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bullshit
I was taken by your list being full of Non-BCS schools. The vast majority of those OC's looked really bad when they played BCS defenses. See Northern Illinois, Orange Bowl (they didn't look good against hapless Iowa in week 1 either).
So what do you do? Hire a mid-major coach who has no experience against BCS competition?
Hire an FCS coach who has only dominated the JV league and hope for the best?
Hire a flawed and fired, yet experienced, former BCS OC and hope he reinvents himself?
Promote a current offensive assistant at your own or another BCS program? (Shawn Elliott?)
Go get an NFL assistant?
Wake Ralph Friedgen?
Yes, hiring Pep Hamilton looked like it avoided almost all these other flawed scenarios. It didn't work out, now we are left with inevitable letdown.
I think that's an unfair generalization. Just because you're involved in Greek life doesn't mean you and your friends are stupid. I graduated in 2010 and I can tell you that my brothers and I showed up early, stayed late, and stood and cheered the whole game, for every game, no matter the opponent. That goes for home, road, conference ships, and bowl games. So easy with the anti-greek vitriol, hombre.
I think that many of the students that leave early are freshman that don't get VT Football like the readers of TKP. It could be a generational thing; maybe it's because recently, we always find a way to lose the big game; or maybe it just IS. Who knows? Hopefully, Brian's Letter circulated through enough dorms, off-campus apartments, and Oak Lane and got the fan base fired up for next year. I have confidence that the additions -and maybe more importantly, the subtractions- on Coach Beamer's staff will fire up this fan base and maybe, just maybe, we can fill that empty trophy case.
We'll end up with an inexplicably high ranking in the preseason by the media wanting a marquee opening week matchup and voting based on our expected performance against a weak schedule.
It's also important to remember our style of offense. It can change a little but you have to coach how you recruit.
The best example I can think of off the top of my head is Alabma wanting to hire the OC from Oregon.
That makes no sense because Alabama is set up to play power footbal not spread. even though that sounds like a great hire on paper it logistically doens't work at all.
Now we are admittedly somewhere in between those two extremes, and maybe that is a problem right there, but we have to keep in mind what we do best and what we recruit best.
We should also keep that in mind when looking at potential hires that we don't like, maybe Chuck Long would fit perfectly into our style of players, maybe he just didn't have that at othe places. This is just all food for thought.
I have 'altered' my original thought process. He believes that we should get an OC from a top 50 FBS offense. I agree, but I am still not opposed to an up-and-coming FCS OC or FBS Position coach (if the fit is right).
Anyways, in the FBS top 50 overall offenses, there are about 20 OC for which a move to VT would be better than lateral:
Nevada (maybe given coaching change)
Northern Illinois
Marshall
Tulsa
Fresno St.
Syracuse (maybe given coaching change)
Utah St
Troy
Ball State
LA Laffette
San Jose St
Toledo
Ohio
Houston
UCF
ULM
Rice
Kent State
ECU
I'm too lazy to research each of these coaches, but I assume that anywhere from half to three quarters of these OC's either have no recruiting ties to the area or don't run an offense that would 'fit' at VT. Whatever the case, each of these OC's should at least be briefly considered for an interview, and a handful of them should be interviewed. If a coach has no ties, but can develop an effective scheme, then he should be considered.
I say Leave no stone unturned, if we could find the perfect fit (BIG IF) we could be a top 5-10 team at year end.
Had scholarship offers from Mason, JMU, and St. Joes from small town Winchester. I know he went to Paul XI his senior year but Millbrook HS is not exactly a basketball powerhouse. Good to see his hard work payoff, especially since he couldnt hit a wide open three to save his life the first two years.
Wow,this is just meh.
The whole VT has a weak schedule argument won't be resolved this year.
The good thing: We'll be able to thrash Maryland as we ship them off to the Big 10. That is kind of nice.
The ACC convieniently waited until after Pep was out of the picture to do this....hmmm.
We have the easiest schedule in the ACC (conference play anyway) yet we have no idea what kind of team we will have, I mean if we aren't at least in the Coastal picture then something had to go horribly wrong right? Is the ACC setting us up to fall flat on our faces.
Why do I get the feeling that if we hired Pep we would have some how ended up playing both FSU and Clemson on the road....
P.S. This message has been brought to you by sarcasm and just joking.
I don't know what I was expecting considering the division alignment and scheduling decisions we'd seen so far, but this is pretty terrible. I don't see how we keep convincing sellout crowds to come for this home slate, unless other ACC teams step up.
Combine with coming off our worst season and Beamer trying to manage a restructuring off the offense. Danger signs all around for the program on the whole trying to maintain our position. If UVA wasn't still lolUVA I'd be worried.
this set's up perfectly like our 2010 schedule. Marquee match up followed by winnable sched!
Really excited to see us lose a heartbreaker to Bama then drop our game against Western Carolina the next week!
Just bleh
deep breath.
This is from Norm Wood and what really makes me think it is a bleh hire.
http://www.dailypress.com/sports/colleges/acc-all-access-blog/dp-spt-acc...
The problem is once they figure out how to handle basketball they throw darts at the wall to decide how to handle football.
Gotta say I've got a great case of schadenfreude going on watching the chain of events pass over the past 24 hours.
1. Here comes Pep! Pep in our step!
2. No Pep??!?!
3. Who the fuck is Chuck-fucking Long???
4. Now Fridge isn't even in consideration???
Not to say I'm not disappointed myself, but I think expectations were set a bit high.
Got the morale in here of a Matt Ryan Thursday night game in Blacksburg, amarite? Too soon?
Would love to play VT in Charlotte this year.
The SEC didn't get where it is by dodging in conference competition.
Just so frustrated with this conference we are both in. It's like their think-tanks literally sit around trying to figure out the best course of action and then recommending the exact opposite.
I was merely correcting his factual errors, not commenting on the opinion portion. I think we ought to interview everyone interested, but should focus on people with ties to our recruiting base. Ricky bustle is my first choice, but he has health issues. Shawn Elliott should be the primary target right now. He's already said he'd leave SC for an OC job (paraphrasing).
For fans it is a blessing a curse
CamErv75
@KillaCam9898
I wanna play some tough opponents next year!!! Tired of the BS I hear about we not good look at who we play!! #BeBold
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that we have the ACC's weakest schedule. Thanks for all the help getting a bowl bid.
then we get visibility into Pep turning us down (or us backing off....whatever), and people freak out.
I don't want or expect to know what's going on. Interview some people, hire the best guy you can. Have an offense with an identity and coach fundamentals. That would be a dramatic improvement.
Maybe he is getting over his Fat Frank hangover and just realized how bad they were at running the offense...
They do not count towards our ACC record, and will not effect on who reaches the ACC championship. But they can take a bowl bid from us.
recruiting ties aren't enough to make someone move across the country. People said he liked the DC area... Blacksburg is 4 hours away from the DC area. The east coast is pretty big, plenty of people like Blacksburg, but hate New York. Baltimore and Charlotte are both on the east coast, are they equally desirable locations?
I understand that Pep fit from a recruiting and philosophy standpoint, but I don't think we can offer him anything that Stanford can't. California to VA is a big move without any major incentive. It was a reach hire in my opinion, but that's fine, we're a big time program, and should swing for the fences when making a major hire.
I realize Long doesn't fit like Pep does, but why not interview him? What harm could come from an interview? I guess we lose some cash, but that shouldn't be a problem for a major athletic department.