ESPN published an article about Kalen DeBoer succeeding Nick Saban and Justin Fuente shared some perspective on why it didn't work for him with the Hokies.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/40858871/alabama-coach-...
Fuente said that Beamer couldn't have been more supportive but that maintaining the right alignment at the university among administrators and others in the department was the most difficult challenge.
"There wasn't one second that I felt Coach Beamer wished he were still coaching. He'd worked his butt off to make the program what it was," said Fuente, who is out of coaching and lives with his family just outside Dallas. "He was never a hindrance. Hell, we lived in the same neighborhood. His wife brought my kids cookies."
But with any coaching change of that stature, Fuente said, it's inevitable that some people at the university never get on board.
"If you don't have alignment, clear alignment, then you have no shot anywhere. And it doesn't matter if that's at Alabama or anywhere else," he said. "I made my share of mistakes and I don't regret being there or any of my experiences there, but there is going to be some difficulty along the way."
Fuente said probably the most important aspect for DeBoer is making sure the people above him mandate that the "things that need to be tweaked are tweaked." Saban has said many times that former AD Mal Moore was invaluable in helping set things up at Alabama where Saban could coach and recruit and not be bogged down with outside issues.
Joe Pendry, Saban's first offensive line coach at Alabama and one of Saban's closest confidants, used to refer to it as "having the stroke."
Not everybody is going to have that stroke, but Fuente said having the president, chancellor, board members and athletic director all rowing in the same direction is critical.
"And if not, it's death by a thousand paper cuts," Fuente said. "Any one thing is not that big a deal, but hundreds of them -- time after time -- just sink you."
Comments
Aligning the entire university is really Saban's legacy. He did that better than any one and demanded it. He knew the direction and knew what to do and got everyone to buy in. It helps that he had won a national title previously, but he didn't build the machine at LSU, he just coached well and recruited well. At Bama he built a machine that produced a juggernaut.
Saban dramatically elevated LSU when he coached there from 2000-2004. LSU was super mediocre throughout the 80s and 90s. The fact they are considered a blue blood today is almost entirely because of what Saban built them into. Before Saban got there, they hadn't won a national title since 1958, and had only won 5 conference championships since 1936. The 3 seasons after Saban left, Les Miles managed to go 34-6 with Saban's players.
Not disagreeing, and I'm not wanting to diminishing the job he did, he brought in fantastic coaches like Jimbo Fisher and he recruited his but off and got big name players. But he won because he's a really good coach. At Bama he did so much more transforming the athletic department.
I tend to agree. Saban had two major contributions to the sport:
The latter has forever changed the sport in a way no one else ever thought to do.
I disagree, all the stuff you're saying he did at Bama was modeled after what he did at LSU where that type of alignment was much more difficult to achieve.
Yes, people lose sight of the fact that Saban is an elite defensive coach/mind who coached under Bellichick, Don James, etc. He prepared his defenses at Bama better than anyone else from an X and O's perspective. That's what people lose sight of.
Don't let that distract you from the fact that we kicked their butts in '02
Super mediocre despite having gigantic amounts of elite talent in the recruiting footprint.
Time will tell if "...he built a machine that produced a juggernaut," or if it was Saban that was the juggernaut.
DeBoer nor the coach after him will have the success Saban did. Times have changed. Players are professionals now with unlimited transfers. Saban did not have to deal with that until the very end of his time at Bama. DeBoer won't have Tua, Mack Jones and Hurts on the same roster - ever. 2 of those will transfer after fall practice now. Just one example. It's a different era. Bama also has more opportunities for 2 tough games on the schedule- Texas and Oklahoma. Different era.
Is he saying Dr. Sands would not let him play Henson Hooker?
No, but he is saying that Whit wouldn't let him hire more recruiting staff, or give him money to hire Barry Odom or replace Corny.
He made plenty of errors, but I think we also know that he was a little bit limited.
"Whit wouldn't let him hire more recruiting staff, or give him money to hire Barry Odom or replace Corny."- Internet myth largely - WADR. The "reporter" and site that propagated that is well....not Walter Kronkite. I've been critical of Whit on here at times- however no pod caster or message board fan is inside the VT athletic department at this level. Whit is uber secretive and guarded and an experienced AD. He would have replaced fucking Brad Cornelson FFS.
Didn't whit basically admit this during the Fuente firing/Pry hiring press conferences? Wasn't the "don't send good money after bad" quote directly from Whit's mouth?
For what it's worth, I'm not saying it was a bad move by Whit. Just saying that in his last two years, Fuente wanted to expand/update the staff, and Whit said 'earn it first'.
Fuente asked for more money once he realized the gig was up and people had woken up to just how far in over his head he was at this level. Our recruiting was absolute trash under him, with the only reason we weren't routinely listed at the bottom of the ACC is because we kept loading up on the one or two positions we could recruit for, like RB.
Again, he didn't need a bigger budget to pick up the phone and call schools around the state. He didn't need a bigger budget to send an assistant to visit schools around the state a couple times a week. And yet, when you talk to high schools around the commonwealth a recurring theme is that they just never heard from VT under Fuente unless they had a player we wanted. There was no effort to maintain relationships, it was purely transactional, and purely an attempt to leech off the talent within the state without giving something back.
Which is infuriating because I specifically remember Whit calling out an overhaul of the recruiting efforts a major selling point of bringing Fuente in when he talked to our Hokie Club back over that first summer. I remember getting the impression that it was going to be a major point of emphasis, and yet it inexplicably got so much worse from where it was under Beamer. How does that happen?
I'm just glad we are where we are under Pry. Seems like we've actually got it working again.
"Our recruiting was absolute trash under him"- bingo. Big time schools realize this early and don't make bullshit excuses like our fans did for him. VT signing classes in the 70's is almost impossible- you have to try to do it. Also videographers, analysts, etc aren't recruiters at this level. On field coaches- the guys kids are playing for- recruit and actually land good players- not James Johnson, not the director of HS relations, not anyone else. The damn on field coaches get the real players- full stop. An Fu didn't have good ones.
100%
Seeing us coming in as one of the worst 4 FBS recruiting classes in back to back years was stunning, because no program that is less than 10 years removed from an At Large BCS bid should be floundering that badly on the recruiting trail. You almost have to go out of your way to fumble the bag that badly.
I'm just glad that Pry is starting to prove that what happened during those years was a Fuente problem and not a Virginia Tech problem.
You know what they say about coaching: You don't want to be the guy that follows a legend. You want to be the guy that follows that guy.
