Great twitter activity by Andy Bitter today.
A lot of un needed hate being spewed at our head coach without any factual evidence. We are better than that guys. I'm thrilled he's staying. We are building something here.
#Hokies AD Whit Babcock says Justin Fuente shared with him Tuesday that he'd been contacted by Baylor and they wanted to visit. Baylor came close to Blacksburg to meet him.Babcock and Fuente visited at his house last night.Fuente removed name from consideration. #Hokies— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) January 16, 2020
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Man I hate twitter. Well I rather look like an idiot and be wrong then the alternative here.
That certainly sounds better than the speculation Whit found out about Baylor on Twitter. But could also be that Whit needs to try to get everyone on the Fuente bandwagon and is willing to stretch the truth to do so
I put in the other thread that CJF informing Whit of the interest and Whit hearing it elsewhere first aren't mutually exclusive. i'm not claiming it went down one way or another, just pointing out
Yes, Whit could have been tipped off prior to Tuesday.
AND, Fuente could have actually told Whit himself of the interest.
But let's not hang CJF just yet. Maybe Baylor reached out...CJF was mulling it over...someone in the Baylor camp was all excited because they (with big ego and deep pockets) thought they had a slam dunk and ran their mouth a little...then CJF said what's the harm, informed Whit, and had the meeting.
So we're replacing old speculation with new speculation already?
Nothing better than "Reckless Speculation"
I think the real MVP in this gif is Roy in the bottom right corner questioning every life decision that led him to that point.
But but but but but...........
r0ckYourBody69 on twitter said he heard someone else say that they read a reporter said that somebody else said that Fuente's wife was in Waco. F Fuente!!!
Choppin Wood by the JUGS said Whit didn't know and that Fuente was in Waco. F Fuente!!!
it's tough to pin on JUGS if she's being fed information directly from people in the athletics department or football staff, which is definitely plausible. i imagine yesterday was even more hectic and confusing for the folks in the athletic department and in football than it was for us.
edit: not saying you're blaming her, but the rumors around here definitely grew more legs and felt more substantive because of her track record.
I'm no saying JUGS has bad intentions but for atleast 3 months now everything her sources have fed her has been wrong and in this case the assertion that Fuente was operating behind Whits back is what set TKP ablaze. Now, maybe Bitters sources are wrong, or maybe Whit lied to Bitter to save some face and control a narrative... I honestly dont know. But we probably would all be wise to not over react to people with sources posting here.
I think Bitters source in this case is Whit. Whit held either a conference call or press conference today, there is audio of it on youtube
My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Fuente meeting with Baylor at 31 Flavors last night.
From the other thread.....
I'm not sure how these tweets help the pro-Fuente argument because this makes it seem like he wasn't doing this for more resources and that he was actually interested until post-interview.
That's how I read it too. If it had nothing to do with leveraging an offer, then what purpose did it serve? more likely to me that they turned him down than vice versa.
Either he was legitimately interested or tried to leverage for something Whit was already working on lol.
Or CJF felt like Whit wasn't working on it "hard enough" or to his liking and decided to exert some more pressure.
I think there are a few other options there.
First, if Fuente wanted a large football project completed, and Whit was the one saying no to the new facilities, how would that make Whit look? Not good at a school that values football as much as we do. Or, as so often in the academic world, there ARE plans, but until X amount of funding is found or the first few steps are accomplished, it will not be mentioned publicly.
We also know that Fuente doesn't care about perception all that much. If it comes across as him looking like he was interested and got nothing, but really did, well then he is probably still happy.
Or he was somewhere between legitimately interested and not at all interested.
As in I'd need to really be wowed and this is the first situation that even had the potential to really wow me...
If they offered to come to Blacksburg, the whole, "might as well listen to what they have to say" argument becomes more plausible. It could have been vague to almost no interest on Fuente's part, especially since he'd talked to Whit about it and removed himself from consideration so quickly. As the tweets point out, we know/knew very little about how this all played out.
