had his own issues. I dont think more staff would have been a solution as he struggled being the CEO head coach and more people doesn't help that. But 2020 might look different if he had budget for Odom to replace Bud, and budget to replace Cornelson.
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I think there's a bit of truth to that. But part of being a CFB hc is lobbying donors and your AD for resources. If you can't do that, you'll fall off eventually
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He struggled (being nice here) with building and maintaining relationships; players, coaches, pipelines, Virginia recruiting footprint, donors, and ex-players. More resources would not overcome what he lacked in other areas
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Saban walked away from the game and it wasnt because he didnt think he could coach anymore. This isn't me comparing Fuente to Saban. It's me saying being a college coach is an even more brutal job today than it was in the previous generation and there are very few people that are going to be successful at it and there are even fewer that will want to do it for long term.
Fuente isn't nearly the coach Saban was (duh) but they're cut from the same cloth.
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Saban has the self-discipline and mental toughness to not let feelings get in the way of firing under-performing coaches and personnel in order to improve the football system he devised. He was/is brilliantly ruthless. That is why he won, brutal honesty, loyalty to his system, and acute knowledge of football skills. He was a perfect fit for the "football as a religion" crowd in Alabama.
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Comments
More like no one has any interest in making him their coach.
Corn got an OC spot at Sam Houston after VT, I'm sure there's a lower tier program that would accept Fuente. His reasoning for not wanting to coach is valid, hell it's hard being a fan sometimes with all this new stuff...
Sam Houston Institute of Technology.
Man to go from head coach of a P5 program taking over from a former National Coach of the Year who brought the program to the National Championship Game and multiple major bowls and conference championships with at the very least conference title expectations of his own performance to being so far out of coaching he can only get a radio job is one hell of a downfall
When I saw the headline I thought he'd be an analyst or some insignificant backroom role. I LOL'd when I saw radio color commentator.
Or....he has so much money from said previous job he has no need to work that hard/deal with all the new bullsh*t in college sports and this keeps him close to home where he has daughters in high school. I believe his daughters are big into volleyball and knowing the schedule my brother keeps for his daughter in high end volleyball that's a huge commitment in itself.
Yeah.... based on his buyout alone he could be sitting on $400k a year in earnings if he simply put those funds in a money market account at current rates. Why put up with the shit storm if you don't have to.
This. If I had his buyout the only thing that would bring me back is ego and/or a whole lotta $$$. He may have decided that he's got enough and that the stresses that come with the HC job simply aren't worth it.
Yeah it's shocking, unprecedented really. On a personal level, I don't really blame him. Being a head coach in college has to be an absolute shit job these days, so if you have the money to do what you want and not have to coach again, good for you.
But, typically most people in that profession are pretty proud and aspirational. They just move on to the next challenge. Fu basically just fell off the face of the earth. Definitely not cut out for major football coaching if he's just done.
Yuuuuup. To just not take any other kind of coaching jobs and settle into radio, man it just looks like a guy who doesn't have the stones to be in the position we hired him to be 10 years ago. Not wanting to play the game anymore puts our inability to give any ounce of a shit in recruiting while he was here in a completely different perspective. When the going got tough, he bailed.
Or he just got rich without having to work anymore for it, and bailed. I know how I'd be with that kind of bank account, and even radio commentary would be more than I'd bother with.
Most successful coaches- and people for that matter- aren't wired that way. Fuente took over a program in Memphis that had zero support/facilities/good players. Total dumpster fire. Lazy people don't do that. Hungry people do that. Any coach at his level didn't get there being lazy or resting on their salary. I doubt he just mailed it in. I just think he couldn't adjust to a bigger job.
Who are you and why did you hijack dcwilson40's account?
Well, I'm definitely lazy, I'll own up to it. At least until I get hungry, that is. But of course, I understand your point and agree with you about successful people being driven.
Dude, I can't even stomach being a HC in the latest offering from EA...
They made building a program so much harder! In a way I love it, but it's so much more daunting even with Virginia Tech. I'll give it to them that they got some aspects annoyingly accurate. In my first season I whiffed on all but like 4 of my initial recruiting board with Clemson and Penn St reliably beating me out. I also lost a number of transfer portal players for various reasons (brand name, playing time, championship contender), but portaled a bunch of good replacements that have me at # 5 in the country now.
or he's still living off of VT's dime!