Fuente caused plenty of his own problems, but it was always going to be a tough situation for him trying to follow Frank Beamer.
100% - Fuente had an up hill battle the entire way. He shot himself in the foot a few times to make things worse but it was always going to be a struggle for him.
I've always said no matter who came after Beamer they'd fail. Fuente just didn't do anything to help himself.
The weight weigh the same is the biggest shit storm I think I've ever heard, this is college football, the little things matter, do more kids come to a school because Nike then wear Nike, Coke in the vending machines, Gatorade of powerade, and even if it is unholy serve the fucking turkey bacon. Bama aligned everyone, there weren't arguments like this because Saban squashed them. Details matter. Beamer won his way, but no one us coming to VT to play for Beamer anymore. Just like no one is going to Bama because of Saban today.
3 years removed, he should move on, I know I have...
He has moved on. This isn't the case of Fuente reaching out to ESPN and asking if they'll interview him, I'm sure ESPN chose him for an interview because he followed Frank Beamer, and wanting a tie-in on someone following Saban.
I agree following a legendary coach would be tough if there wasn't a foundation laid. In this case there was a solid foundation and more than 20 years of consistency and continuity. Fuente didn't get the support because he tried changing all that, from recruiting to football philosophy to PR engagement to trying to change the culture to alumni and booster alienation. Hanging onto Corny and putting 15 running backs on scholarship doesn't help things either. I feel like he's taking every opportunity to blame everyone but himself for his failures. He absolutely could have been successful at Virginia Tech if he had continued with the foundation Beamer and Foster worked so hard to establish but instead he wanted to burn it all down and do it selfishly his way hence is why he didn't get the support.
Depends on what you mean by solid foundation. We found out we had one guy in charge of recruiting that liked to keep everything to himself and then left. That's not a solid foundation for recruiting. I'm not saying Fuente didn't suck at it, but look at all the recruiting staff Pry hired to get us to where we should be with recruiting.
The problem with having a coach who is as long-tenured as Beamer was, is not adapting to changes/advances in the best ways to run a program. Granted, some long-time coaches do adapt, but I don't think Beamer did.
Edit; also, he admits he made plenty of mistakes. Remember, this article isn't about what Fuente did wrong, it's about following a legend and what obstacles you may face from that. Fuente absolutely did a lot wrong, but that doesn't mean that there weren't extra problems he faced related to everyone being used to Beamer and the way he did things for decades..And that there won't be similar challenges coming in after Saban.
There is rarely a foundation laid by legendary coaches. He didn't have a modern day recruiting staff, which Beamer was struggling with the last 5 years. We didn't have a hudl account. Our facilities were so-so. And we didn't spend money on coaches. Fuente made almost double Beamer. Gray went to UF and made almost 3 times what we were paying. Wiles went to NC State, yup NC State, and doubled his salary. How is NC State paying assistants better than us? And Wiles had been here what 19 years or something.
Fuente added about 10 staff when he came, Pry added another 10 or so. He also got Whit to agree to do something to freshen up the locker rooms (new paint job and some new lights) to cheaply make it look newer. Now maybe that was all Pry and if so kudos to him for being thrifty. But things needed done. And if you can shell out 1.5 mil for Barry Odom, one of the top DCs in the game then you're not serious about football (it might have been a no because they wanted to fire Fuente). You don't have a solid foundation. Beamer is a top 10 all time football coach, that means there are 10 guys that could replace him. Everyone else needs to get on board that massive changes need to happen cause you can't when how he won because you hired a worse coach. Just like Bama hired a worse coach. Just like UGA will do when Kirby is gone.
Theres two examples of someone following the guy who made the program:
Bear Bryant, Steve Spurrier, Tom Osborn, Frank Beamer, Bill Snyder, John Robinson, Darrell Royal, JoePa... none of their immediate predecessors were able to reach nearly the same heights
Idk how you can say that about VT. Facilities and staffing were behind. The foundation has since been fixed. Fuente inherited a house that needed a lot of work. He wasn't handy enough to fix it up.
Also categorically false. Often admits a lot of mistakes he made with staffing and recruiting.
All of his whining would hit a lot more if his successor wasn't able to immediately do everything that Fuente complained was impossible within this program.
The guy just sucked as a head coach. Hearing so many high schools in the state saying they're now hearing from VT for the first time in a decade is just sad. Fuente mailed it in, collected a paycheck and blamed everyone but himself for his own failures.
He didn't mail it in. He tried stuff that just didn't work well, like recruiting Texas (probably because he was from Oklahoma and coached in Texas so maybe he felt he'd do better there, plus, wasn't someone on staff also from Texas and probably also thought that would help). Plus, he had a lot of success with certain players, and I think he just couldn't adapt to not having the exact players he needed and also either couldn't identify the, or was bad at recruiting them.
If he mailed it in, we never would have won 10 games and gone to the ACCCG in his first year (and did WAY better against Clemson than the best the Big 10 had to offer) and won 8 games the following year. And even though we didn't win many games with him, the staff did have success with Herbert.
One of his biggest problems was sticking with Corny. I don't know if that was loyalty or not having the $ to hire someone else as was mentioned above, but whatever the case, That hurt him a LOT.
Bottom line, I really don't think you can say he mailed it in, I think he just made a lot of mistakes, but worked hard at them.
He peaked with a roster made up of someone else's players in his first 8 months on the job. Everything after that on and off the field was an absolute disaster of a program defined by a complete lack of effort. The recruiting was absolute trash, alumni relations was a joke and he was better at running players off than fielding effective units on the field. And then he went public about trying to go to Baylor because the man child couldn't get what he wanted here. He absolutely mailed it in.
Yes, he did well with someone else's players, except Jerrod Evan's, who he recruited and was probably the biggest reason we actually had success, and even if not, he did better with those players than the legend he replaced.
And he didn't go public with Baylor, Baylor just made it publicly known who they were going after, we just knew about Fuente because he was our coach. But I searched on the whole Baylor coach recruiting, and the university was definitely saying who they were going after, which is rare since most universities do not.
What, SPECIFICALLY do you have in mind that makes you say lack of effort? I'm not disagreeing that he did lots of stuff bad or poorly, I just don't think it was lack of effort. Hell, recruiting Texas, FL, NC, and the west coast isn't smart, but it takes a lot of time and effort. And not doing certain things (like schmoozing alumni) doesn't mean he wasn't spending the time and energy he should have been on alumni relations on something else that was either a bad idea or just not productive.
