The First Franklin and Friends Presser

James Franklin and the coordinators, Pry, Howle, and Shearer are scheduled to talk to the media today at 11am. To my knowledge this is the first time VT has acknowledged we have any other staff outside of Coach Franklin. Maybe we'll get some insight into how the rest of the staff is shaping up and hear about the LED light purchase among other facilities upgrades.

I won't be doing a full breakdown of this, but I will post the embeds as they become available.

HokieSports Link

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Comments

This is timely to our ongoing discussion. I suppose they're following it closely.

Will the team be sponsored by Marie Callender's, Betty Crocker, Tillamook, or stay brand-aligned with Turkey Hill?

We need to know this team's official dessert stance.

A decade on TKP and it's been time well spent.

Hopefully someone asks Franklin his stance on pie vs cake.

C'mon. He's absolutely team pie.

But pancakes are part of team Cake.

Are they?

I always think of pancakes as their own thing.

Cake is in the name...

its why I prefer waffles

Sometimes I also like them. But then sometimes not.

This is going to be great for the ACC.

That's funny - you're coming across as team waffle.

Press 2 of them around a big hunk of ice cream.

This is going to be great for the ACC.

Toasted frozen waffle cream cheese and jelly sandwich

Thank me later

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Well-played, sir! Subtle humor is awesome!

From the 2018 VT-uva game-"This is when LEGENDS are made!"

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

You're really waffling on your opinion...

“These people are losing their minds. This is beautiful.”

Well crepe, here comes another blintz of food fighting...

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own

But cheesecake is pie.

And Boston Cream Pie is cake

I do art stuff.

My wife makes a Boston creme pie cake that's amazing. Two vanilla layer cakes with custard filling and a dark chocolate ganache poured over the whole thing.

Got the record the other facility upgrades are modernized heating and cooling for the indoor practice facility and a scoreboard/video board replacement in Lane.

"When I was growing up, Virginia Tech was a school that was kicking ass and taking names, and it's time we get back to that" - James Franklin

Is this the first time we have heard from Pry since his firing? I am curious on what the media is going to ask him. It should be interesting.

I think this is the first time anyone other than Franklin is talking with the media. The second episode of Set in Stone featured Pry a bit.

Edit:

Helloooooo Stifler's mom.

you would think so but the questions were not interesting

2/5 on PSU this must retain list (spoiler they only retained 1/5)

Also mentions they hope to keep Earls if Losey leaves....they both are on our staff now

(add if applicable) /s

Can I just say I love' CJF's attention to detail? Beginning of the presser, the mic is way too hot (especially for Franklin who speaks loudly) and causing some feedback issues. He says, "that buzzing is really annoying, can someone fix that?" And literally paused until someone did and thanked them. It's just the little things but man he holds your feet to the fire and commands excellence.

I noticed this right away as well. He doesn't settle for even for the tiniest detail.

I love the tickle of Dickel in my belly

Honestly for the first time since Beamer in his heyday, I feel like we have a true head ball coach in charge of the program. When Franklin speaks, he commands your attention.

No JC Price? I knew he was stepping back due to health or age or something, but is he just retiring?

He is taking a admin role

The taste is so divine
A chemical come alive
Welcome to your vice
Good luck with life
'Cause you can't
You can't
You can't kill me that easily

Definitely some positive points:

"Not in the business of hiring friends." Wonder what this stems from? /s

Three Deep at every position - Not sure if I completely buy it at this point, but it is definitely a good goal.
(Two Deep guys may need to update the name of their podcast.)

Franklin would have hired Pry where ever he ended up.

Good news is that years of 2 beers may make them ready to still do a good podcast while three beers deep

Danny is always open

If someone had told me the Beamer Barn wasn't heated, I'm not sure I would have believed them. Who made that decision to start? Does anyone here know any more about that?

It isn't air conditioned either. It was designed that way to save money and simulate weather conditions for practice. They can open a LOT of windows for good cross ventilation when it is hot, and those same windows and roof design give it a little solar heating in winter.

Gotcha, that certainly makes sense and I 'm not surprised that those are *capabilities* of the facility, but I am surprised that heating was not included. As someone who has spent at least some time working in a warehouse, I know that it's typical for those facilities to have heat but not air conditioning, and that's the configuration I would have expected for a building of that size.

ETA: I thought a part of the 'simulation of weather' was the possibility to simulate weather in the South or CA ahead of a bowl game, or other away games. I'm pretty sure I've heard of other practice facilities where they can increase/decrease the temperature to simulate conditions they are going to be traveling to.

I knew the building didn't have air conditioning, but I was surprised it didn't have heating either.

I could see why putting in AC would be too expensive, but it wouldn't have cost them that much to throw a couple of infrared gas heaters in there.

It likely has to have some type of heating and ventilation system, even if that system is designed to only maintain a minimum setpoint to keep things from freezing, etc. It really does not make sense to fully condition a space of that size unless it is frequently at full occupancy and intended for a stable environment. For intermittent athletic training, minimum heat and proper ventilation would be typical.