Typically other jobs would eat into his buyout, so if he got paid $1.5 mil to be and OC in his last year of buyout then VT pays 1.5m less. But if it's last two years then VT pays 3m less.
I doubt we wrote in a clause for radio announcer.
I thought we paid him $8.75 lump sum as part of the negotiated buyout. So he's got the cash free and clear.
He is just either A) Lazy, B) enjoying time with the kids, C) tarnished by how badly he failed here, D) living of the invested buyout, E) All of the above.
I'm not above Fuente bashing by any means and I think if the guy really wanted to coach again he'd find a place to coach. I just don't think he wants to coach right now. Did VT break him? Maybe. Was it Covid (he seems pretty set on continuing to blame Covid, even half a decade later)? I don't know. But I genuinely believe that he just doesn't want to coach. I don't think color commentary is really his forte but I guess he'll try it out for a season and then make up some excuse to quit if he doesn't like it.
I just don't really see it as a downfall so much as he just isn't interested in dealing with the new era of college football. I don't really blame him. It's not enjoyable as a fan - I can't imagine how much more of a PITA it is as a coach. Coaching wasn't an easy job to begin with - now, unless you're at one of the bluebloods, it's 100X harder than it was before. At some point, things get to be so difficult that there remains little to no joy left in them. I think Fuente reached that point. I think he still loves the sport and would like to be connected to it in some way but the juice ain't worth the squeeze as a coach for him and I'm fine with that
I'll still make fun of him though. I gotta try to catch a TCU game to hear his "color commentary" - I'm sure they'll ban plastic water bottles in the booth.
I think you've nailed it here. Fuente strikes me as very much in a Gary Patterson mold in terms of program building and what he wants to deal with in CFB. Patterson was a legend and was forced out/left TCU because he couldn't manage the transfer portal & NIL stuff. I can very easily see Fuente being similar here - especially as a guy who coached under Patterson. It's not why he was in the business. Compound that with basically having to restart with another G5 level program (there were rumors he was considered for the UAB job a couple years ago) to build back up and I'm sure he and his family don't think it's worthwhile.
It's definitely weird seeing a coach do this - they're all wired so differently from most of us. In a weird way I commend him for being able to put his competitiveness in the back seat and just be with his family.
I'd go even earlier in the changing college football landscape... Peterson wanted to be a ball coach. Since the Saban-ization of college football, there's no room for being a 'ball coach' at the P4 level - you gotta be a CEO.
Or you go to the G5/6 level and be a ball coach, but that sounds miserable.
I do think this is part of it... 2020 was grueling on and off the field for the football.
Then, instead of being swiftly put out of his misery, he hobbled back to VT as a lame duck coach in 2021... He was hated by the fanbase, knew that there were millions of dollars being raised for the next guy that he was unable to tap into.
I bet that two year period did a number on him and his family...
I think it would have been a lot better for everyone if he had been fired after the 2019 season. Or, at least told that he had to replace Cornelsen or find another job himself.
I think there's a reasonable chance that if he'd left Tech in some way in 2019 he'd still be coaching today. There's no guarantee that we'd be any better or worse if that had happened since Whit seems to struggle with making football coaching hires but who knows
I just think that keeping Fuente around for another few years was detrimental to both him and VT
He should have been put out to pasture after the 2019 Duke game. Not just because that game was an abomination where Coach Cutcliffe of all people ran up the score on us, but with the absolute disaster that came out shortly after about the way the 1999 team was treated that week and during the game. There were enough red flags at that time to close a coastline, and we only hurt ourselves that much more by not pulling the trigger then, when we absolutely should have.
Love the phrasing and the vivid image it evokes....
Sadly the undertow grabbed the VT program.....(sadly NOT /s )
If we had lost that next week to Miami, I think something would have happened. Hendon Hooker and Jerry Kill saved his job in 2019. The heat was even ratcheting up in the national media - I remember on Gameday the morning before the Miami game the whole panel was calling out Fuente saying it just wasn't working at VT.
Honestly, I think after how badly 2019 went, then the Baylor flirtation which blew up in Fu's face, yeah I strongly think he was checked out in 2020 (then dealing with COVID) and 2021. Just going through the motions at that point.