Really? i actually got the complete opposite out of the thread. Seems to me at most Fuente just wanted to hear what they had to say.
Come on now. Baylor essentially flew all the way to blacksburg to get a meeting with him, Fuente told Whit, and Fuente took his name out of the conversation vs. the story on here that Fuente and his wife were practically house shopping in Waco yesterday which led to way too many people saying F*** Fuente and calling him the most hated person in Tech history and you don't see how this helps the people that even tried to defend him?
All the people defending him said he didn't take an interview or was doing it to leverage more resources for the program. Both of those scenarios have been disproven with this press conference from Whit Babcock.
He didn't take his name out of consideration until after the interview.
i've not said he was doing either and it's not weird/problematic for him to sit and listen
1. Only one person was saying an interview didnt happen...
2. He did leverage it for resources. How does this narrative change that? He took his name out after he got what he wanted from Whit, seemingly before he knew if he had a baylor offer. If this shows anything it shows that all he cared about was getting stronger commitment for the football program.
3. All this does is kill the whit didnt know and house shopping in Waco narratives.
Right here:
We don't know that he got an offer.
He got something for the program that Whit wasn't offering before.
Whit dropped the bag of Hardee's coupon then!
(This is tongue in cheek. Yes there must be something they aren't saying.)
After going back and rereading, I'll just note that when I quoted that, I thought it originally came from one of Bitter's tweets...now I see that it came from the post you quoted, and that Bitter made no mention of Fuente getting anything...so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes jsumm said that. I've talked to someone close to this entire situation ( I am not claiming to be JUGS or LAHokie here) and there was definitely some leveraging.
But at the end of the day Whit isn't going to admit that.
So I see here the reference to Fuente getting something. Apparently that came from something other than the tweets and Whit comments, so hadn't heard it. But for all we know it wasn't even a big thing (especially if it wasn't his or his staff's salary) - a golf cart maybe?
For all we know, he leveraged the pitch to get a giant window decal for his suv that says "Proud to be VT". We can't be mad at him for getting something when we have no idea how big or small it was. All we know is that he did not take the job for what is presumably a LOT more money. If he didn't use THAT for more money, not sure why whatever he did get is equivalent to $500k a year and couldn't be small. If he joked and told Whit he wanted a new iPad for staying and Whit gave it to him, would you be mad.
I should just shut myself up. People apparently WANT to be mad at him and I'm not going to change anybody's opinion.
I know it's been pointed out but this specifically says "after he got what he wanted from whit"... presumably something for the football program... not something for him (ex: salary, extension, bonus) this is like the best possible light for Fuente to be painted in and somehow your initial take was this is a worse look!!??! To me that's as ridiculous as HF contending that no interview happened.
That's conjecture man. Nothing from Whit confirmed any demands were met.
Per Whit, the resources talks were already on-going.
The people defending him didn't blame him for taking an interview for a job that was going to pay him more money and this board wanted to hang the guy for allegedly taking his wife to Waco for the meeting without telling Whit. I really don't understand how you don't see that people on this board and twitter way overreacted to a shit ton of unconfirmed BS.
You are correct.
I mean you had HokieFireman saying that he didn't believe fuente even interviewed and that no real media members were reporting that he was a leading candidate.
there's a difference between "let's pump the brakes on the speculation until we know more" and "none of this is actually happening"
Come on man. You're not new here. HokieFireman doesn't speak for one side of an arguement just like DCWilson doesn't for the other side.
there were more than just HF, but point well taken.
This is actually what I typed. And lo and behold Baylor pitched him the job NOT in Waco (which damn sure were a lot of "sources" claiming he flew to Waco). So again everyone got fired up and their panties in a bunch without all the facts.
https://www.thekeyplay.com/comment/925543#comment-925543
Yep and that first part hasn't changed. As for the word "interview" there it meant go to Waco or somewhere else and interview like you would for a job. I did say Baylor made a pitch to him but I don't think that's an interview. Every single "media person" who claimed Fuente was in Waco interviewing was wrong but now I should believe that have verified Fuente was top of the coaching search list. Again maybe people should stop jumping off cliffs and wait for actual details to come out.