Like I said, I think he did a lot poorly, just don't see a clear lack of effort that you can point to.
Edit: he was a bad coach, not sure why you have so much animosity towards him that you feel the need to throw mailing it in and complete lack of effort on top? Just let him be a bad coach and that's good enough.
"If he mailed it in, we never would have won 10 games and gone to the ACCCG in his first year (and did WAY better against Clemson than the best the Big 10 had to offer) and won 8 games the following year." yes, because the real staff before him left him good players. Players that weren't small and skinny - like the ones he left Pry.
You're confusing incompetence with laziness. Huge difference between saying he 'sucked' and he 'mailed it in'. The latter insinuates that he was lazy or took short cuts to avoid doing work. That was not the case.
never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.
was fuente good? no.
but it was more a case of him being in over his head than mailing it in to collect a paycheck.
I think the first couple years, yes he realized he was in over his head, but it sure seemed like he definitely mailed it in that last year and maybe the last two
His next to last year was the COVID year if I'm not mistaken. That year was so effed up, I don't know how you can make any sort of judgment on it.
I know everyone was frustrated with Fuente, how much we wanted things like our bowl streak to continue, and wanted to succeed. But honestly, we probably needed someone to fail after Beamer and someone like Pry to come in after to tell the administration and alumni what it will take to be a big boy program. The sentiment was probably that if Beamer had success running things the way he did, we probably didn't need more resources.
The problem was, even if he hadn't been close to retiring, the way he HAD been doing things probably wasn't going to sustain success. We needed to adapt. Fuente failing opened the door for the conversation about extra resources for recruiting and a larger staff in order to be competitive.
So we can hate on Fuente all we want to, but, like I said in a comment above, he's a bad coach, but we kinda needed him to be in order to usher in a new period of success. Plus, I don't think he's a bad guy, just a bad coach. So while it's tempting to pile on with how bad he was, I'm looking forward because it certainly feels like Pry has built the foundation we needed and will likely (hopefully?) have a lot of success going forward.
It would have been incredibly helpful for Fuente to have spent at least one year at an elite blue blood program that pumps out top 10 recruiting classes. Prior to him being a head coach, he was leveraging his experience at TCU which didn't have a top 40 recruiting class until his last year there (when they went undefeated and went to the Rose Bowl).
I don't want to make excuses for the guy, he was a bad head coach, but if had a year at a place like Texas, Oklahoma etc. to have a chance to really understand recruiting, his risk of ruin would have been much smaller.
Whit didn't understand what the program needed post-Beamer. We needed a guy like Pry to rebuild and modernize the program from the ground-up, not an "offensive guru" we could pair up with Foster.
I believe Fuente when he said he saw program rot prior to 2018 with the Kumah and Hill generation. But I don't think he was equipped to fix it and didn't have the ability to learn on the fly.
Totally agree, with a small caveat:
To be fair, no one did. Almost every VT fan thought this was a great hire. The media lauded it.
100%. I initially thought Whit pulled off a heist when he got both Fuente and Foster.
VT fans were on the outside looking in. Whit was on the inside looking out. Big disparity in knowledge level between the two groups.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20 as they say.
Thing is, Whit also had not worked at an established Athletic department - his experience was at Cincy, WVU, Mizzou, and JMU.
On top of that, you have recognize that we had turnover at President, AD, and football coach in a 2.5 year span (the latter two of which had spent over two decades at their post). How were we supposed to maintain alignment through that?
As you said, hindsight is 20/20, and hindsight shows us that there was a whole lot of We-don't-know-what-we-don't-know.
It was a great hire to just about everyone because everyone thought the losing in 2012-2016 was Beamer getting old and not all the cracks showing. After The Coale/Boykins class our WR recruiting was abysmal. DJ Coles was always injured and Marcus Davis didn't have the motor, and those two were amazing compared to the others until we lucked into Ford and found a diamond in thr rough in Phillips.
Yet, what I remember from that time period was virtually all the fan base screaming for offense. And not just offense but flashy, high-octane offense.
We need speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.
This makes a lot of sense when combined with the podcast episodes he did awhile back (last year maybe?). He didn't name names, but he indicated there was at least one person on the administrative side of athletics that he really butted heads with. When I listened to those episodes, it didn't sound like it was Whit specifically. You wouldn't think Whit would have been inflexible to change since Fuente was one of the first coaches he hired.
It was John Ballein. They didn't see eye to eye on anything and Ballein just thought Fu should do everything the old Beamer way. Blame on both sides for not being able to work out their differences IMO.
Yeah I agree, and thanks that makes a lot of sense. I figured it was someone who had been there for a long time. Makes you wonder what things they disagreed about!
John's been at VT since 1987.
It's probably gold watch time for him.
yes.. 100 times. Or put him in charge of womens lacrosse.
Current his job description is:
That's a whole boatload of things for a guy at retirement age. He's 63, I believe, and overseeing S&C, Equipment, Facilities, Events, as well as being the admin/secondary admin for 4 varsity sports seems like...a lot.
Im so over Fuente. Sitting at home spending his buyout to not coach. F that guy. I hope his arms and legs fall off and roll down a hill.
Why am I always surprised when grown men wish ill on someone who failed to win enough college football games?
Grown men give millions in NIL money to players now. Millions. Go Hokies. Why would anyone be surprised if grown men are in turn "fired up" if their school loses and their coach sucks?
Why on earth is this getting downvoted to the blur zone? It's not offensive.
I'm pretty sure "I hope his arms and legs fall off and roll down a hill" is tongue and cheek. I mean, have you ever fucking heard of that actually happening to a person? C'mon people! Lighten up.
Besides, it looks like people are downvoting George DelRicco. THAT would be offensive.
I can't tell if this is satire, so if so... Bravo i guess
No, I genuinely don't understand the pearl clutching over Wagoneer's post. He's hating on Justin Fuente for crying out loud. Why would that offend anyone on TKP who was alive during the Justin Fuente era?
And the criticism about "a grown man wishing ill" on Fuente? Have you seriously ever heard someone earnestly wish a person's arms and legs would "fall off and roll down a hill?" It's intentionally absurd. How is that not obvious?
