Alright so who is our next coach?

I CAN COACH! ... oh you mean football, nevermind.

Legit question to spark discussion;

Why can't we just fire him anyway and deal with the fallout? Like is it possible to just run the department in the red for a handful of years dealing with the 15 mil buyout plus whatever you spend for a new staff (assuming that move would put you in the red. I figure it would but I don't know their books)? Basically, you're operating with debt with the idea that eventually you'll pay it off and come out whole on the other side.

Football is our biggest revenue generator and its what gets people to donate. If we're bad, the longer we're bad the less money we're going to have coming in. It's possible you could actually hurt yourself more in the long run by waiting than if you'd just take the hit now. If that fan interest turns to apathy, it could take a lot longer to get it back if you're waiting to fire him until the buyout is manageable. And I think apathy is a VERY strong possibility if a month or two from now we're struggling to make a bowl game again and the sentiment is Fuente won't be going anywhere

So is it reasonably possible to take a short term hit to stave off a long term hurt?

(BTW, this is a theoretical about firing a coach in our situation. Not a "Fuente sucks" or "Fuente just needs more time" post. It's intended to get people to think thru the process more and to understand it, not about the merits of Fuente himself)

At this point, I'm not sure he shouldn't be fired tonight

Correct. Whit says he is 100% behind Fuente. There is a reason for that. He has no choice financially. So even if he is telling himself privately OMG I hired this guy, you will never hear that publicly. That is until we lose to UVA, have another losing season and then see the fan base howl.

• He's an Ohio guy, grew up in Columbus, played at anOSU, so I don't see him leaving the midwest.
• He started coaching at Cincy in 2017; his tenure didn't overlap with Whit's
• Regarding recruiting - He was a great recruiter as an assistant at OSU, but recruiting at OSU is a lot easier than recruiting at VT. His recruiting since being an HC at Cincy has been mediocre, worse than VT. Not saying he can't recruit, but given that the bulk of his experience is at either one of the 5 easiest programs to recruit at or one of the more difficult schools to recruit at, I'm not sure how this would translate at VT.
• Finally, he's 21-17 as a head coach. He went 6-7 as an interm coach at OSU, 4-8 at his first season at CIncy, and 11-2 in his second season.

None of this is to say that he would be a bad hire, but he's hardly a home run hire. Personally, I'd rather we make a stellar DC hire and keep Fuente at the helm than replace Fuente with Luke Fickell, who has no ties to the ACC, Midatlantic, or the south.

Whats going wrong at this point?
-Offense- check
-Defense-check
-Recruiting-check
-Pretty much everything offseason-check

It might just be possible that Fuente just isn't that good of a Coach.

But something is going very wrong and I don't know what it is.

Huge pet peeve of mine - When you make change for the sake of change, you either get lucky, or (more likely) your organization falls apart. If I'm Whit, I'm doing the following analysis:

1. Identifying the 3-5 surface level issues that our challenging our staff (play calling, recruiting, etc)
2. Deep dive on each of those. For example, if recruiting is an issue, why? Are our coaches not personable enough to build relationships? Do they not have the funding to travel and visit recruits to build relationships? Do they not have the bandwidth on staff to recruit a large enough pool of players? Are our bagmen slacking?
3. Once we identify the underlying issues, it's time to come up with a variety of solutions; new head coach, more support staff, new coordinator(s), new bagmen, etc.
4. Each solution should be analyzed and all risks/benefits identified. From here, Whit can make an informed decision, not an emotional one.

Are you joking?

I don't entirely agree with that.

We were in for a significant culture change no matter what.

We're a young team. Hopefully a lot of that nonsense is behind us. I think the fans are about a year behind.

We have some talent on the team, and I do think they'll get better. I'm more worried about the defense than I am the offense. The defense had some good stops, but I saw some missed tackles, and some situations where it seemed that they were quite slow or couldn't put pressure on.

The part that Fuente DOES have control over has been the offense. And the offense has gone downhill.

Fuente has got to answer the recruiting issues. If he doesn't make some major adjustments in his staff to get us back up to where we were and higher then I don't see this getting better.

Well, he is replacing half his staff this offseason so....

Do you know what assuming does? That's right....

Fuente directly addressed this issue in his post game... He said he was trying to get Willis to "go down" since he was clearly injured. That Willis thought he was talking about "going down on the play", but Fuente had to yell, because he was concerned about the injury and he wanted to make sure HH took the next snap.

Dabo screams at his guys when they do bone headed things.

Appreciate your positivity but it's not like other teams aren't playing under the same rules. Roster management, recruiting, and inspiring people to play for you are likely to blame for 2 years of *young* players. We're past the "but we're young" excuses.

Hurts me too man but we've fallen far from the apple tree.

We played 11 true freshmen yesterday.

So yeah, we're young. And some of that youth is pretty talented.

So while this process is more painful than we expected, there is some hope on the horizon.

I sense a bit of a disconnect. First, we beat ODU. Second, inexperience is a detriment, even if you have superior talent. It takes some time to learn college football. Which is why I think we blow the doors off ODU next year, once those eleven true freshmen we played yesterday get some experience.

He's not leaving Clemson any time soon... His oldest son just started playing for him, and he has another who will be there in a few more years. If he did want to leave Clemson, he could probably go anywhere; I'm not even sure VT would be on his radar.

2 starters of our opponent were former starters.

Our WR3s are putting up better numbers than Kumah, and Cunningham has more rushes this season than catches... as a TE.