Thamel said nothing about where. He nailed the who, when, and what, though. Keep thinking this wasn't real though.
You serious?
The accepted narrative was Fuente hid this from Whit, flew to Waco with his wife to interview and was leaking it to the press.
This narrative is Fuente told Whit, Baylor came here, Fuente met with Whit, Fuente told Baylor he isn't interested....
How is this not a better narrative?
Edit: I dont know which is true but I certainly know which one looks better.
That's fair, but at the end of the day neither are a great look for a program that is struggling to raise funds. Which has been my contention with this all along.
Considering The tweets from Andy Bitter sounded like the info came from Whit himself. So if Fuente really DID hide it from Whit, Whit just lied to us about knowing. Considering people seem to have a lot of faith in Whit, it seems likely to me that the second narrative is true.
Yes and no AD is coming to come out and say "my coach lied to me" in a press conference.
True, I doubt an AD would admit if their coach lied, but it sounded like from the tweets that Whit went to Fuente's house shortly after the interview to talk about it (or Fuente went to his house, one or the other). If Fuente had kept it secret, it seems like that gives more credibility to Fuente asking for more money, but he also pointed out that there would be no changes to Fuente's contract. If there was a lot of interest on Fuente's part, it seems reasonable that he could have either taken the job or leveraged it for more money (for himself or his staff). And the speculation of them not offering? Maybe, but my understanding is that the way coaching searches work is you have a ranked list and you work your way down that list, and honestly, the interviews are more of a formality and are probably offers. They offer their number one choice coach and then if that person doesn't take the job, they go to their second choice. How many times do you hear "we reached out but there wasn't interest."
The more I read and think about it, the more I think that he probably wasn't that interested to begin with. If he was more interested, he would have taken longer than one evening to consider it.
bUt Im A fAn aNd I dEsErVe To KnOw ThE tRuTh
If Whit's lying to us, time to fire him too!
/s
As gobble gobble Chumps pointed out, Whit finding out on social media on Tuesday and Fuente telling Whit on Tuesday are not mutually exclusive.
They kinda are if you subscribe to the narrative that Fuente leaked it. In that case, what, Fuente leaked it to someone who leaked it on twitter, then rushed to tell his boss that he had the interview so he wouldn't get in trouble? People seem to think that Baylor was being secretive. So either Baylor let it out, or you have the above scenario. And the twitter stuff had all sorts of what appears to be bogus info. Maybe Baylor announced that Fuente was a candidate of interest and they wanted to interview him. THAT could have been leaked or announced before Fuente even knew. We need to stop living in conjecture and either believe what Andy Bitter reported that Whit said, or think that Fuente lied about it and Whit is lying to cover for him, which I don't buy either.
So basically... YAWN. The only reasonable complaint I can see here is that it would be nice to hear from Whit and Fuente... but if this is the truth Fuente really doesn't owe it to us.
So, wait, based off some basic information (Baylor interest) and total lack of information (Fuente not tweeting out to everybody he was going to have an interview), we read all sorts of things into that, credited Fuente with some of the worst possible motives, and otherwise worked ourselves up into a giant shit-storm, and it turns out Fuente had told Whit about it from the beginning and removed himself from consideration almost immediately after talking to someone from Baylor near Blacksburg. Huh.
Everyone's missing the most important part of this... where exactly did they meet near Blacksburg?
Were they drinking 40s and talking zone blitzes outside of Christiansburg Walmart?
Did they have big slices at Benny's in Radford?
Perhaps played a few rounds at the Galax Country Club?
Southern X to discuss tight ends?
They met near Liberty so they could return the last box of Ian McCaw's stuff they finally cleaned out.
Haha southern X to talk tight ends 😂😂😂😂
Toothless tight ends
Old toothless one has spoken
I have all 32 still.
So what you are saying is Fuente might not be going to Baylor?