Completely agree. And its around this time that we absolutely cratered in recruiting as well. It was like we stopped trying as a program
I also distinctly remember at one point during that 2019 Duke game broadcast after we were getting crushed, we finally put Hooker in who clearly looked more athletic and capable, and it cut to a shot of Mike Vick and Coach Beamer shaking their heads talking about what they were seeing on the field and trying to cover their mouths (likely knew the camera was on them.) I knew at that point Fu was in way over his head.
Sitting in the stands that night, I was beyond pissed. Again, teams not named Ohio State and Alabama lose games. They do. I am fully aware that we won't go undefeated every year. The frustration for hokies fans is losses like THAT one- for the past decade, we lose to way way way too many dogshit teams. Way too many. We are a signature win for ODU, Liberty, Neil Brown, Dino Babers far too fucking often. We will never beat Miami any time soon, games with Pitt and BC are coin flips AT BEST- and name something those 2 programs have done? its fucking maddening. We were a 7 OT miracle away from never beating fossil Mack Brown on his return.
Yea... I was one of those people who thought the 2019 turnaround was evidence to keep him on. Clearly I was wrong.
we're all wrong once in a while, bar. Don't beat yourself up over it :P
edit to add:
and in fairness, it wasn't really so clear cut by the end of 2019 either. The flags were there but there was also the midyear renaissance that kinda threw us off the scent a bit. By the end of 2019 I was definitely confident that Cornelsen wasn't the right guy for the job he had(in fact, I thought he could have been canned after 2018). I was less sure on Fuente - I think going into 2020 I was disappointed that he hadn't parted ways with Corny but Fuente still had some rope IIRC, so long as his offense went ham in 2020 (which, clearly, it did not). I think by the end of 2019 I was sort of at a place where I thought Fuente could save his own job if he parted ways with Corny but if he bet his job on him he'd have to really outperform expectations to keep my faith. He didn't part ways with him, he did bet his job on Corny, and Corny subsequently stunk it up, predictably, so then by the middle of 2020 I KNEW Fuente wasn't the right guy but then "optics" made it hard to fire him (I still think we should have anyway, optics be dammed-but that's a different story). And to think, if Fuente had just gone out and gotten a competent OC after 2018 (which, I think most of us could tell by then that Corny wasn't it) our entire program trajectory might have been different.
If I told anyone on this board in 2005 that we are bungling games in Lane against Duke, losing to ODU, getting embarrassed and laughed at by pitt, recruiting in the 50's etc you would be laughed off here. Fu was so bad, those things happened and he still wasn't fired.
Everyone would be pumped and think that we are scouting better than anyone else like Nebraska in the 70s lol
But yeah I get your point
I think I was pretty high on the team going into 2020 pre covid. Hooker, blackshear, the OL, Foster's handpicked successor... lolololololol
I really do believe the covid piece, though .... we managed it badly and it impacted our chances
It was a wild time... With the benefit of hindsights, we saw that a lot of really smart people made a lot of poor decisions on how to handle it. The idea that a college football coach is supposed to have an informed take on how to handle covid is wild. University presidents were struggling with it.
I don't envy anyone who was charged with leading others during that 1-2 year time period.
And not just university presidents either! Seemingly everyone had their own unique opinion on the best way to handle things
ACC coach of the year 9 years ago too
I feel like the current landscape of recruiting would actually be good for fuente if he is at a school that buys players and he can just call plays. They won't care that he doesn't have recruiting charisma when all that matters is the NIL check.
But if I am him I am totally doing a barista-FIRE type job and that appears to be what he found.
I met the guy a couple times. Nice guy- seriously not an asshole and he loved VT. His issue was - like so many others- he thought he could "out football" and "out smart" the competition with play calling/film/etc. Not unlike Scot Leoffler. Fu was not interested AT ALL in kissing babies, kissing donors asses, and once he targeted a kid to recruit, the moment the handlers, high school coaches with GEDs etc started pressing his buttons, he wasn't interested. When he got an extension, that is when he felt he could dig his heels in on Cornelson and do things his way. That was his downfall. I said it on here and will say it again- when losing Mook Reyonolds kills your whole operation, when TSL changes their recruiting metric to try to make it look better than terrible, when Pittsburgh comes to the line and tells you what they are running and still have a record day, when ODU lights up Bud Foster and Charlie Wiles for 600 yards- you can't coach at this level. You simply can't. P4 football is competetive and yeah, you win some lose some- but the bullshit highlighted above shows you aren't close- you don't get it, its over your head. And that's OK- he's gone, but the guy that hired him is still here, and we are still sitting with a vegas O/U of 6 wins in year 4 of Pry.
yeah. sounds less like "nobody wants him" than it does "he just doesnt want it any more"
but aren't color commentators supposed to be... colorful?
