The Argument for Bob Chesney to be the next VT Football Coach

I'm continuing to drop some posts evaluating guys on my radar who could potentially be the next guy for VT. This is my second post. The first was on WKU coach Tyson Helton.

This week: Bob Chensey

Who is Bob Chesney?

Bob Chesney is the 47-year-old head coach at James Madison who just completed his first season in Harrisonburg. The Pennsylvania native has spent his entire coaching career methodically working his way up through the ranks, proving himself at every level from Division III to his current G5 position.

Chesney played defensive back at Dickinson College, then began his coaching career in 2000 as an assistant at Norwich University. He's climbed the coaching ladder, starting as an assistant, then taking on head coaching jobs at D3 Salve Regina (2010-12), D2 Assumption College (2013-17), FCS Holy Cross (2018-23), and now G5 JMU.

His track record of program transformation is remarkable

Chesney has an overall head coaching record of 120-50 (.706 winning percentage) across 15 seasons at four different programs (ignoring JMU's current season - they're currently 2-1 with a 28-14 loss to Louisville). With the exception of JMU, Chesney has made a habit of taking struggling programs and turning them into winners:

• Salve Regina (2010-12): Inherited a program that had eight consecutive losing seasons and immediately posted three straight winning records
• Assumption College (2013-17): Took over a program that had just two winning seasons in the previous 17 years and led them to five straight winning records and three consecutive NCAA Division II playoff appearances
• Holy Cross (2018-23): Built perhaps the most successful era since the 1980s, going 44-21 overall with five Patriot League titles and four straight playoff appearances from 2019-2022

His staff loyalty could be a double-edged sword

Chesney has shown loyalty to his assistants... which as VT fan could make your eye twitch. When he moved to JMU, he brought seven coaches with him from Holy Cross, which sounds familiar to Virginia Tech fans who watched Justin Fuente bring much of his Memphis staff to Blacksburg with (at best) mixed results.

On the flip side, his defensive coordinator at JMU is Lyle Hemphill, who coached at Duke with Mike Elko. That Duke team ranked first in the ACC in scoring defense (stupid metric) despite having just the 25th best defense in SP+ (smarter metric). His offensive coordinator Dean Kennedy followed him from Holy Cross, where Kennedy had developed Walter Payton Award finalist Matthew Sluka.

In the hypothetical scenario where Chensey is Virginia Tech's next football coach, I would hope for more proven staff hires

Chesney is a proven winner

He's won everywhere. His assent appears to be similar to Chris Klimen, Lance Leipold, or Jamey Chadwell. He's won over multiple decades at different levels. He is apparently very "adaptable" (I don't know what this means, but I found at least three articles on him that use the word 'adaptable' to describe him).

At Holy Cross, he won Patriot League Coach of the Year three times (2019, 2021, 2022) and guided the program to its first FCS playoff victory in decades. His teams consistently performed above expectations, including close losses to Boston College and Army that showed they could compete with FBS opponents.

His first JMU season was good, but leaves some questions

Chesney's debut season at JMU presents a fascinating puzzle for evaluating his potential. On one hand, he went 9-4 and led the Dukes to their first-ever bowl victory, defeating Western Kentucky (ironically coached by Tyson Helton, who I previously wrote about) 27-17 in the Boca Raton Bowl (also, bowl victories don't mean what they used to in the aughts, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt). The season included a stunning 70-50 victory at North Carolina that set a Kenan Stadium record for points scored by an opponent (LOLZ). JMU led the nation in turnover margin under Chesney (butttt remember... turnovers are random). They finished the season as the 41st best team per SP+, with the 49th best offense, the 41st best defense, and the 52nd best Special Teams unit.

How much of JMU's success was due to Chesney's success vs what he inherited from Curt Cignetti? Cignetti left JMU for Indiana, he took an extraordinary amount of talent with him - 13 players followed him to Bloomington, including the team's leading tackler (Aiden Fisher), top receiver (Elijah Sarratt), leading rusher (Kaelon Black), and key offensive and defensive linemen. Cignetti mostly gutted the roster of proven talent.

Chensey rebuilt significant portions of the roster through the transfer portal, bringing in players like running backs George Pettaway (from North Carolina) and Ayo Adeyi (from Cincinnati), and still managed to win a bowl game. Rebuilding a team that lost 13 starts and returning to 9 wins ain't bad.

But, as you know if you're reading this, JMU was a G5 powerhouse when he arrived, and has been on an upward trajectory for a solid decade. Virginia Tech is not a one year rebuild with a known trajectory; the Hokies would be asking Chesney to rebuild a struggling program, and guide us through potentially 3-10 years of power conference purgatory.

He's open to NIL world

Chesney has openly acknowledged the realities of today's transfer portal and NIL era - as shown in this interview. I think it's kinda table stakes in 2025 that coaches are bought into the reality of the NIL/Portal, but I'm not sure all coaches are (I definitely question it with some of the more retread-y candidates).

Regional knowledge

While Chesney isn't from Virginia, he's spent significant time recruiting in the Mid-Atlantic region during his Holy Cross tenure. His understanding of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic recruiting pipelines could benefit Virginia Tech, particularly in areas the program has traditionally recruited.

That said, this is one area where questions remain - can he recruit at the ACC level? Can he compete with Clemson and Miami for elite talent? His track record suggests he's good at identifying and developing under-recruited players, but the jump to Power 4 recruiting is significant.

The concerns are real and should be acknowledged

To be candid, I would be underwhelmed with a Chesney hire. He's supposed "known for intricate preparation, intense practices and maximizing talent", and he certainly maximized his talent since arriving at JMU, but due to the complete lack of P4 experience (literally has never been a player, GA, assistant, or head coach at a P4 program), I'd really need to see some elite staffing around him (both front office AND assistants) to get excited about it.

I think he's a pretty good coach, and I do believe that winners win (see Leipold, Klimen, etc). But he hasn't won quite like those guys have - Leipold was running the D3 equivalent of Nick Saban's Alabama before going to University of Buffalo, Klimen won 4 FCS Natties(!!!!) in five seasons at North Dakota State. Chesney won a couple of playoffs games at a historically bad FCS team.

And give that we just don't know how much of JMU's 2024 and 2025 success was built on infrastructure and recruiting momentum from the previous coaching staff versus Chesney's own impact, it's impossible to fully separate his contribution from what he inherited after just 1.25 seasons.

Sports Illustrated (which has been using AI to 'write' articles) recently published a piece saying that Chesney "is around the No. 6 to No. 10 range... when it comes to where he'd sit on the Hokies' big board." We'll see how this season goes, but IMHO he's closer to 10 than 6.

If VT lands with Chesney, it absolutely could work out, but it would also be a sobering sign of how coaches/agents view the Virginia Tech Job.