Choose Your Own Rebuilding Plan

Welp.

Virginia Tech's 33-10 loss to an underwhelming West Virginia team stung our collective pride, it highlighted the program deficiencies that will take years to build back from (French didn't title his film review "Red Flags" for nothing.) If it wasn't clear before, it should certainly be now. Virginia Tech football is in the midst of the type of rebuild most of us haven't seen.

Since we're in these uncharted waters, I figured it would be a helpful exercise to figure out what kind of rebuild Brent Pry and company can (and should) undertake. Each program reorganization has its own set of circumstances, meaning there are plenty of makes and models of rebuilding plans out there, from the successful to the flashy to the depressing. But some of these issues speak directly to what Pry and company face in Blacksburg, so what can we learn?

Let's go through some of the most recent rebuilds in college football and see if there's one the Hokies can model their own after.

The USC

The problem: Lack of talent

The solution: Flip almost the entire roster

Ah yes, the luxury package. An excellent choice!

Upon his arrival from Oklahoma, Lincoln Riley inherited a bit of a disaster. Clay Helton's perpetual underachieving hot seat cycle left the Trojans vulnerable on the recruiting trail, so much so that he signed the (gasp) 20th ranked class in 2019 and then the absolutely abominable 63rd ranked class in 2020.

Compared to what we've known from USC — even in the eternally disappointing Lane Kiffin/Steve Sarkisian years, the Trojans still pulled in fistfuls of NFL talent — Riley took the reins of a program that has much less talent than we would traditionally expect. And while Riley's is not the same situation as Pry's, for obvious reasons, if you squint hard you can see the similarities.

Sure, Blacksburg isn't Los Angeles and Pry wasn't one of the most expensive and sought after football coaches on the planet. And even at the program's peak, the Hokies' talent level could never compete with what you'd see in LA. But if we're talking proportionally, both Riley and Pry took over from underperforming predecessors who could never fully tap into the (again, proportionally) talent rich environments surrounding them. Both of their rosters were simply not close to what they should have been.

So what did Riley — who was hired in the same cycle as Pry, mind you — do to rebuild USC in such quick order?

He turned over the roster at a historic rate.