The Franklin Fit

Before we talk about the thing that everyone wants to talk about, it's important to look back on the only time in the last 20 years when a single decision altered the trajectory of the Virginia Tech athletic department for the better.

Want to guess what it was?

Pause here, I'll give you a second.

The only time the Hokies have completely improved their standing in modern college sports in the last two decades was when they hired Buzz Williams from Marquette in 2014.

It's hard to overstate what a bad place Virginia Tech men's basketball was in when Williams took the job. There was no talent on the roster, recruiting was somehow even worse. They were poorly coached, poorly funded and good for four-ish conference wins a year. I believe I once described the situation as if a tire fire was set within a dumpster fire, and that larger dumpster fire got pushed into a giant crater.

But Buzz gave the program instant credibility. It gave Virginia Tech basketball a nationally famous face. For the first time ever, the Hokie basketball coach was someone people outside the program actually knew, and wasn't notable just for the occasional March Madness interview when Tech fell outside the bubble. I'll always remember Buzz sitting on national TV during the tournament that year, wearing a maroon blazer and hamming it up like only he could. In fact, it reminded me of another nationally relevant coach on a broadly watched sports television show...

The fit wasn't perfect. In fact, you could argue that it was non-existent. Buzz was not an aw shucks, small town, humble member of the community. In fact, he went out of his way to distance himself from Tech as much as he could–he once told a gaggle of reporters before his second or third season that he still needed to use his GPS to get from his house to the facility, all but screaming I DON'T CARE TO LEARN ABOUT YOUR LITTLE TOWN.