Illinois Hokie's Recent Comments
Great Scott, this pun thread is still going on?
Gray skies seem to have cleared up.
(Too soon?)
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10 years 5 months
# | Justin Fuente's Recruiting Prowess Shouldn't Be Judged Solely On His First Class 
Jim Weaver (may he rest in peace) certainly played a role in the stagnation. From a recruiting standpoint, Jim basically kneecapped the program thanks to his accountant's mindset. However, I firmly believe the post-2011 decline reaches much further than recruiting failures. In general, the intensity of the program waned from the top down. It affected every aspect of the program, from recruiting, to strength and conditioning, to practices, to individual player effort during games (and not being benched or reprimanded for taking plays off). That's one reason I think Fuente can have relatively quick success with the current roster, so long as we have more players with the work ethic of Isaiah Ford and Sam Rogers, who can pick up the gauntlet.
Again, I don't think this is an issue of it being Frank's "fault" as I think it was a matter of being Frank's time.
Frank Beamer allowed the entire program to stagnate, from the top down.
Not a knock on Frank personally, he was a hell of a coach. But the fire, intensity, accountability and attention to detail evaporated over the last four years. We were going through the motions, even after shaking up the coaching staff when O'Cain and Newsome were released and Stinespring demoted. The problem post-Leoffler hire wasn't that we had bad coaches, it was that we were on cruise control.
I hate to say this, but expect to see more attrition, in terms of players and perhaps even more coaches. We are experiencing culture change at VT, and Fuente's intensity is not going to sit well with some people. Especially not people who are accustomed to being able to mail it in. I think we're about to witness the wheat being separated from the chaff.
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10 years 5 months
# | Virginia Tech Confirms Torrian Gray Has Resigned, Expected to Take Same Position at Florida Well, yeah, because we're still DBU.
The Program > One Man
These are a few of my favorite things...
They figured out Stinespring's offense, and knew Stiney was incapable of on-the-fly offensive adjustments to counter what they were doing to take our receivers out of the game.
I've never thought TG was head coach material. Maybe he'll prove me wrong, but I'll be surprised.
To me, the NSD angst seems to hinge on us being unable to flip verbal commits to other schools and the shocker of losing JaQuan Bailey due to what appears to be a family issue. We didn't lose anything we thought we had going into yesterday, we just didn't add to it when we really hoped we would.
This was never a great class by the rankings. I don't get why everyone's pulling their hair out over a mid-30s ranking, since that's exactly where we've hovered for like three months. This isn't a sexy class, and it never promised to be one. Yet it still filled a lot of needs. We got 4 WRs, 4 OLs and 3 LBs.
Maybe it's because all the sexiest names enrolled early that's got everyone all emo over yesterday's signing class, but it was about what I expected. Losing Bailey sucked, but not nearly so much as if we had simply been out-recruited by the Vols for him. I would have loved to flip Fox, Ross or Pine, but I'm never shocked when we fail to flip a recruit who feels good enough about another program to give a solid verbal commitment to them. The fact that we went hard after them knowing they were verbally committed elsewhere was enough for me to appreciate that the recruiting culture at VT is changing under Fuente.
Yesterday turned out about how I expected it to, with the one exception being disappointment because a guy wanted to play his college ball with his brother.
reassure 2017 kids it won't happen again
There will never, ever, EVER be that kind of reassurance, because this could happen literally any year.
You commit to the program, not the coach.
Are we still going to be DBU without CTG? You bet your ass we are, because we were churning out quality DBs prior to Gray's hire. Gray's vacant position is one of the most desirable in P5 football right now. Coach under a living legend of a DC at a program that just made the hottest coaching hire in the NCAA. And we have the AD the go out and get a grand slam candidate to fill the position.
I'm disappointed we missed out on a great prospect. I can't fault him for taking Michael Corleone's advice. Never take sides against the family.
This does not detail the Fuente train. If things like this happen in the 2017 and 2018 (especially) cycle, I'll start to wring my hands. This doesn't even give me indigestion.
Fuente's first order of business is clear: win with the roster he inherits. As it stands, we addressed one of our biggest needs at WR, and shored up LB a bit with some bodies, if not immediate contributors. But CJF is going to have to win with what he's got before he climbs the 'crootin ladder.
"I wasn't big, but I made up for it by being slow." --Frank Beamer
Better than if he'd gone to Tennessee.
Iowa is actually a pretty cool state. The Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorph, across the river from Moline and Rock Island, IL) are all pretty cool.
Those winters, though...
Consider it like an alley oop. An original comment drives further conversation. That's exactly the sort of thing Joe wants happening in the comments section.
Definitely no reason to apologize. You did everything right.
Do you ever get that not so fresh feeling?
Replying to a comment can be done to further an idea, not just to reply to the original thought. I took Fireman's response to your original comment as him branching off from the proof you posted that Austin will still be attending classes, and addressing the TKP community at large on a broader point.
Building on this, did we lose any recruits who were committed prior to Fuente's hiring? I know we lost the punter Long, but I think he committed to Fuente and then decommitted, yes?
I think it can't be overstated how big an accomplishment it was to keep every commit to the former regime in place. Especially kids like Josh Jackson, who by all appearances was committing to Lefty moreso than to Virginia Tech.
This sucks.
Also, thread title should be expanded to something like "Rumors Austin Clark no longer with VT"
Meta suggestion: Let VTGuitarman delete comments permanently.
In this case I'm thinking more like:
I believe in basing a menu off the regional favorites of the teams playing. So I'll be serving vinegar-based barbecue and marijuana.