Maybe, and perhaps I'm projecting here but humor me, it was the "F that guy" (which you seem to have missed) that people find to be in poor taste
Guy got paid millions of dollars to implode a program. I believe as paying consumers we have the right to express our displeasure with a PG-13 "F that guy"
For whatever reason, there's a huge affinity for him on this board
My stance on it is, Fuente seems like a good dude. That doesn't mean that Fuente was a good football coach. He was paid to do a job and then got paid to not do that job since he wasn't meeting expectations. He hasn't come out and disparaged the University or his time here, at least that I know of. He took his family and moved back to be closer to his home where he feels more comfortable. Good on him.
If I really want to point out the other side of the coin then Fuente actually helped the program move past Beamer and to where we are now. Without Fuente we don't get Pry, IMO. We didn't know what we needed without Fuente showing us what it was that we needed as a program.
I wouldn't say there's a huge affinity for him here, at least not anymore. In fact, this thread is probably the most objective I've seen any VT fans be about Fuente since his firing.
But during his tenure, some people here defended him way longer than they should have.
I was probably/possibly one of those. I still maintain, given how he did in 2016, that he is CAPABLE of winning, but based on the other years, he has no clue how to recreate it. He needs exactly the right pieces in place, but doesn't even know what the pieces are. Oh well. Like I said in my post above, I think we needed someone to fail after Beamer, and Fuente did it.
He knew the X's and O's but doesn't know the Jimmy and Joes
We needed the fail to rebound. But it hurt to see us have to pay anybody 10 million to go away. We make fun of schools that have to do that.
Any big time football program has buyouts. Jimbo Fisher's was MASSIVE. It sucks, but given the failure rate of coaches, especially where expectations are high, it's just a fact of life. What's worse is when programs go through coaches like every 3 years and pay out multiple buyouts.
Look, I get that it's an over-the-top post. I just don't think it's a torches and pitchforks everybody-downvote-him post. Maybe on TSL, where everything is breathlessly serious. But I like to think TKP is a bit more irreverent.
Think about it this way: If you replaced "Justin Fuente" with "Anthony Colandrea" would anyone be offended? I've literally joked about wanting to punch Colandrea in the face and gotten a couple dozen legs. And people have definitely said "Fuck that [insert opposing coach or player name]" and everyone has laughed about it. It just feels like selective finger wagging to me.
I think you are vastly overstating the significance of a -18 for a commenter who has thousands of turkey legs.
It's basically a "hey we think this is in poor taste". If you think it's funny, upvote and move on. Its not the only comment in this thread in the negatives for a weird hindsight take that's in poor taste either, fwiw
Yeah. Sorry mates. I should have added some /s or something. It was satire, and maybe a little sour grapes that he rode our program into the dirt and is now sitting on a pile of money doing nothing after that work of art. I realize its not all his fault, but he is the face, and the one who got paid to go away. Totally on board about Ballein fwiw.
That being said, if someone's arms and legs DO fall off and roll down a hill, I sure hope someone gets it on video at @'s me. :)
If you actually care enough to go back and remove the "F the Guy" I imagine some of the down votes would disappear.
As someone else pointed, the failure rate for coaches is actually really high. We can be salty about it, but the odds are stacked against teams, especially ones who can't afford to put out massive contracts for known commodities. So we have to gamble on an up-and-comer that more often than not won't pan out.
And, like I said somewhere above, I'm sure he would have liked to have succeeded so he could still be making boatloads of money, so it's not like it was intentional.
Hiring an up and comer or not Nick Saban is fine. All coaches start somewhere. Is there less risk hiring an Urban Meyer? Dabo Swinney, Bob Stoops? proven winners at the highest level- yep. But hiring a Fuente is fine- what is NOT fine is ignoring all of the signs that the guy can't coach or recruit until its too late and your program loses to UVA and misses a bowl for the first time in decades.- THAT is not OK. When you get embarassed by 3 win ODU, you fire that guy. You can find a better coach score of places than that guy. The serious programs do that and don't worry about the buyouts. Keep an eye on Florida- If Napier is 7-5, he's gone. They are serious about football down there.
Your point is spot on, but Napier is going to stay if he wins 7 this year. Their schedule is insane, and Florida admin knows it.
Yes just looked- that is a ridiculous schedule- wow. Good luck!
do we think Napier gets the axe if he loses 7?
Perhaps- depending on the 7. If 5 of his losses are to FSU, Miami, Tennessee, UCF, and Kentucky? I think he is in legit trouble in that scenario
But then he has wins over UGA, Texas, Tamu, lsu, ole miss lol
Edit: I don't think he survives losses to UCF AND Miami. That might get him a mid year firing.
But if he can finish the season with 7 wins, that means he probably has at least two top 10 wins, and probably four over ranked teams.
yes, true- I'm just saying. his seat is pretty warm right now. He needs a good year.
Remains to be seen- perhaps soon, but I never thought he was a good fit there. They could have done much better than a sunbelt coach, IMO. I thought it was a lazy hire and still think so. If he wins 8-9 games with that schedule then you know he can coach.
Nope. If he wins 7 this year, with that schedule, they enter next year as a dark horse favorite to win the SEC next year (not unlike VT after last season).
I've talked to some Florida folks who say he's fine if he wins 5 and looks respectable in the other 7.
He just can't lose to UCF, and has to keep it close with Miami
I don't think he'll have any trouble with Miami. I think, as they have been for the last 25 years, Miami is a paper tiger. I think they are overrated, and I think UF will dispatch them fairly easily.
Cam Wards 6 years of experience and McCormicks 9 years will help the canes though.
Until their coach decides not to take a knee and snatches defeat from the jaws of victory again.
That was a true definition of epic bad decision.
DecisionS
He did it at Oregon too
I mean sure the failure rate might be high, but there is a big gap between 'this coach just didn't work out' and 'this coach had a school that was a BCS At Large, chosen based on prestige more than ranking, and within 10 years had them losing to the likes of ODU, Liberty, UVa and getting the doors blown off at home by Duke while pulling in bottom 4 recruiting classes in multiple years'
Fuente wasn't just a bad coach, his last few years were an unmitigated disaster to the point where there was serious worry through the football community that he had done irreparable harm to the Virginia Tech brand. The only reason you're willing to defend him like this is because he was family for those 6 years he was here. If this had happened anywhere else, we'd all be in agreement that it was one of the all- time worst pairings of a coach and program.
Exactly.
For us Redskins fans (fuck that 5th grade youth boys soccer team name), no one cares about Jason Wright being a "good dude" off the field. Am I supposed to have some low key affinity for him since he was our president for a few years? lol no. He was the lead architect (along with Snyder) of the worst rebranding of all sports history. A total disaster and shit show. Now they don't feel like the team we all loved and rooted for growing up. Feels like an expansion team... Fuck him too.