Looking at some pictures, they are probably going with Natural Ventilation. The louvers and garage doors probably meet the 4% floor area requirement.

Using forced air heating wouldn't work to well. The building is so tall all the heat would end up at the ceiling.

Just buy some Big Ass Fans to put in the ceiling to blow all the hot air back down. /s

Would they use the extra money they raised to pay for the "Assless" package? /s

They better not!

Just buy some Big Ass Fans...

What exactly is an ass-fan? ;^)

Point of Information: Yes, there was no hyphen in the above comment, but the concept still holds.

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

While the comic is good, Big Ass Fans is actually a very well known manufacturer of large fans for exactly this purpose: https://bigassfans.com/

Just leaving it here for the uninitiated.

TIL. Thanks.

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

They used to have them in Cassell and close enough to the stands that you could read the label

Are they still there?

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Yeah, remember the pure delight the first time I read the name. 19 y/o me was tickled.

Yeah, my buddy is an engineer and gave me one of their ballcaps.
It's a jackass looking back at you with the Big Ass Fans script.
Wondruss.

This is going to be great for the ACC.

As promised:

FYI 28sec of dead air:

Apparently, Shearer didn't get the wear black memo 🙄

It's sometimes/many times very difficult (maybe impossible) for a "star" to accept a "team" role......ego is important, but the key item to handle......the best teams, imo, have "stars" who mesh and are team players. I believe Pry is that "star" who wants to succeed as a team. He's a man of character. Pry's comments about coming back and wanting to be a part of bringing back pride to Tech got my juices flowing. How many of us really thought he'd come back? I'm thrilled.

Really loved him comments. I was rooting for him as HC until the end and I'll be rooting even harder for him as DC.

Every second counts

When he got fired I was saying that nobody is more upset about his lack of success and inability to bring VT back to prominence than Pry himself because he's one of us. He didn't want to win at VT because he wanted Coach Brent Pry to be successful. He wanted to win at VT because he wanted the Hokies to be successful. He loves this place and it's always emanated out of him.

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Facts. Sometimes your just not cut out to be a HC

The taste is so divine
A chemical come alive
Welcome to your vice
Good luck with life
'Cause you can't
You can't
You can't kill me that easily

Very well said.

Thank you!

Maybe a quicker way of describing it is Brent Pry and Mike Young are just townies who also happen to be coaches and get to coach their favorite team.

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Interesting to see Cam Phillips listed as an assistant WR coach. I think this is his first coaching stop, unless I'm missing something, so I'm surprised he isn't starting out in an analyst role.

I think he was assistant WR coach last year

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Hopefully he can coach and develop. Mines can recruit but not sure I've seen much development since his arrival.

Really out of left field, but if any of you have done the magic eye 3d images thing where you have to 'relax your eyes and look through the image', do that while watching the Franklin clip. His black shirt blends in so well with the background that all you see is 2 floating Franklin heads and 4 hands in between the logos behind. It's really weird.

My wife takes the kids and leaves the house while I watch my Hokie games.........nuff said

...if any of you have done the magic eye 3d images thing...

Never have I ever been able to see anything in any of those. I think they're just a prank, and don't contain any deeper images at all.

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

Oh they most certainly do have 3d images in them. Ita all about adjusting your focal length to a distance behind what you're looking at. Some people just can't seem to do it.

My wife takes the kids and leaves the house while I watch my Hokie games.........nuff said

I thought I was just good at spacing out.

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

Don't believe this, hokietopher is part of the conspiracy

If you have ever seen a photo stereograph and used one of them, it can prep you for using a magic eye. They date back to the earliest days of photography and since you can already see the image(s), it can be easier to get your eyes to align on the combined image.

I do art stuff.

Live look at Hokietopher

/s

To quote the Brothers Osborne: "I'm Good For Some But I'm Not For Everyone"

Well I wasn't caving on acid when I wrote that, but nice gif anyway. Leg!

My wife takes the kids and leaves the house while I watch my Hokie games.........nuff said

Coach Pry sounds so refreshed and invigorated. It's so good to have him back, sometimes the role you step in to just isn't a good fit. Really glad support he got after he was let go sounded all positive

"The Big Ten is always using excuses to cancel games with us. First Wisconsin. Then Wisconsin. After that, Wisconsin. The subsequent cancellation with Wisconsin comes to mind too. Now Penn State. What's next? Wisconsin?" -HorseOnATreadmill

Don't know if it was known already but caught at the beginning that Jarrett Ferguson was retained.

___

-What we do is, if we need that extra push, you know what we do? -Put it up to fully dipped? -Fully dipped. Exactly. It's dork magic.

I'm assuming that will be under Losey, since he came from PSU with Franklin?

“These people are losing their minds. This is beautiful.”

Random question - Ive been trying to find a new zip up VT hoodie, anyone know where find the one Coach is wearing here?

Apparently somewhere in the coach hiring process we've pissed off Roc Carmichael and he's let it be known on the twitters.

