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I'd add the refs to this too. It's pretty shitty to force out the starting QB in a bowl game with only 1 play left in the game with a chance to win the game.

Pop was somewhat inconsistent, but probably no more than Drones, and I would have given him the reigns when it appeared that Drones was just going through the motions later in the season. Seems to me the coaching staff continued to go with Drones over the course of the entire season because (1) he was healthy, and (2) he was the senior leader of the offense, regardless of his ineffectiveness. At that point, it probably would have been a good idea to see what we had in Pop, but that's water under the bridge now.

I guess we're looking for a "bridge" QB before Hahn is ready, so picking up someone like Grunkenmeyer could negatively affect Hahn's development, and would likely result in Hahn transferring. However, Grunkenmeyer looked rather effective finishing the season, so deciding whether to go after him would be a tough decision for the coaching staff. I wonder if Franklin has any renewed interest in Beau Pribula, former Penn State backup and Mizzu QB, who has another year of eligibility remaining. I also think Alonza Barnett III could be a nice "bridge" QB.

Clock should be ticking for the Michigan commits to make a decision. Hoping the VA kids are rethinking.

Not sure that is true. Look at Grey's track record of recruiting but also placing defensive backs in the NFL. He is ranked 35th in recruiting. His DBs have had 14 or more interceptions in four of his five seasons as coach at South Carolina. He has had four All Americans and put five into the draft.

At Florida he also put five in the league in two seasons.

For the Hokies he did this:

Gray spent a decade (2006-15) at his alma mater, Virginia Tech, leading some of the nation's best defensive backfields. In his 10 seasons coaching the secondary in Blacksburg under head coach Frank Beamer, his unit allowed just 185.0 passing yards per game and a 106.5 opponent passer rating – both ranked second in the nation over that span. Opposing quarterbacks completed just 50.4 percent of their passes in those 10 seasons, the lowest percentage of any defense in the nation. The Virginia Tech secondary ranked in the top 15 nationally in opponent passer rating eight times in Gray's 10 seasons leading the unit, including three top-five finishes. During Gray's tenure, a total of 11 Hokie defensive backs were selected in the NFL Draft.

If he had done that anywhere else he would likely still be someone Franklin is looking at.

They do have a completely separate fight song. They probably think that fight songs are beneath them, so they use the new year's song instead.

Either way, it's them being pretentious.

Front page news of ESPN....first 11 win season in 122 year program history

I also found out there stupid new years song they all sing isn't even their fight song.

This is more "it's not a campus it's the grounds" stuff from the Wahoos. They sing it after every touchdown. They can pretend it isn't a fight song if they like, but no matter how pretentious they are, words mean things.

Having to overpay to get coaches doesn't make that a good thing,

I think it's irrelevant if you're overpaying if you get your guy.

I think there are two main issues with coaching today, first the easy one, we just lived through Nick Saban who is the greatest college coach of all time. Very few people alive have seen dominance like that, the late 90s/early 90s had miami/FSU doing what Saban did, but that was two teams. Before that was OU's 47 game win streak in the 50s. This is why people want to fire Ryan Day who has the best winning percentage ever.

The 2nd is that football has changed so rapidly that its really hard to evaluate coaches because what makes a great coach, in the 90s we had Spurrier and Beamer who won with inventive football, Miami and Bowden both won with talent, Osborne won with execution and steroids. I think the changed from 2001-2025 dwarf the changes from 1975-2000. The offenses are so different, the defenses had to change, coaches use math to determine what to do. Recruiting is completely different.

There 4 are coaches still coaching college that won a national title as Head coach (Chizek is now a DC). That's it. In 2007 we had 15 coaching all as head coaches. Also Pat Dye was an Atheletic director.

Eli Drinkwitz has a better winning percentage than Frank Beamer. For a program like Mizzouri thats great, same for Arkansas. It's also higher than UFs historical winning percentage. And better than all but Spurrier, Meyer and Mullen in the last 50 years.

Rumor is he wants to go back to RB...considering he would be at best our third option there, makes sense he wants to transfer.

May also have been about where they liked their chances with the primary of Church vs Nininger against the Midlands field seeing Church and Miller wrestling attached.

For better or worse we got our first choices at OC and DC. We didn't get our first choices at CB (Gray) and OL (Traut).

Gray leveraged the VT offer into a better deal at USC-E and will coach in the SEC with a close friend...tho we will likely land a better recruiter at CB than Torrian. Traut went back to his alma mater and will continue to try to move on to the NFL. Moore is proven recruiter and a good run blocking coach. Second choices are better than 4th or 5th.

Howle doesn't have a ton of play calling experience but it is also not zero (and he has been a co-OC twice). Again, time will tell if he was the best choice. But he will run the O the HC wants to see, he knows what the TE's and OL's do in a TE-centric run heavy offense, and at this point he is a better recruiter than JDB.

O'Brien has been a QB coach for 2 years. More importantly, he's familiar with the player likely to be QB1 for us next year (Pribula or Grunkemeyer) as well as the O we will be running.

McKenzie is considered by most to be the more desirable choice over Brooks...time will tell.

I share your concerns about Pry; we will know soon enough if he still has what it takes at DC.

Spencer is a huge get; I think saving $ on Pry enabled this one to happen.

I don't think Franklin has any question marks about his choices; certainly not a "whole lot" of them. If we get LaMar Morgan, Dex, and Lustig to round out the main staff positions; I'll be very happy. Would certainly be the best recruiting staff we've ever had by quite a margin...Spencer, Moore and Howle recruiting the trenches for VT is a BIG deal.