As a fellow Redskins fan, how sad is it that the Phoenix Coyotes said... we are going to put Utah down the jersey and its going to be black and white... and that is a better rebranding. lol.
The best part is these people who head up these rebrands brag about how great of a job they did even though they are nothing short of lazy. Microsoft "Word Art" seems to be only thing in these guy's budget.
go Washington Taco Holders!!!! smdh
Most of us Redskins fan have conceded that the name and logo isn't coming back as much as we want it to, but its not too much to ask to keep jersey pattern and colors so it doesn't feel like an expansion team. At least that would give us a connection to the team we all grew up with. The current branding is a joke and a half. Looks and feels like an expansion team.
Yep- keeping the "washington football team" would have actually been better- unique, etc. But THAT rebrand was simply putting numbers on the helmets like alabama and using the old redskins jerseys and pants. This current set of white uniforms that aren't even the classic burgundy is awful.
WFT was quirky but it worked. The Commanders? Its trying to cosplay a little too hard as a team for military vets and it comes off as a cheap joke. I don't mind the jersey redesign, in fact it was probably inevitable it was going to happen anyway just to wash the Dan Snyder stink off the franchise (before inevitably reverting back as a 'throwback' design in 10-20 years when nostalgia sees demand spike), but the whole rebrand itself was just awful, right down to the alternate logo that looks like a New Era cap sticker.
I am going to partially agree but restate a little.
To me, it comes off as the cringe that completely clueless but arrogant civilians profess what veterans like.
I really wanted them to go with "Washington Team of Football" so that their initialism would be WTF. Would have been a branding"/marketing slam dunk.
The name is WAY down on my list of things I'm concerned about for the Commanders. Hell, half of the NFL team names are silly at best, and stupid at worst. Is the Dolphins a cool name? Or the Seahawks? How about the Packers, the 49ers or the Steelers? The Saints? No, they're all stupid nicknames.
Commanders, Giants, Titans are all in the tier slightly above the stupid names. The names imply their team is better than yours. Nothing too creative, but it's better than being...the Browns.
If Jayden Daniels starts making Pro Bowls and the team starts winning playoff games, people will shut up about the name.
Agree about the winning. Don't care one bit about pro bowls- 100 players make that team and it's flag football. Nobody cares you made a pro bowl anymore. If Daniels is an all-pro however, that means he's one of the 2 best QBs in the league. Brady was an "all-pro" 6 times. He was a pro bowler 15 times. Meaningless. I get what you are saying, though I think 49ers and Steelers are pretty damn cool names, given their ties to the city the time they were named.
The Saints name is also very much tied to the city of New Orleans. I think that its criminal that Utah still has the name Jazz instead of coming up with something that applies to Utah.
Agreed. Utah should have been renamed 40 years ago. The lakers too, IMO. LA is not known for lakes like Minnesota is.
I don't actually hate any of the NFL team names I made fun of. I'm just trying to make the point that they're not intrinsically great names, but when you win a bunch of Super Bowls all of a sudden your name carries a certain amount of nostalgia and respect.
I'm a sucker for old timey names because of the history behind them. Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox. etc.
Obviously its just a name and other names have no connection to their location but all those team names have fun nick names or chants (Fins, Hawks, go Pack go, G-men, etc.)... 49ers, Saints and Steelers actually makes sense for their locations.
But yes, you're correct if they start winning, people won't care as much about the name... But the fact that our nickname or what people are already calling them for short (commies) isn't great.
All they had to do is keep same colors and jersey pattern, come up with a name that starts with an "R", that allows them to stick with the old school "R" helmet and be able to keep #HTTR which many loved, though silly... Many who aren't fans and/or who weren't following the "rebrand" from the beginning how badly they fucked this up on a thing that could have been such an easy transition. Everyone involved in the rebrand is officially on the FUBAR list.
Re-wind a bit. All Snyder had to do was give Fed Ex and Nike the middle finger and keep the name. Goodell stated that the league would never force him to change it. The other owners didn't care, the players didn't care, etc. The corporate mob forced the change- and conspired to do so I might add- which is illegal. But anyway- he should have told Fedex he would take the name off the stadium himself. Ironically its no longer fedex anyway.
100%
Uhh....are we downvoting the f that phrasing??😭/s
I can genuinely say "fuck that guy"... We can talk about how good of a dude he is off the field, and he probably is, but no one cares about that. We hired him as our football coach, the leader and face of the program that is the cash cow of the school we all love, created hundreds of memories with, and many graduated from.
Most (if not all) of us on here put our hard earned money towards this school and (mainly) football program, and he was too arrogant to realize how it was wayyyyyy over his head, especially by 2018. Did the administration not give him all the resources for him to succeed? So it seems, but his inability to recruit, his unbreakable loyalty to some of the coaches, his piss poor coaching/prep/game management, embarrassment after embarrassment in excusable loses, and his lack of leadership/accountability really fucked this program over and set us back years.
Yea you can say, "well we don't have Pry without hiring/firing Fuente"... Sure, but that doesn't excuse Fuente (and the admin too) to royally fucking over this fan base and former players... I can equally be excited for what we have in Pry and staff now but also say, fuck that guy. Just my $0.02
I've been surprised at the amount of grace folks have been willing to give him in this thread. Taking that as a sign that the slow off-season news cycle is driving us crazy and Week 1 cannot come soon enough.
yeah you can say that and i still think it's in poor taste. i'm not gonna nuke you for it, but i understand why someone else would downvote you for it.
People are free to do as they please. We all have different feelings/opinions which is fine. I'm just on team fuck that guy, and if others don't because of whatever affinity they have towards him or think it's "not nice", then to each their own. We'll just agree to disagree on this one.
Right there with ya
Also, with all this talk about how Fuente ran the program in the ground; it got me thinking about the James Johnson years in MBB. So that led me to the discovery that James Johnson (yup, the same one) is now on our football staff? Did anyone else know this?
Yes, Johnson has - in my opinion- one of the many useless modern roles in college football. No offense to him, but 50 people on the pay roll to not draw up a play, run a drill, recruit players in person, run a camp, win a football game is a bunch of bullshit. Nobody will ever convince me that Saban's secret was 60 admin positions. Never. It's the new arms race though. how many "high school relations" staff can we hire? It better be more than Clemson. I saw a team picture of the hoops team when Buzz was here. There were twice as many people in street cloths than there were players. Ridiculous.
