Godfrey/Richard Johnson talk VT/Fuente on PAPN

LINK.
In depth talk about VT/the state of Virginia starts at 57:00, and lasts about 5 minutes. I tried to transcribe it, but it was too difficult given my mediocre keyboard/listening skills. Instead, I just summarized the conversation and listed a bunch of quotes I found notable. I recommend listening to the whole thing so you get the complete context of the conversation.

Starts out with Godfrey talking about VT/Fuente culture fit:

I've always thought Virginia Tech was cool, always known Virginia Tech to be innovative, lethal, fun, enter sandman, crazy, crazy, Appalachian rednecks, and you know, some of the best football talent in the world coming out of Newport News. You know, obviously the Vicks, but remember Deangelo Hall.

This is a different V-tech, it is just weird. I'll say this as many times as I need to say this, I called Fuente to Virginia Tech the best cultural fit for both sides that I've ever seen, and it is not working out.

Richard Johnson responds with:

I think you may have errored on calling it a culture fit; I think what it actually was was the lockstep of Whit Babcock, the AD, and the coach in Fuente. I don't know if that's a culture fit as much as it is a top level administrative fit. Willie Taggart at FSU is a cultural fit.

Other interesting discussion topics/quotes include:

• Godfrey talking about how Beamer was able to unified the poor, white, coal mining, and farming communities in SWVA with the black communities in the tidewater, then the DC projects with the NoVA suburbs, and eventually the whole state. He goes on to talk about what a remarkable accomplishment this was. "Tech was doing something culturally with white and black that you didn't see a lot."
• Godfrey thinks what Justin Fuente did at Memphis was truly incredible, and admits that he isn't sure how much credit to give Norvell, because he thinks that Fuente did all of the hard work there. This is all to say yet again that Godfrey is surprised that Fuente-to-VT hasn't worked as expected.
• Richard Johnson thinks that VT has lost the ability to bridge the cultural gap between the different races/cultures in the state, and that this is what made VT cool back in the day. He doesn't think that Fuente can't win at VT, but that he'll have to find his own way to win and be cool at VT.
• Godfrey shares an opinion of Bud Elliott, who believes that VT "may have never been able to last as a brand, and was a moment, not an institution... ...Any time there's not a ton of talent available within a 100 mile radius, your program is subject to some valleys (*Ahem* Tennessee)"
• Godfrey says that VT was the first program to make Thursday Nights and Punt Teams cool.