Sounds like he was interested in a position and the two sides couldn't come to an agreement which apparently rubbed him the wrong way.

(add if applicable) /s

Has he ever coached before?

If I recall, he was a personal coach/trainer to Antonio Cotman who was in one of Pry's first recruiting classes but ended up transferring out.

From one tweet I saw, it seemed like his beef was with Pry. So my uneducated guess is something happened with Cotman or maybe with another player Carmichael was training that VT was or wasn't recruiting

My insight as to what happened came from Kolby's Korner where he briefly touched on it and said there was some sort of talks about him coming on staff.

(add if applicable) /s

Then that's probably more informed than my casual internet sleuthing

I don't know the full depth but I did see one interesting interaction a couple days back:

  • Sergio Render had a tweet effectively saying he'd love to come back to support Tech in a non-coaching role.
  • Roc replied saying Pry sucks / lies.
  • Sergio responded to Roc to defend Pry and state he's always been honest / transparent with him but he won't pretend to know Roc's story.

I kinda wish somebody had asked JMFF if he going to try to get Keegan Michael Key via the transfer portal.

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Be sure to bring Cartoons Plural with you!

I don't know how we didn't already get this guy in the portal.

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

I believe that's pronounce H-ingle.

Stonewall Jackson High-school in Manassas got renamed to Unity-Reed High. Took the kids about 3 nanoseconds to celebrate their school is now called U R High

"Nooooooooooo!"
~What happened?
"James Franklin to Virginia Tech...."
~Fuck me......*sigh*
"Oh my God.... They're gonna take all our recruits... like WTF bro...."
~*squints eyes in disbelief*

The old Robert E Lee High School in Fairfax County, now John R. Lewis High School, Swim & Dive team had "LSD" on all their shirts. I'm guessing since it's still L High School they're keeping that tradition. They kept their logo and mascot through the name change.

Outside it's night time, but inside it's LeDay

Ahh, so Franklin probably got the hell out of State College at just the right time

"When I was growing up, Virginia Tech was a school that was kicking ass and taking names, and it's time we get back to that" - James Franklin

Hopefully this is not us in a few years.

Non-t.co link, for those at work: sportico link

"Yes I am going to have favorites. My favorites are high production and low maintenance players, coaches, and staff." - JMFF

I've never paid much attention to school's balance sheets / debts but holy crap that just seems like a massive number. Maybe Adidas will bail them out again

Virginia Tech School of Architecture Class of 2014
Fan of Hokies, Ravens, NY Giants, Orioles

Don't get me wrong, it's bad. But most of that is debt the university is taking on to revamp the stadium.

I think VT is more cautious and will raise money before announcing a project like that.

VT 2016
Go Hokies

No wonder it took a while to finalize with Franklin, PSU really wanted their money back

I am very willing to bet that this is much more common than is being reported.

A large percentage of the population has just accepted the narrative that college football programs are money making machines.

And while for a select few that may be true, there's also a significant difference between revenue created and actual profit.

I think over the course of the next few years we will see more and more programs find themselves in tenuous Financial situations.

The writing seems to be on the wall that eventually either: (1) the NIL system needs to be regulated in a rational manner OR (2) Private Equity is going to get involved to inject cash and tighten up balance sheets. The B1G was quite close already to going down that pathway-- once private equity becomes involved, college sports will become completely unenjotable for the fans. It will be like an Airline...$90 ticket followed by $135 of extra fees for "upgrades."

College football programs are absolutely money-making machines.

For somebody.

But for others, they're money pits. Private equity generally tries to separate the money-making part from the debt part, and stick someone ELSE with the debt part while expanding and liquidating the money part for fun and profit, which is why I want them nowhere near anything the public sector is involved with.

There are very few football programs that don't mske money, its the rest of the athletics department that doesn't (basketball makes money depending on the school)

eh

The Nittany Lions' dramatic increase in outstanding obligations is driven by the $700 million renovation of Beaver Stadium, which is being financed through debt the school said will be repaid via "fundraising, concessions, naming opportunities, sponsorships and ticket sales." That liability will linger on the athletics department's balance sheet for years to come, and is likely only to grow.

Not all debt is the same. Rutgers is basically racking up the athletic dept equivilant of credit card debt. This seems more analogous to a mortgage.

I suppose that last sentence may have cause for concern (if you're a PSU fan). But it's not like they're not investing in assets.

Debts never debt the same.

In other words, never partner with someone who is better at finance than you are.

My mortgage lender and financial planner both finance better than I

Sure, but you're not really partnering with them, you're procuring services from them.

And you should do your own homework, even then.

If you're cutting them in for a percent, well, see rule #1. You're supporting someone else's retirement.

I know of a big statue they have that they can sell for the scrap metal.

"Nope, launch him into the sun and fart on him on the way up"
-gobble gobble chumps

"11-0, bro"
-Hunter Carpenter (probably)

I bet they could auction that off for a shit ton

There are alumni that would probably pony up at least a million for it.