So I. Sure you're a huge fan of this then https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/40924556/sources-alabama-agrees-record-gm-courtney-morgan
One of Pry's first announced hires was Mike Villagrana as GM but we call it "director of player personnel"
I mean the eagles almost have more vice presidents than players then there's a lot of room for college football teams to have people that handle things that aren't directly related to playing football
Sure, the specific method of harm is hyperbolic and tongue in cheek, but he's still wishing harm on a former Virginia Tech head football coach. As much as you may not like how good of a coach he was, that's still just low rent.
Fu wasn't the coach we needed when Beamer retired. Fu had plenty of faults and mistakes, but the VT football program and infrastructure needed an overhaul in 2016. Frank - as great as he was - got complacent, and VT got way behind everyone else as the game evolved and recruiting, facilities, staff, social media, etc. became the new way for college football programs. We needed someone to bring VT football into the modern era, and unfortunately Whit and the powers that be thought we could just hire an offensive "guru" as HC, pair him with Foster, and suddenly we would be winning again.
Fu came in, added an impact QB, and had a 10 win season with Beamer's players. But Fu was never the "tip of the spear" as Saban was to Bama. I think Fu just comes from the era and coaching tree where his primary focus is being a ball coach. The modern recruiting game, being the CEO and face of the program, building a modern staff, all the stuff that Pry is phenomenal at Fu was completely ill-equipped for with us. And the VT admin thinking the old cheap Beamer way of doing things could still work certainly did Fu no favors. But all in all, we just didn't hire the right guy.
Pry has come in, embraced tradition and received the buy-in of the admin, but the guy knows what big time football and recruiting looks like. I think there was a big push by some Influential donors/board members to give the program an infusion of cash before we hired Pry and knew we needed we needed to invest more to be competitive. But Pry was the guy to come in and build the vision for the new, modern VT football blueprint. And he has knocked it out of the park.
Fu was just never, ever going to be that guy. Whereas Pry is so comfortable at donor events, speaking, selling the program - Fu was never going to excel at that. He was never going to be able to manage relationships and get the entire VT solar system in alignment. Could he have done better with more resources? Probably, but VT would never reach its potential with a coach like Fu.
As far as on-field failure, his number one flaw was his unwavering trust in Corn. The guy blew chunks as a P5 coordinator and was in way over his head.
The logic was sound- Keep foster and his top notch defensive scheme here, and add a little "offense" with a noted offensive guy in Fuente. Not terrible logic at the time. Hindsight yes, but modern uber cut throat competitive college football where the players choose you, not the other way around is not like the NFL, where Kyle Shannahan can call cool offensive plays and pretend to be a "head coach". The kid in miami couldn't lead me to an IPA, but he knows alot of good ball plays. That shit works as a "head coach" in the NFL now, but not in CFB. What Whit should have done- knowing what we know now- is 1. not eliminate his coaching options by roughly 50%. He stated from the beginning this would be an "offensive" hire. Well GA hired a "defensive" minded guy and we know how that is working for them. 2. Get rid of fossil, no real value John Bellein- who as we found out was the guy desperatley holding on to 1999- he's not Tom Landry- get him the fuck out of the program. 3. This is 100% on Justin Fuente- after you struggle to move the ball in the redzone against dog teams- perhaps hire a better, proven, P5 offensive coordinator? Perhaps be aware and experienced enough to realize Jafar Williams can't coach? Perhaps be aware that Ben Hilgart is an underqualified clown?
The thing that will always bother me about Fuente is the complete lack of caring about maintaining relationships with high schools around the commonwealth. Like, this is supposed to be your pipeline, this is supposed to be the backbone of the players that you're bringing into the program and he only reached out to them if they had someone he wanted. To me, that's lazy and not even the bare minimum of what should be expected of a coach over the last 30 years. That alone raised up enough red flags that it probably should have cost him his job, but then to see the absolute disasterclass of alumni relations when the 1999 team was brought back the week of that infamous Duke game? Hearing after the fact that the 99 team was essentially snubbed all week long by the staff was inexcusable. That alone showed he had no idea what it meant to be the head coach of Virginia Tech, let alone any other big name program. And then to cap it off by getting run out of the stadium by Duke while Cutcliffe of all people was dunking on you with trick plays? Looking back, that's when you realize that not even the nicest coaches in the ACC liked the guy.
I'm glad we have Pry now. He seems to be doing all the right things and getting us back to behaving like we should. Hopefully the wins come, but if we keep recruiting like we are, at worst we'll stumble into a winning program. But I'm also not about to listen to people wax poetic about a coach who turned us into one of the worst programs in the country for a short period of time, recruiting at a FBS bottom-4 rate multiple years in a row. You almost have to try to be that bad in order to burn that many bridges. That man shouldn't be let near the helm of any major football program going forward.
That's where Fu's hubris bit him in the ass. Now, If I resurrected Memphis- a complete dumpster fire with literally zero facilities and support- I might be a tad cocky too. Fu didn't care about the 99 team - he was in college then, he felt confident he could do things "his" way- worked at Memphis
Unless that program is one of the numerous programs I hate. (ND, OSU, Mich, Miami, Texas, UNC, WVU, Pitt, etc.) I still believe that Fuente's biggest on-field downfall was Corny. If I could wish Cornelsen on any program it would be one of these listed...
Yeah, I don't think we need to worry about this. Corny is spinning wheels and failing at Sam Houston State. That is a career killer. I hope he enjoys coaching high school football.
Agree with you here. That 2019 Duke game was the point where I, and I think most of the fanbase, knew Fuente wasn't going to work out. Getting pushed around like rag dolls and ran out of the stadium by a lowly Duke squad, snubbing the 1999 team, the disaster that recruiting was turning into...that game was where I think the majority of the fanbase was done with him.
And I truly think 2021 was him simply going through the motions. Recruiting had become unimaginably abysmal, to the point where, like you said, you are trying to be that bad. I don't want to go as far to say that Fu was lazy or mailed it in from the start - I think he came in and worked hard. But yeah...I truly think he was done with VT and knew he was gone after 2021. It was a total lame duck season.
Virginia Tech losing to ODU in football is a huge deal- like it or not. Losing to a bad ODU team in a stadium that only had port o johns and was 75% VT fans, was and is a fireable offense. I said it then, I'll say it now. Fire him, name Foster interim, tell the memphis guys they are coaching for their future and show you are serious about football. Not an overreaction, IMHO. Now, Pry will not be fired if he loses at ODU this year. He won't, but I'm not kidding when I say he will catch some real heat if he does- real heat from important boosters.