He did our bowl game with Minnesota on radio. He sounds just like - Justin Fuente... dry, boring, only comments on offensive strategy or the what the offense is showing the defense.
He's a football nerd, through and through. I've made the comparison several times in the past - he's the real-life version of Eric Taylor. All he cares about is X's and O's and doing right by his players.
Beige-gray is a color, right?
Greige, and yes
I wonder if he could've coached at this level if someone else was doing the recruiting heavy lifting and handing him typical VT recruiting classes. He did pretty well with Beamer's players in 2016 (though Cornelson did drag him down). What drug him down more than anything was talent, the jimmes and the joes. He didn't want to recruit, and couldn't bring in the talent. But if he did have someone bring in the talent, could he have succeeded at VT? He didn't just forget how to coach, did he?
If Devon Hunter was Aaron Rouse, Payoute was Josh Morgan, and Quincy Patterson was - hell- Kyrone Drones, we might not be having this conversation. He landed some good players but 90% of them never posted. Call it development, etc but his 4 star hit rate was awful.
If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bicycle
If my Irish grandmother had wheels, she'd be a dad gum Harley.
He would do great in a Jerry Kill-type role. Wouldn't want him doing anything else.
He couldn't be the head coach at this level if he had a recruiter doing heavy lifting because he still has to close. And he'd have to keep them too.
In game stuff I only remember the liberty timeout as a huge screw up. But the game prep wasnt good, but there were a number of times that we made adjustments and won, which is opposite of Pry who has not won a game when behind at half.
He could be one of those OC that isn't expected to recruit. If I were a fan of another team and Fuente was announced as my OC, I'd be pretty jazzed.
Agree he was friendly. Not warm. Didn't have that magical way of making you feel special. But polite. Could hold a conversation.
I heard rumors shortly after Fuente was fired about how the whole Mook thing was handled... If I had heard those same stories in 2017 I would've been out on Fuente way earlier than I was.
Oh do tell
The source was Mook on a podcast - so take it with a grain of salt - but he basically said that Fuente just started ignoring him and giving the him the cold shoulder for half a year, then as soon as there was an excuse to kick him off the team, Fuente did.
Mook, Kumah, Tre Turner couldn't stand him. The only starters that liked him IIRC were Rogers, McLaughlin, and the Edmunds- who like everybody because they are pros.
Right - starting with overseeing a roster that had one fucking safety/OLB on it that could actually tackle... so when that kid gets pulled over with weed, you fucking defense sucks ass. Look at the root cause.. one good safety/olb on the roster.
I know I'm in the minority, but I liked Fuente and think he was handed an impossible situation. You give Fuente, the resources that Pry has now and you likely have a much different outcome. I also dont blame him for interviewing for that Baylor gig. He likely knew what kind of budget was needed to build success and knew he wasnt getting it here.
Saban walked away from the game and it wasnt because he didnt think he could coach anymore. This isn't me comparing Fuente to Saban. It's me saying being a college coach is an even more brutal job today than it was in the previous generation and there are very few people that are going to be successful at it and there are even fewer that will want to do it for long term.
While Fuente was in a bad position, he still had his own issues. I dont think more staff would have been a solution as he struggled being the CEO head coach and more people doesn't help that. But 2020 might look different if he had budget for Odom to replace Bud, and budget to replace Cornelson.
I think there's a bit of truth to that. But part of being a CFB hc is lobbying donors and your AD for resources. If you can't do that, you'll fall off eventually
He struggled (being nice here) with building and maintaining relationships; players, coaches, pipelines, Virginia recruiting footprint, donors, and ex-players. More resources would not overcome what he lacked in other areas
You could have just said "He struggled here"
Fuente isn't nearly the coach Saban was (duh) but they're cut from the same cloth.
Saban has the self-discipline and mental toughness to not let feelings get in the way of firing under-performing coaches and personnel in order to improve the football system he devised. He was/is brilliantly ruthless. That is why he won, brutal honesty, loyalty to his system, and acute knowledge of football skills. He was a perfect fit for the "football as a religion" crowd in Alabama.