What if we end up like Miami. We think we've found the right guy, but 5 years down the road we have to fire him and start over. Or another JJ situation, but this time in football?
Bottom line: will we find a long term coach?
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no idea.
In Whit We Trust
We shouldn't expect to find a coach that will be here for 25+ years, I'll say that much
I'll take 10 and a couple national championships though
Couple? Now that's just greedy. ;-)
I trust Whit. He wasted no time firing James Johnson and getting a 4 out of 5 star coach for the basketball team, and there isn't as much pressure on the basketball program as there is on the football program, to be frank.
Buzz was a 5/5 star hire. He was/is a premiere coach in NCAA basketball.
Maybe 4.5. I consider the likes of Coach K and Roy Williams 5.
I agree, hall-of-fame coaches with multiple National Titles are 5 star guys, but I would say in terms of the hire and the coaching chops that Buzz has displayed, it was a 10/10. I'm not going to knock Buzz because he hasn't won it all, he gets more out of his guys than most coaches get out of their blue-chip-one-and-done All Americans.
If I can't get a 5, I'll take a future 5.
IIRC, there were only a couple of other power 5 basketball jobs open when Whit hired Buzz -- and it's not as though they were biggies. There will be maybe 10 or 12 football jobs open at the end of this season -- of which at least one and maybe two or three (or more) will be a better job than VT and another 4 or 5 will be roughly equivalent to VT depending upon what is important to a coach candidate.
Whit will have his work cut out for him. And just hiring a retread like Tuberville isn't going to cut it.
10/12 I'll take the over on that. We are at 7 in just FBS jobs already.
Whit seems to have a history of success. They have a goal to increase the programs rev and footprint. But VT can't afford to cycle through coaches.
Tuberville has done slightly worse at Cincy than his predecessors - in a conference that has been decimated and that Cincy should dominate. Revenues and ticket sales are down 10% and recruiting has taken a small step backward if anything.
But Whit (i.e. Cincy donors) did pay a lot for a guy who was once a big name - but generally underachieved at each of his 3 stops prior to Cincy.
I mean... he did go undefeated at Auburn. I'm not saying he was a world beater but he very much did go undefeated in 2004 in the SEC.
Yes he did. He also has 6 seasons of 6 wins or less in his 19 yr career...which, by the way, is worse than any season by Frank Beamer since 1993.
I'm not saying he's a terrible coach. I'm just saying he's gotten a lot of mileage out of 1 great season and from once being an SEC coach.
I don't get this post tbh. New hirings are bound to happen no matter what. Who knows how it will turn out, nobody knows at this point. I trust Whit, but we live in a "what have you done for me lately" world. Hopefully Whit and the Hokie community will give the new coach more than 2-3 years to let him get in his own players.
It happens, look at Pitt this year. They found the right guy, but may not pan out after a few years. London looked great for LOLUVA, but man I'm surprised he's still there. Oregon? Bad year this year, TX, Florida, it happens. Point is, if we do go out to hire, we gotta look for the right fit to get on board. The rest is up to Destiny
Or maybe we can get some luck. It worked for OSU when Urban Myer came on board. Shaw for Stanford worked pretty decent. The whole FSU and Jimbo thing worked.
The difference with us is the caliber of players we have now. All those coaches I listed had the benefit of talented recruits on their side.
The problem is that the odds are not remotely in favor of destiny being on your side in a coaching hire.
Look at the dozens of coaches who have been hired in the ACC since the early-mid 90s and I'll bet you can count on one hand or so the number that have satisfied fan bases for more than just a season or two.
Off the top of my head:
David Cutcliffe
Paul Johnson
Dabo Sweeney
Butch Davis (at Miami, not UNC)
Tom O'Brien (at BC, not NC State)
Jimbo Fisher (at least until last Saturday evening...)
Ralph Friedgen (maybe)
George O'Leary (maybe)
Jim Grobe (probably -- until WF got spoiled by just a small taste of success)
Am I missing any? That's a pretty short list of coaching hires over the last 20+ years that have worked out to even a modest amount of success - and two of them were unable to repeat their prior success elsewhere (and conversely Cutcliffe was deemed a failure elsewhere).