I don't think he was going through the motions. I remember seeing him in a post-game and looked like he genuinely didn't comprehend why things weren't working, and had no idea how to fix it. Not sure I'm right, that was just my take.
He looked ... defeated I guess, like I said, like he didn't know how to fix it and I'm sure knew he had to be on his way out. And for people who say he was just looking to cash in on his buyout, I doubt it. If you're capable, there is SOOOO much more money to be made if you're not a failure.
He had to know that it was the Jimmies and the Joes that were the problem. And if he didn't know that, he should've been fired on the spot.
No matter why, the point is, it was going to be his last season. He did resign early (or it was called an "mutual parting of ways") and JC Price ended the season. I mean, I feel like the most you could say is it should have happened a game or two before.
Whit basically had said at the end of the previous year that he expected positive results the next year and had to give Fuente enough games to demonstrate whether there was improvement. Through the first 5 games of the 21 season, we were 3-2 with two close losses to WV and a 3 point loss to then-ranked Notre Dame (ranked 14).
It wasn't until after that where it really became obvious things hadn't improved, losing 3 of the next 4. And, like I said, Fuente was gone early that year, with Price coaching the last 3 games of the season (I think it was just 3). So yeah, he was gone right around then.
Yeah I see fault truly on both sides. Blame lies with Fuente and with Whit and the admin. Frankly, we needed someone in 2016 with experience at a big time program to come in and objectively say "You guys are way behind, and if you want to be competitive, you've got to get behind me." Whit and Co didn't know or think in 2016 that we needed far more money, resources, and a total overhaul in order to be competitive. Like many others, I too thought all we needed was a high-octane offense to pair with Bud's defense and we would be back. It was a very sound thought at the time, but it ignored all the problems below the surface with VT football that we now know of thanks to hindsight.
Fu may have been limited by resources, but he also wasn't the right guy or personality to transform and overhaul VT. He may have demanded more resources and started firing back and blaming Whit and the admin, but he was never going to be the guy to get recruiting turned around and build those relationships, be the CEO and face of the program, and be comfortable managing university/admin/donor/fan/alumni/player relationships the way Pry has. He's just not that personality and would rather be home by dinner time. No fault there - coaching is a total grind and not for everyone. But he wasn't cut out for the job of rebuilding VT football and turning the page from the Beamer era, no matter how much more he got as far as financial resources.
And honestly, it may have taken Fu completely failing for the university leadership and admin to wake up and realize what we needed this second go-around. It's very possible that anyone directly succeeding Beamer was doomed to fail due to the good old boy mentality and way of doing things that hung around. But again, even if that wasn't the case, VT would have never reached its true potential under Fu given his faults.
^nice synopsis and I agree.
To amplify #2: I had a nice conversation earlier this year with person present, in the know during the Fuente years. Statement was made basically that coaching staff couldn't get what was needed/wanted because Ballein knew better, wouldn't allow, etc. It put Whit right in the middle and we all see how it worked out. So there's LOTS of blame to go around.
I'd love for Whit to have a post-mortem public conversation about the mistakes, etc. But it'll never happen because too many big names associated with VT would have exposure.
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On Fuente: It's been discussed a great deal at this point. He did some good things, like fighting to get us into the modern era in terms of support staff, recruiting infrastructure, etc. He did some bad things like his recruiting plan, failure to maintain relationships in the Commonwealth, loyalty to some assistants who probably didn't deserve it, among others. He had some issues with money for staff, which complicated some of those staff decisions certainly, he had guys in the admin that fought with him, couldn't get aligned, etc. The points about the importance of organizational alignment cannot be overstated, and we have talked about that before. Ultimately, I do not have "hate" towards Fuente, but I was out on him much earlier (I saw some worry signs in 2017, and was completely out in 2018). I thought he overstayed his welcome, boosted by a 2019 final run by Foster that featured some incredible defensive performances, and the introduction of Hendon Hooker, which gave us something of a dead cat bounce. He had a tough role to play, did some good things to make things better for Pry, but also did some things that left Pry with a roster with a significant talent deficit.
On his comments on DeBoer: I think the future of Alabama, while it won't be Saban-level, is still bright. Their NIL has stepped up in the absence of Saban, after a few years of getting players to take discounts/eschew big offers from other programs to play for Saban. He has setup that program, from an organizational perspective, to keep rolling. It's a well-oiled machine at this point with tremendous alignment. In the 12 team era, DeBoer will not have to be as mistake-free as Saban did, and thus keep the fanbase more satiated with easier access to the playoff. Obviously, if he doesn't win a championship their fanbase will get restless, but I don't see the the machine falling apart any time soon. Even their boosters have almost two decades of proof of concept that being aligned is a hell of a lot better than all the in-fighting they had before. There might be some internal controls there to keep everyone in line.
My take on the article was, bottom line, relationships with admin can be a challenge. Like this, "but Saban didn't do it that way and he was incredibly successful , why do you want to do something different?"
Regarding DeBoer: I was mostly concerned about his ability and the support around recruiting. His classes at Washington were fine, but not incredible. That doesn't seem to be a problem (leading for average recruit rating). The man has proven he can coach a team at any level. If he and the admin stay aligned, I see them playing in a title in the next couple years.
I'm over it. If there's a silver lining its that the failures that occurred during his tenure made a lot of people - from the administration down to the fans - all realize that we need to do better and need to do more. The administration struggled to adapt and didn't listen to what Fuente needed, and it triggered a relatively significant payout for someone to not work for the program. For the fans we realized we're not as good as we thought, and it was going to take a lot more financially to make this thing work.
Here's an interesting alternate universe situation I have thought about. There's been a lot of discussion on other VT sites/boards that in 2016, Kirby Smart was highly interested in the VT job. Now obviously that ended up not going anywhere for many reasons (UGA opened up too so he was going there as an alum, we really wanted to go in an offensive direction given how bad we had been there, and hiring a defensive coach would mean moving on from Foster).
But let's assume that Kirby was in play - VT fans would have taken to the streets with torches and pitchforks if we had let Foster go. It wasn't just the administration, but I think most of the fan base thought all we needed was an offense and we are set. We just didn't truly know what we needed until Fu exposed many of the issues we faced at the end of the Beamer era.
