OT: Every SEC hire is a Beamer or a Chadwell

Here's an interesting midweek read from the folks at Banner Society that may spark some interest as VT (potentially) embarks on (or completes, depending on which tea leaves you choose to read) our second coaching search of the post-Beamer era.

This industry is not, nor has it ever been, a meritocracy.

In the Nick Saban era of the Southeastern Conference, you can drop almost every head coaching hire into one of two buckets: a Chadwell or a Beamer. A Chadwell is an outsider, with schematic or cultural bonafides that an athletic director and/or booster corps believes will translate successfully to the SEC. A Beamer lacks the head coaching experience and can't boast a proven working system, but has knocked around the league long enough to know its hidden politics and what it takes to make the SEC's signature blood sausage, i.e. recruiting.

It's not important to figure out which is better. I'm not even sure that's possible. The point of the exercise is that these two ideas of a man — a promising young head coach with a new idea, or an already accomplished doer of dirt in the SEC — are often mutually exclusive, and often the decision makers at schools like South Carolina choose to hire one and hope the new coach fills out his staff with the other kind.

I've actively supporting that VT hire a Chadwell (including, but not limited to, the Chadwell), but if we hire the right Beamer *cough* Clemson coordinator *cough*, I won't be complaining.