A Stream of Consciousness on Frank Beamer and Virginia Tech's Football Program

I thought about writing this later in the week after I'd had time to digest the totality of what we've seen leading into a bye week and then three games that will define a season and perhaps a legendary coach's career. But 11 at night nearly 12 hours into a bender is more my style.

What we have at Virginia Tech and what we have in Frank Beamer is not comparable to any other school or any other coach. The easy thing to do in sports is to compare a situation or a player to something that came before it. Every white possession receiver is Oklahoman Wes Welker. Every bruising between-the-tackles runner is Earl Campbell.

But there is no one like Beamer. He's not Bill Snyder simply because he took a team from obscurity and made it relevant in college football thanks in large part to a dual threat QB that wore No. 7. Beamer by all accounts cares a lot more about spending time with his family instead of in the film room than Snyder.

Beamer isn't Bobby Bowden just because the program's downturn coincided with the hiring of the coach's son. Bowden had two national titles under his belt before he eventually retired under duress from the forces around
him.

And Beamer isn't Mack Brown just because attention to recruiting year-round waned late in his career. Texas was Texas long before Brown arrived in Austin.

So what we have in our coach isn't something we can compare to Snyder, Bowden, Brown, Paterno or a coach whose program experienced struggles as he got up in years.

What we have in Beamer is a man who played for the school he coaches, built a program from practically nothing, created it based on a family atmosphere that helped make being in Blacksburg on game day special and helped lead the school through an unfathomable tragedy that was previously unseen in higher education.

The end game of Beamer's career is something we only get to go through once. There's no do-over here. Do we really want to go down as the school that forced out a great man and alum who built a program up from nothing and did so the right way? I don't.

Things are bad and they haven't been this bad in 20 years. That's enough time for an entire generation of Hokie fans to grow up knowing nothing but success. It's the exact opposite of what Kansas City Royals fans are going through right now.

I'm just barely old enough to remember when this team didn't matter. My first Virginia Tech game came in 1991 when the team went 5-6. The next year they were 2-8-1 and the next year the bowl streak started. But all I know is Beamer and he stands as one of the primary reasons my Hokie fandom stuck. While family members did their best to make me a Hokie at an impressionable age, I probably wouldn't still consider myself one if Beamer hadn't created a program that was fun to be around.

Maybe Beamer doesn't fit in the brave new world of college football. He's intensely loyal and a devoted family man. Those are great qualities in life, but are no longer qualities that contribute to college football success. The business has changed and Beamer hasn't.

We have plenty of time to get beyond that, unless Congress bans football in the next decade. Will allowing Beamer to go out when he wants set the program back a few years? That's possible, but not guaranteed. Will forcing Beamer out and replacing him with someone younger and in the mold of today's college football coach get the program back to contending for conference titles? Also possible, also not guaranteed.

I can't see it happening, but it would satisfy both sides if we beat UVA to make a bowl and Frank then announced the bowl would be his last game with the Hokies. We would be allowed to say goodbye and maybe the team would come together, win one for the coach and carry him off the field.

That's a fairy tale. And fairy tales don't happen in college football. Beamer probably isn't going to leave after this season on his own volition so the only way for "real change to happen" as I read so often on Twitter is for the new AD to demand Beamer's resignation and for the new school president to sign off on it.

I don't want to be that program. To me, Frank has earned the right to go out the way he wants to. And I can't imagine it will happen unless there's something going on behind the scenes of the program that we aren't privy to.

Being bad at football isn't fun. Losing the way the Hokies are losing isn't fun. But this program can't be compared to any other program and our coach can't be compared to any other coach. I'm still proud of this program and I'm still proud Beamer is our coach. If Virginia Tech sacrificed its soul to possibly get a better football team just because things got hard it wouldn't be Virginia Tech anymore.