I would still like to see a press release or short conference to rebuild the bridges that burned with the fan base on the fence. There should be a press conference for the new coaches anyway right? Address this thing head on, tell Hokie Nation that this is home and you are dedicated to taking this program to new heights. Take three questions, then turn it over to Teerlink and Smith.
Well I've got some bad news for you. Fuente just wants to coach football.
Fuente avoiding the media like they played for the 1999 team.
Yes, I'm still annoyed about that. I want to let it go but he keeps doing things that piss me off.
Holy shit haha
I get that is what he wants, but he created a big fucking mess and needs to help clean it up. This is 2020, a college football coach is as much a PR guy as an Xs and Os guy. People need to hear it from his lips that he wants to be here for the long run and they could help him reach the goals that he has for this program by joining the Hokie Club and making a donation today.
How do we know HE created the mess? A bunch of stuff was said on twitter, a bunch of it appears to not even be true. I could get on Twitter right now and claim that the Chancellor of Germany is a gay slug named Toby. Does Angela Merkel need to get on twitter to disavow my statement? Or better yet, does she need to have a press announcement?
He took the interview, which I don't fault him for and he may have meant for it to be kept quite, but once it got out he had to have known it would not go over well with most of the fan base and cause some consternation amongst the players. That is where he works with the AD and PR team to put out a statement that reassures the donors that he is here to stay. Its not that hard.
As much as he doesn't want to be, he is the face of the program and in this instance was the subject of some news that didn't shed very good light on that face. Him ducking the media and hiding behind Whit does not do much to crack open the wallets and provide the funding he is so desperate for.
I would also argue that a lot of the mess was us believing stuff that wasn't true and feeding into our own paranoid frenzy. That's on us, not him. I can do it for him if you want: Sorry you guys are so gullible that you believe everything that comes out on twitter then react badly to it.
As people pointed out, had we reserved judgement based on information that came from Fuente, Whit, or the school (or any combination thereof), we wouldn't have gotten all out of sorts and it wouldn't have been a big deal. It's not like this was something that dragged out forever, this all happened in just over a day.
This x1000.
That's a bingo.gif
Of course, but guess what, that is always going to happen, twitter spreads the word and people will overreact. The best way to squash it is to get out in front of it or set the record straight as soon as whole picture is known. It seemed like Whit should have been drafting a statement Tuesday night after talking with Fuente and should have had a short presser call or conference for the media planned with Fuente for Wed morning after the team meeting.
What happened on Tuesday was out of the AD control, but what happened Wednesday fanned the flames for most of the day and was preventable. If Fuente wants to wall off the world and "just coach football", he should look for an OC job, because the head whistle needs to be able to address the folks outside of the program as much as those inside it.
Fuente is an honorable man. His loyalty to Corn drives me crazy but I believe in him as a man more than a coach
This could be damage control but I feel dumb for overreacting. If Baylor was flying up to offer more money I don't think its wrong to listen. I think I'd feel differently if he was making an effort to fly down to Texas. Point being Twitter is an absolute cesspool of disinformation. People saying he was in Arkansas when Arkansas job was open are the same people who were saying they saw him in Waco. Clown show...sadly I bought in :(.
In the end more money wasn't enough to lure him away. The people saying hes only connected to VT for a paycheck are wrong. I'm not saying money can't still lure him away because everyone has a price but he is invested in this program more than his paycheck.
Kudos to you, for owning up for it though!
That's a bingo.gif
I can't agree more. I came here to post that I feel like if he turned down more money, reported newer and nicer facilities and recruiting bed of Texas, he must be pretty set here. I would not blame him at all for hearing what they say for coming to him, talking to his wife and then making the decision Blacksburg is where they want to stay now that they have lived there for a few years. I feel like he owes it to his family to make certain this is the best decision and what better way than to test it with a real chance to change scenery.
Call me a homer or wearing the O&M glasses but I find enjoyment in college sports. I like to believe the best in people until they prove me wrong, and honestly, life has enough challenges already than to get myself down about the things that bring me joy. I choose to look at this situation as a good thing now that a few more details have come out.
