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And quite frankly, while there are no sure bets in this coaching market, he's the closest one to it out there right now. If you don't think he can do it for us, there is nobody out there who can.

Last time I heard this we hired Justin Fuente.

Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. That's why I'm not comfortable chasing Franklin, who will demand a salary that would inhibit our ability to hire top flight coordinators.

At the end of the day, you and I are both just keyboard warriors with little knowledge of what's actually happening in the coaching search. I hope that by new years we'll know who our coach is. I think it's more likely than not that the new coach will be neither Franklin nor Chesney.

We'll spend the rest of the off season dissecting the hire every which way and convincing ourselves that it was either the best possible hire or the worst possible hire but we won't really know until 2029.

And 90% of the time the 'ceiling' is bullshit. For the longest time there was wide belief within coaching that Andy Reid's ceiling was what he accomplished with McNabb and the Eagles. And now he has 3 Lombardi trophies to his name after being fired in Philly and more success elsewhere.

I'm not saying that Franklin is guaranteed to win a Natty, but Penn St wasn't willing to give him a legitimate long-term chance. Less than 12 months ago the PSU program hit their high water mark over the last 30 years, and they fired him because they think they can do better. It would be like VT giving into the ridiculous pressure at the time and firing Frank in 2003 after he smacked a player in the helmet on the sidelines and lost to UVa at the end of the year.

Us bringing in Franklin would be betting on him to get us into the P2. At the end of the day, that is the goal of the hire. Everything we are setting up from the BoV agreements to the football oversight team to the GM that the coach essentially hires is tailor made for someone like Franklin to come in and run this program as he sees fit to get us there. And the kicker is, Penn St is contractually obligated to make up the difference between whatever salary we give him and the $8m he was making through the end of the decade. We actually have less chance to become coach-poor because of that offset clause than with most of the other guys we'll be considering. And if our bet pays off, we would likely be in the P2 by the time the offset clause lifts and we'd have enough cashflows to make up the difference.

And quite frankly, while there are no sure bets in this coaching market, he's the closest one to it out there right now. If you don't think he can do it for us, there is nobody out there who can.

t is Franklin not able to beat teams with similar or superior talent. He will not have top talent here at VT. If he is going against teams with similar talent as what VT has, will he be able to beat NC State, Wake Forest, Pitt, etc.? Maybe, but I'm skeptical. And that is not even thinking about beating Miami, FSU, Clemson, etc., which I am highly skeptical he can beat.

I know that UF/UGA were down when he was at Vandy, but those teams still had more stars and talent than his Vandy team ever did, and he got wins there.

Probably all a moot point anyway as it seems really unlikely he'll be here anyway.

I tend to agree

Realistically, we aren't good enough for him. If he's at all interested, thank our lucky stars for it and give him whatever the hell he wants to come here and be our head coach.

See this is exactly my point. I don't think he'd come here and for him to even consider it he'd demand a big paycheck. I'm afraid we'd make ourselves coach poor by hiring him and I'm not certain that he'd find the same sort of success he's enjoyed elsewhere. It's not guaranteed. The only guarantee is that we'd spend a ton of money for him. I don't subscribe to throwing tons of money at a coach for work that hasn't been done yet. And there's lots of work that needs doing at VT.

How sorry would we be to throw everything at Franklin only to have him go 22-17 in 3 years?

With the way that Florida and Franklin both recruit, I can see him there without any problem. Florida fans are delusional enough to believe that their talent level would let Franklin win those big games.

Our NIL budget is competitive, that's one of the very few things we do well, and one of the reasons we had quite a few good players come in over the last couple years (though, we still missed the mark in making it a complete team, but that's a whole other topic).

You give Franklin the keys to this program in this region and he'll dominate it in recruiting. No other qualifications needed, the James Franklin name itself has legitimacy in this region and pairing it with Virginia Tech would supercharge our ability to recruit in our own region. As you said, he was able to recruit at Vandy before Penn St, you damn well know he'd be able to recruit to VT.

At the end of the day, Franklin was a FG away from being in the National Championship Game this year and he was fired 10 months later because of 3 losses. Penn St made a giant mistake they are most likely going to regret for a very long time, and we should be throwing whatever it takes to bring him in here. If you're looking for someone to come in and immediately raise the floor and push our ceiling back up to where it was under Beamer, this is who you hire. If you're hellbent on making sure your profile is that of a school routinely participating in big games, driving national hype and positioning yourself to be highly sought after when the ACC implodes, James Franklin is your guy. Sure, there might be other guys out there who might be better, there might be other guys out there that might have a higher ceiling, but Franklin has proven his abilities at historically worse schools in tougher conferences than what we are and where we are now. He would immediately have us annually contending for the ACC title. We would routinely be in the mix for the playoffs, and would routinely be ranked. Our steady state would be where it was under Beamer before the downturn.

We should consider ourselves lucky to ever routinely get back to the point that Franklin would most likely have us playing at within 2 years if we hired him. In fact, its insulting to him to even consider that he isn't good enough for us. Realistically, we aren't good enough for him. If he's at all interested, thank our lucky stars for it and give him whatever the hell he wants to come here and be our head coach.

Complaining that Franklin can't win the big game is missing the forest for the trees. As you're implying right now, Virginia Tech has played in maybe 3 or 4 legitimately 'big' games since Beamer retired. Right now, it would be a significant step in the right direction just to be involved in any big games. To pretend that he isn't good enough for us shows a complete lack of awareness on where we are right now.

This isn't the early 2000s anymore, we haven't been nationally relevant in a decade.

I get what each one is saying. Here's how I view Franklin and to do so by referencing your comments above....

Agreed, he, like so many others (most), and just like Frank, can't win the big games - Top 5.

However, he should be a top candidate to stop VT from losing to ODU, JMU, Temple, Wake, BC, on a contual basis, thus giving us the consistenct opportunity to make our conference championship game and be competitive. Thus winning some to make the NC playoffs.

I believe we can print this ticket with Franklin as our coach.

And though it sucked that Frank couldn't get us "over the himp" on those big games, the Frank Beamer run was awesome and exciting before the last few seasons.

I will gladly take a Beamer and Franklin scenario today so we can make the next hire to the truly elite coaching level vs going the complacency route that was the root of all evil that has led us to where we are today (learn from our past mistakes).

Unfortunately, I also agree to an extent, that we are not on or will be on his radar this hiring cycle.

Yeah, but his great grandkids will be set for life after he is fired from Florida. His kids and grandkids are already set from being fired at Penn State.

Frankly, I think hiring Shane would be worse than hiring some unknown

VT needs a reboot - not some legacy coach with deep ties to the program. If we hire Shane we'll win 6 games next year and everyone will be patting him on the back because it's an improvement and then we'll extend his contract for another 4 years and he'll fail to win 10 games a single time. VT will be skipped over when the ACC implodes and we'll be stuck in football purgatory for the rest of our lives.

DO NOT HIRE SHANE.