![]() The Hokies pulled off a coup by keeping Foster on the staff as defensive coordinator with seemingly no acrimony. Tech thought it had the succession plan in place when Beamer announced his retirement in 2015, doing what most programs did at the time by chasing the shiny offensive toy and hiring Fuente as his replacement. And rag on the ACC all you want, but top to bottom, it’s a deeper league than when the Hokies played in the Big East. Foster isn’t walking through that door with an automatic top-10 defense anymore, either, though it’s hard to win games 17-10 in this era of football anyway. Now, the rest of football seems to have closed up that market inefficiency. “It also had an identity as a tough, hard-nosed football team that made you earn a win and made you play at a level that was physical,” said Dwight Vick, Michael Vick’s cousin.īeamer was a visionary on special teams, realizing it’s the quickest way to turn a football game and putting starters on those units. The conversation starts and ends with Beamer, a Hall of Fame coach who found a distinct style in “Beamer Ball,” which became synonymous with special teams even if it was more than that, and his loyal aid Bud Foster, whose defenses gave nightmares to offensive coordinators for the better part of a 30-plus year career.Īdd an otherworldly talent like Michael Vick to the mix, and a rock-solid team that was often among the class of the Big East elevated itself into rarefied air, coming within a quarter of winning the national championship in 1999. ![]() Was the Fuente era a one-off, a misfire of a hire who couldn’t hack it at a big-time program? Or has the college football landscape changed since the Hokies’ heyday ended over a decade ago, making it impossible for this program to get back to where it once was?īut first: What went right to take a former football nomad to national prominence in the first place? The Hokies haven’t finished in the top 15 since 2009, haven’t won the ACC since 2010, won the wide-open Coastal Division only once in the past decade and watched their ballyhooed 27-year bowl streak come to an end in 2020. A program that was once a model of sustained excellence under Beamer has been in the wilderness. It would be easy to lay all of this at Fuente’s feet, but the Hokies have been a shell of themselves for longer than just his six years. Brent Pry is in charge, with Tech fans hopeful the former Penn State defensive coordinator can recapture some past magic in Blacksburg.īut what are reasonable expectations at a place like Virginia Tech these days? And that was very frustrating.”įuente’s gone now, dismissed in November after a 43-31 record over six middling years, with the Hokies basically a. “I didn’t know if we were a spread team, if we were going to run the ball, were we a gadget team. “I never knew what to expect,” Vick, who played for Frank Beamer’s Hokies from 1994-98, said. It was one of numerous baffling efforts by Virginia Tech during the rocky Fuente era, when the Hokies’ identity from year to year and often week to week was a mystery. ![]() That game wouldn’t come to define the season - the Hokies righted the ship by winning six of their next seven and nearly won the ACC’s Coastal Division - but it was no isolated incident. Making matters worse, Virginia Tech honored the 1999 team that made the national championship game at halftime But as the former Tech offensive lineman and unofficial program ambassador monitored the game remotely on his phone, he couldn’t believe what he was watching - a thorough 45-10 butt-whupping in all three phases by a Duke team charitably described as mediocre.Ī closer examination of the DVR replay the next day wasn’t better, with baffling quarterback decisions, an effort that belied the team’s “Hard, Smart, Tough” mantra and a stone-faced head coach Justin Fuente on the sideline, showing little emotion as he chewed gum with his headset on.
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