I don't see the gloom and doom. He was either gonna stay or go, but I was still going to be a VT fan. It's been said ad nauseum that this has devastated our image, given recruiting advantage to the bad guys, etc., but I doubt all of that. We don't like it, it shook up our usual narrative of how Fu was on the hot seat, had to produce next year or get gone, and on and on. We don't like him being here, then get all hot and bothered about him leaving, circumstances notwithstanding. I'll admit that for me, it was a diversion from other off season bitching, but looks like a tempest in a teapot that I believe will be all but forgotten by fall, if not by spring practice.
I mean "close to Blacksburg"? That's relative. Waco is close to Blacksburg compared to day, Thailand :)
Whit and CJF need to get out in front (literally, like, in person) and talk about this openly. CJF's closed door/anti-personality routine won't work for this...be open, honest, personable, and humble. You need to connect with the fans/donors/alumni to win us back.
I respect that Fuente chose to get back to work - good move. Let whit do the talking. Produce wins next. That's all. If he can't it's over. But pandering to the lunatics ranting on social media and fan sites will do him no good. Get back to work - this dust will settle.
Do you remember when Dave Doeren was the leading candidate for Tennessee in 2017? Because nobody ever talked about it or cared almost immediately afterward. And what do you know, Ricky Person, Alim McNeill, De'Von Graves, and Trent Pennix still signed with NC State over VT less than a month later.
If VT fans/donors/alumni are this entitled yet unwilling to give the necessary money to complete at the level they apparently demand (REPEAT: we only had the $200K needed to hire Jerry Kill because Danielle Bartelstein left for another job), then I'm sorry to say that Coach Fuente made the wrong decision to stay.
I would hardly say wanting the program to be accessible and a coach who doesn't act like he's getting a prostate exam when in front of media/donors is being entitled.
Make the program more accessible and more people will donate. It's creates a connection.
Find me a single example of press conference specifically called for a coach to publicly address an interview with another team and depending on how that turned out, I might change my opinion.
I'm not talking about the general desire for "more access" but rather the people demanding that Fuente owes a public explanation on every aspect of the last two days.
I'm sure the title of this thread will pull some measured replies.
So.... 2020, Let's Go?
To the mall
I'd say TKP recently is more worthy of an angry Robin Sparkles...
Ooooooh yes
HOKIES
because at the end of the day, that's why we're all here, right?
Welp, seems like from the players on twitter that they are happy and ready to kick ass in 2020. So if they're happy, then i'm happy. #gohokies2020coastalchampsandbeyond
what do you mean without facts?
The on-filed performance and lack of judgement on Fuente's part as it relates to the team is the what we consider facts.
Facts as in Fuente and his wife were on a plane in Waco practically looking at houses... turns out that was believable as Metallica's tour bus in Roanoke.
We live in a world where news is almost always interpreted wrong through social media, the actual media, and Bill Lawson...just get me back to 10 win seasons and championship caliber of play (ACC and national).
No matter what the truth is, this whole mess seems like a narrative that will just give extra ammunition to recruiters that have seemed to already be better salesmen than Fuente.
you can spin it that way - you can also spin it that "Fuente is a hot commodity and he has turned down multiple programs (arky, baylor, fsu) to stay with Tech, for less money, because he knows this is a great place".
In the end no recruit is going to care that much. This would've been an issue if he accepted, but he didn't so its now just a non-issue.
Get out of here with that logic. /s
See your point but my retort, if I'm Fuente, is that any coach who says he can guarantee he'll be at a place for 4 years in this day and age is probably lying.
I'll be a son of a bitch
this guy wins twitter today
Pretty sure that's what every opposing defensive coach said when they played us!!!!
He doesnt know how true his word really are.
No check mark, that is a fake right? If not, GOD DAMN the balls on Corny!
Idk if its real or not, but Twitter stopped verifying people at some point.
pssst....take 2 second, click on the link to his twitter profile, take a quick peek, and make your own determination if it's real or not.