Hard to be successful when youve got 4 former starters playing for somebody else. Hill would make a big difference on this team.

Our defensive weakness this year (through 2 games) is against the run. What exactly would Hill do?

The difference Hill would make would be poison in the well. He was dismissed from the team for a reason last year. Did you see him use the head of an opposing player to push himself up off the ground after a play during the Miami/Florida game? The dude is not really a dude at all. Kind of reminded me of the time Marcus Vick intentionally stepped leg of Louisville's defensive star Elvis Dumervil after the whistle. There's no place for poor sportsmanship in the Hokie Nation. Let's keep our eye on the ball here kids..... This is college athletics.

Alright so who is our next coach?

Leonard. Duh.

I hear what you're saying but this is a false dichotomy. It's possible to be a good fan and yet be unhappy with the product. I could just as easily say that the bad fans are the sunshine pumpers who stubbornly refuse to admit that anything is ever wrong. Or point out that it's possible to recognize effort while also believing that we're paying CJF $4m/yr for results, not effort. Or that people generally react poorly when someone tells them that they are bad fans for feeling the way they do.

Your call, but maybe just let people vent. At least they're still engaged enough to come here and do that. The far bigger problem is when people just quit caring and find their entertainment elsewhere.

I am working one job. Turned it off at half time and .... freedom! Looked at results at end and made the right decision. Tired of watching guys hit their heads against the wall.

Dabo's Worst recruiting classes were #36 and #27 nationally in his first 2 years. He then jumped up to 10th and hasn't dropped below 20th (his 4th recruit class) since then.

I don't want to hear the Dabo comparisons any more. They're not even close to relevant when our recruiting ceiling is 25, and our 2020 class is ranked like 70-something

Dabo went 6-7 year three then won 11 games year four and never looked back. Fuente goes 6-7 year three and will be lucky to repeat year four. Year four Dabo had his coaches and his players and delivered. Not gonna happen with Fuente.

Wasn't "Clemsoning" coined during the Tommy Bowden era? Dabo's teams were still Clemsoning the first few years, but it was a pattern of talented teams losing to underdogs, and also rarely winning the big games, that preceded him, and he finally ended that cycle. I think their fanbase wanted to avoid another decade of a Bowden recruiting well but under performing. EDIT: And that's why they were clamoring to get rid of Dabo early because his talented teams were Clemsoning just like the previous ten years under Bowden.

The difference there was that they were already recruiting really well during the Bowden years, whereas VT rarely recruited at Clemson's level, then or now.

I agree with you, though, Fuente needs enough time to see if he can start getting the results he expects, and we expect as fans. That's at least six years for me.

Not sure I agree mistakes is the big problem. It certainly was in the BC game. But the big problem is just poor execution. These guys know their assignments and when they go to execute they get beat or fail. That fact makes me very cautious about any expectations for this team.

Well, yeah. But if he was able to achieve what he promised in 4 years, or at least show progress towards said promise, then he wouldn't be under fire. Our running game, which he even cited as a focus, has not improved at all. The offense as a whole is producing at essentially the same level as the offenses under Loeffler. He promised Bud that he wouldn't have to field a perfect defense any more and here we are 4 years later with basically the exact same offense which hasn't shown any marked improvement.

All that said, though, I think prospective coaches would know to look for and identify other indicators of a sinking ship than whether the head coach is under fire from fans on a sports blog site.

I'm a supporter of Fuente, but this is my biggest critique of his (and there's some other obvious and undeniable ones as well.... recruiting, QB issues this year, media access). He has GOT to find a way to show some amount of emotion during games. Beamer was not an asshole on the sidelines by any stretch of the imagination, but when something good happened for the team he was celebrating, even at times that he will never live down (oh hey, Wake Forest). When the refs missed something, he was letting them know. A team will always mirror it's leader, and I'm convinced the reason we play without emotion is because our leader coaches without emotion.

Agree with you and excellent post.

Entitled? LOL. ODU is now a nip/tuck toss up series and will be a pain in the ass for 10 years, like ECU because we don't have enough talent to blow them out with our B or C game performance. ODU is a bottom half CUSA team, and will be a tough out now every year for VT because the talent is so down compared to the mid-2000's. That is a fact- not entitlement. There is a reason we are so "young" and playing "freshman" on the OL. We have poorly managed the roster- that is not entitlement or whining, that is a fact. Mack Brown just beat 2 top 25 teams with a 2 win team he inherited 8 months ago, and Mike Locksley is blowing out Syracuse with a bunch of transfer guys coming off a year where one of their players died during conditioning. Meanwhile at VT, we are 4 years into the Fuente era- a guy that was hired to elevate the program and not play down to ODU's level and make that series a nailbiter is still spinning wheels with the roster. We averaged 2 yards a carry against ODU. That's not whining, that's a fact. ODU had the ball mid 4th quarter in Lane with a chance to tie the game. ODU- that is going to finish at the bottom of CUSA- that is not entitlement, that is a fact. I don't care how young we are, we should do to ODU what Wisconsin did to a better program in Central Michigan- they destroyed them and didn't make excuses. Fuente wasn't brought in here to treat water against ODU 4 years in. Period. If the roster is too young, that's his fault. If we can't move the line of scrimmage against a 4 win CUSA team, that's his fault. It's not whining, and frankly VT fans are entitled to better at this point in his tenure.

Seriously.

If our team had any identity at all, it was patience.

True, Urban has been retired for at least 3 months now. His health will obviously be good enough to get another head coaching job again.