But say we did hire Kirby - Foster either retires or maybe takes a job elsewhere for a few years. We don't have the instant success that Fu did in 2016 likely (transitioning from Foster's scheme and personnel, likely no Jerod Evans). People would have been very upset. But I do think someone like Kirby would have started the rebuild much sooner, and had the sway and big program experience to help motivate the administration and convince them more than Fu who had no such experience. Kirby likely leaves for a bigger job in a few years, but VT would have been in a much better place by 2020-2021 and still could've ended up with Pry. But point is, no one at all associated with VT would've seen things like this in 2016. Moving on from Foster, gutting the whole program, things like that were just not happening. The thought of hiring best available candidate for an overhaul who might only be here a few years wasn't part of the equation. Collectively, VT was still stuck in the Beamer era - we had to hire the new guy who would be a VT lifer (and we went to great lengths from a PR perspective to reinforce that bond and passing of the torch).
The Fu era was bad. But I think it helped VT wake up and understand what we need to do to be successful in the post-Beamer era.
If Kirby recruited at 75% of the level here he does at UGA, he would be more popular that Beamer and the Hokie Bird combined. Lets be real. A bunch of 5 star linebackers makes you forget Bud Foster real fast.
I don't hold any ill will toward Fuente. It seemed like a solid hire at the onset. A high flying offense paired with a Foster defense. How could you beat that? 2016 was fun. It just couldn't last.
In hindsight it sounds as if the there was no way Fuente was going to work out here. As a University, we just weren't ready to make the changes needed. As a coach he didn't know what was required on the P5 level.
I do still wonder what the heck happened on recruiting. How do you end up with 10 scholarship RBs? That is just mind boggling.
Well maybe at his next stop, Fu will learn how to win. That's what was missing. Beamer didn't have a conference, apparel deal or dedicated weight room when he got to VT. He took his lumps and showed progress- he was losing close games and recruiting was actually showing a pulse more than taking UVA's leftovers- Braine could see that. Then Beamer learned how to win games- all 3 phases, tough defense, limit mistakes, find an athletic QB that can make plays. What was/is Fu's formula? Inside zone running to set up post patterns? Had Fu figured out simply how to WIN more games with what he had- i.e. play Hooker earlier, etc- by hook or crook- its hard to fire a guy that wins 8-9 games. But he didn't/couldn't do that in a weak ACC. Maybe he will have learned that valuable lesson at his next stop. He is an analyst for Indiana- a putrid program- so he needs to find something better if he wants to get another HC gig. And don't get me wrong, there were plenty of coaching blunders with Fu- the end of the liberty game, the end of the GT game in Atlanta, etc. Hoping for a PI is not what winning coaches bank on. Water under bridge now- Pry will get it turned around.
I mean, I guess if you primarily run jet sweeps, you need a ton of WRs and/or RBs, amiright?
OR
If you can't properly evaluate talent at the position, you just get a lot of em and see what pans out.
Clearly /s (except they feel like they hit close to home)
It's 2024, why are we still talking about him? Without Fuente we wouldn't be where we are now, which is having an upgraded coach everyone likes and 10 games to win.
I'll bite...
Look, I think the Adelson article last year made it clear that Fuente was fighting an Athletic Dept that was, at best, unaccomodating and probably at times frankly an obstruction to him.
So VT Athletics clearly deserves some blame for the failures of his regime.
But I would counter by saying that if you expect to have "alignment" then as a H.C. you also have to have a clear vision. And more than anything, thats where Fuente failed miserably...
Just a few points:
-touted an offense that would need 5-6 WR to spread the ball around yet, once Philips and Ford left, rarely did more than 1-2 guys get consistent PT. To the point that at the end of his tenure, the only legit G5 WR left was Kaleb Smith, a walkon.
-Recruting was a complete mess. Too much to even get into, but how do you expect to have "alignment" when from year to year you go from #NC2VT to #TX2VT???
-For all the "discipline" that was apparently preached (silent meals, ect.)..the dirty laundry of the Program found its way out very easily--the Turkey Bacon fiasco, post-ODU locker room blowup that led Hill to get kicked off the team, the near-fistfight between coaches.
-total lack of fan engagement, trying desperately to "hide" the Spring Game, ect.
And I could go on. The point being, Fuente didn't have a basic understanding of what P5 success looked like and it became increasingly obvious as time went along. To have alignment, you have to start by having a product that people understand and are willing to get behind.
Your final paragraph is spot on. I think he'd need significant growth / evolution for him to be a successful P5 (P4?) head coach. I do, however, think he could succeed again at a G5 program (possibly even in short order) without major tweaks to his previous approach.
I don't wish him any ill will but he was in WAY over his head here and I don't know that he ever adjusted.
On a tangential note, I think it's funny that Pry literally bought Fu's house and made him move 😂
Some might say it was the ultimate Fu...
There are a very limited number of newer mc mansions in blacksburg.
Yeah, I'm thinking he did Fu a big favor by buying it too. I would imagine there is a limited market in Blacksburg and that thing could have sat on the market for ages before he had any offers.
To be fair, Pry could probably gut the home, completely remodel and still be better off than he would be trying to buy a similar sized home in many, many other locations.
Which is why Beamer's house was on the market for so long and I'm not sure it ever sold.
Quick check on the GIS and it is still his. Tax assessed at 2 million. Not currently for sale.
Yep too big and unique a property for the market now it's outdated.
At one time I heard VT or some related non-profit or foundation was interested in buying it as a place for university visitors/functions. But I guess that fell through too.
The issues when you build the nicest house by far on the block (all of Blacksburg/likely Montgomery county). Small market with very limited demand for a house like that.
When I first read about how expensive & big the house is, I thought the most viable option is a buyer turning it into a B&B.
How awesome would it be to B&B that for a football weekend?
Or, hear me out, TKP timeshare.
I would actually give this some thought because I know I would be "investing" in this with a community of people I have a connection to, and not some sleazy corporation.
I can't wait to read the interview of the coach that follows Brent Pry, the legendary coach who won two national championships in 10 years at VT before retiring.
Only two?
I feel bad for Shane's son.
/S
TL;DR....I think we all wanted Fuente to be successful. Especially after that first year.
But his lack of keeping relationships w/VA HS football programs and targeting further out of state hurt us as well as not getting rid of Corn.
I have a friend who coached with both and I asked if he thought Fu would ever fire Corn. He said, "never, they were both the best man at each others wedding."
I'm sure he had some struggles with the administration as well but the the recruiting and lack of changing OCs ultimately sunk him IMO.