I was commenting more on twitter not verifying anyone, as sort of a PSA for the future. I honestly don't care if this one is real or not. Just like I don't care if the Carlos Beltran's niece account is real, as long as it keeps dishing out juicy baseball gossip.
edit: my original reply wasn't very nice
That would be akin to Bryan Stinespring tweeting, "Wide receiver screens isn't going ANYWHERE!"
Edit: That twitter account is fake. Only 2 tweets.
New respect for Corn
Def not his real account. Check out the tweets and followers 😂😂😂
FCK YES! what a ballsy twitter by the Cornhole. Much respect.
Welp - I guess fake account. Still good comedy.
This needs to go plaid. I LOL'd.
The mental gymnastics in a lot of these threads is excruciating.
Look guys, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Fuente wasn't going full rouge with animosity, nor was Whit likely in the know of everything. Whit is not going to come out and say he had no idea what CJF was doing or who he was talking to. Some of this is basic damage control, too.
The effort going into proving/disproving so much of this is remarkable.
For a school that everyone claims is very secretive about their coaching search they sure do have a lot of leaks.
With a stare like that I'm pretty sure he bullied Baylor into giving him the job
Hokie Twitter
I am no longer trending towards the lolgf end of the Fuente spectrum.
I can haz spring practice view now?
The biggest spin in Whit's statement is that discussions about resources have been going on for awhile independent of the Baylor thing.
It's probably technically true, but it probably hasn't been going the way Fu wanted...and one very plausible reason for Fu not being at the PC.
Two "probably's" and a "plausible" in one definitive sentence. Well done.
I think everybody should listen to this. I like the last sentence. I know not everybody is on board with him, but I honestly think we're on a good path and given more time here he will succeed to the degree we want him to.
I actually feel like the last sentence is what is most concerning for me. I'm not doubting Whit or even that Fuente is a nice guy, but I think it's very difficult to be successful in that position when you're "a little more private than most". I mean, he's the figurehead of the entire program. I think this is even more true in an area like Blacksburg.
Case in point - the fans shouldn't be relying on the AD to reassure us of how much of a Hokie the coach is and how much he fits.
Hard disagree. I think it would look lame for Fuente to come out and defend something that didn't require any defense. Just win football games. That's all. The drama is garbage. Football season is over and there's little to discuss otherwise.
I'm not a hater or anything and I agree that winning fixes it... But I think it's a mistake to downplay the importance of PR and branding and clearly there is a significant proportion of the fanbase who have concerns.
Man, the more I read about this, the more I irrationally believe the conspiracy theory that Whit, Fuente, and Bill did this to send a subliminal message to the fans and/or President Sands.
anyone know a good contact with the Hokie Club that can give us some insight on what donations have looked like over the last 48 hours vs. the avg January day?
doubt it
My head hurts from all this nonsense. I just hope no one enters the portal in the next week or so because we need a break!
Don't we need some attrition to meet the scholarship requirements?
Wait, overreaction on social media?
So my issue with all of this is the that we as fans have no idea how to feel about the program because we really don't have a clue what is going on. Fuente is a private guy and has taken the Football Program with him.
My opinion is that he should have talked to the media yesterday, not for the purpose of focusing on the flying rumors but to introduce Hokie Nation to the new coaches on staff. The only thing that I know about these coaches I had to look up because I got a name and a picture from VT Twitter. I also don't have a Twitter account so I don't get all the features of Twitter so I don't get all the information that is there, like of other fans.
Overall I believe he needs to become a little more open with the fans. I'm not saying that we should get free full access to his home life and the program. We just need some time to get to know the players and coaches. We as fans should only want the best for them but sometimes it hard when you don't know who you are truly rooting to succeed is.
Seeing the complaints on Social Media today that this wasn't so much a press conference as it was a surprise meeting with a couple hand-picked members of the media while being completely secretive to everyone else is....
Well, it certainly isn't going to help with anyone who was already frustrated that this staff thinks they need to be secretive about everything they do.