And notice that some schools aren't represented at all and only one school is represented more than once...how many unsatisfactory coaches did those schools go through before they hired and/or after they fired the one that was even modestly successful for a somewhat sustained period?
that's the game, but the program can't proceed like it is now.
Agreed, its also one of the biggest downsides to parting ways with CFB. From this point forward head coaches become mercenaries. They stay until they get canned or find a better gig. The days of long-term head coaches are likely over.
Unless Foster gets hired, and becomes successful.
If we make a hire that doesn't work out, we hire someone else.
A coaching search is going to feel really weird for a lot of us and this post is rather indicative of that. There's nothing wrong with this topic - it's good to be realistic about this search because the nature of a new coach is a gamble. But it backs up my point, we are heading into uncharted territory if Beamer retires. It happened in basketball but that wasn't a big deal. The college coaching carousel is the most dramatic and chaotic in all of sports (maybe a tie with the NFL) and we're about to get thrown in.
Another thing, just like RealDiehl said, don't expect to get another 20+ year coach and don't expect to get even a 5-7 year coach for what we are paying for Beamer. Beamer's current pay doesn't get you a good coach with longevity.
The next coach likely won't start at Beamer pay someone like Richrod will start in the 3.5-4 million range
Yeah that's the point I was getting at. Maybe didn't articulate it very well.
You could either keep Beamer for another then hire a new coach with a lot of risk, or hire a new coach with a lot of risk right now. Either situation is going to have a lot of unknowns. I think this argument is invalid, it's not like keeping Beamer for another year then hiring a new coach is going to mean we will be more successful post-Beamer than right now. It just delays the inevitable.
well, it adds another year of uncertainty in recruiting ... if you think this class is bad, think about the 2017 one. new coach comes in with less resources to work with.
Yeah but Tom Herman brought in a pretty solid recruiting class at Houston in a pretty short time span. I'm certain he could do that here at VT as well. I think if we're able to land him early (a day or two after Houston's Bowl game) he would hit the recruiting trail early and hard. I'm just about positive he'd pull in as good, if not better, of a class as we've see in years.
He's pretty disappointed with the fan base there. He's winning and no one is coming to the games.
Beacause it's Houston. And honestly if you think he's sticking around there you're insane. They know they are a stepping stone to a bigger school so perhaps they aren't getting their hopes up. Not justifying it. I'd say enjoy the moment. Heck Auburn went from one win in a season to playing in the National Championship the next.
I don't know if these allegations about him being disappointed with Houston's fanbase are true but if they are...that makes me more hopeful that we could land him. He is my top choice at the moment but I just don't know how likely it is we'll actually lure him to the Burg. Then again, I don't remember seeing anyone predicting Buzz Williams to VT. Whit may just surprise us all again
we are in a conference where a new coach could make a huge impact/turn around quickly......a good recruiting year this year and next due to influence from a NEW HIGH ENERGY big time coach or up and coming big time coach, could have us back on top in 2 years....it does happen.....I.E. florida........
Justin Fuente, an offensively focused coach with Bud at defensive helm?....COULD BE GOOD SET UP
UNFORTUNATLEY franks time is over...waiting only hurts program and makes it harder to rebuild
we have the fans , the facilities, the talent , and the money to go forward and be great again ....... winning the Costal should be the base line for success, with eventually getting a shot at the top four SPOTS in college football again.
Don't know... Bud's D's last several years have had some issues. I've lost a lot of confidence in him lately
His defenses HAVE been questionable as of late. However, I still trust completely in Bud's scheme; I think he's currently just working with what he has. He's currently experiencing the backlash from missing out on some good recruiting opportunities, and I hope he has learned his lesson. But don't be too quick to give Bud the boot, he has been THE reason Tech has been relevant for quite awhile, he gets a pass or two.
We'll never know if we have the right/wrong next hire until we try. What we know now though is that our current coach is not the right guy to lead the program. At the very worst if we hire a younger, energetic coach we should be able to get a recruiting bump for the next 2-3 years and if he doesn't pan out the next hire might have more to work with.
The problem with the so-called recruiting bump is that USC-E, UVA, UMd, Rutgers, and Miami (and potentially Georgia and WVU) - all schools that VT bumps heads with on the recruiting trail - will also have their shiny new toy as well.
that's the case every year with new coaches. We'll still see a bump and it will be a large one from the wreck of a class we currently have.
Unfortunately the odds are not in favor of a new coach being successful -- at VT or almost anywhere.
True, but what choice to you have?
You roll your dice and you take your chances.
and I'd like our chances with Tom Herman. I'll be watching the Houston-Memphis game on Nov 14. That will pit two fan favorites against each other. It should be noted that Herman has already gone up against Chad Morris this season and got the better of him. I realize that it doesn't really say much about either guy since they came into different situations at different universities but it's an interesting talking point when comparing coaches IMO.
To be fair everyone but 1 coach has gotten the better of Chad Morris this season. Just curious if anyone watches SMU regularly and if they've noticed a difference in the teams from last year to this year?
This is a good point. SMU has been bad since the infamous Death Penalty. Similarly, I wonder how Houston was last year before Tom Herman. I'm sure they weren't nearly as bad off as SMU but how much of their success this year is Tom Herman and how much of it is carry over from previous years? I literally know nothing about that program.
Teach a man to fish.....etc.......just google any team you are interested in with the words "Phil Steele" afterwards. That will lead you to their team page, you can then see how they have done the previous 6 seasons, broken down in any number of ways.
Quick primer on Houston: Kevin Sumlin was really good there until 2011 when he left for aTm. They finished 14th in the country. Tony Levine was his ST/WR coach and stepped in as interim and was named HC before a bowl game win over a ranked PSU team. Levine didn't do poorly in his three years (5-7, 8-5, 7-5) but they often felt out of synch. Last year, I believe they had a QB injury (John O'Korn, really, that's his name) and struggled on O, but still won 8 games, including a bowl win over Pitt (Levine was gone by then).
SMU on the other hand, was 1-11 last year (27-20 win over UCONN in last game of the year) with some truly putrid performances. Steele has their game score average at 54.4, which is worse than any single VT game in my lifetime. They were ranked 127 out of 128 teams last year. It was a democratic putridity, bad on offense and bad on defense.
Just using one overall data point for comparison, Herman has taken Houston from an avg game score of 78.5 to 91.6. Morris has taken SMU from 54.4 to 69.4. Pretty similar improvement, much lower starting point for SMU/Morris.
thanks! this is great stuff. I'll try to remember the Phil Steele trick.
I like Chad Morris as a coach as well. I knew SMU started off at a lower baseline than Houston. I guess it could be argued that the two coaches are pretty comparable but we can't really know much about either with just one season each to look at. I still like Tom Herman as a candidate for Tech. I wouldn't mind having Morris, but I think Herman would be an easier get. I also don't think we'd have to worry about Herman leaving for Texas in 2 years.
If any coach leaves VT in two years after we have hired them, its because we have succeeded wildly which will increase our funding and potential for the next hire.
Yes, hiring a new coach is a risk. You won't know how successful you are going to be for a few years, though you might feel pretty good about the way things are going when you see some promising early signs, such as great recruiting classes.
Several schools are doing the same thing, and they all have pretty high hopes that their new coach will turn their programs around. I don't doubt that UMD and UVa are going to show up with a decent chunk of change for a new coach.
I'm trusting in Whit, as you've got to believe he's had a short list for a year or so at this point, and knows it's go time. I think VT is a pretty attractive program at this point.
Oddly enough, the teams current problems might help, as the new coach will face a lower expectation bar initially than if he showed up when the team had back to back 10-win seasons.
We have recruited pretty well until this year (next years class). If we get a Herman or Fuente and they hit the ground running we will be fine for the 17 class and they will have in house talent to work with. If this current mess lingers another year it just gets worse and harder to catch up. No recruit will commit to Tech next year if CFB is still around and you will be looking at 2 weak classes in a row
Just wondering what everyone else thinks..
What will the expectation of our new coach be? Do you think that his seat gets hot at 8 wins a year and no ACC trophies? Will ACC trophies be enough? I assume the leash will be much shorter on any coach than it was/is with Beamer. Also how many years does the new guy get before he is really held accountable?
I suppose he'd have a while before 8 wins would be a problem.
Losing to ECU and UVa might be, though.