jwVA

UNT: 29 Smurfs: 28

Gents, I have quite enjoyed hanging around these parts this past week. It appears you have a great fan base. And Coach Fu is your guy if you want to take it to the next level. I promise that’s the one hire the Ponies don’t want you to make. They know what’s up.

This! Coach Fu’s 2022 class was top 25 until VT fired him. He had a top QB committed that went to Michigan after Fu was let go. Their top RB recruit went to Maryland. I believe those were VT’s top two recruits in that class. Fu’s staff were strong evaluators also. VT’s top two CBs were unheralded recruits without any big offers. Both are likely NFL guys.

I take it you rejected my suggestions regarding the Baylor thing… You are a tough customer, Cr.

I suspect Coach learned some valuable lessons from his time at VT though. We have all been there… It sucks at the time. But when the dust settles the adversity makes us stronger.

I hope so partner. I like the idea of being a Mean Green fan… and taking it to the ponies every year in the American.

Hah… I can understand that. But at the same time I doubt relatives or agents would spend any time on fan site message boards. What’s the upside? I stumbled upon your community here looking up the remaining jobs Coach Fuente had been linked to as a potential candidate after the UAB and Tulsa jobs filled. And you guys are quite active so I figured I would pipe in. I assure you I have no motives here. I am just a student of the game, and I happen to appreciate Coach Fu’s approach. It reminds me of vintage VT, except with a modern offense. I will be a fan of whichever program hires the guy. And I would be willing to bet that they will be incredibly successful.

You mean talking to Baylor about their vacancy prior to the 2020 season? Man, you know a lot about this story. I never had a problem with it. That was about one of two things... Either Coach Fu was exploring an opportunity to move back closer to home and get a big raise for his staff – apparently Baylor is an extremely well-funded private school… Or he made a calculated move to show VT’s admin that they absolutely needed to step up their support for the football program. Or fall behind even more. I think I mentioned at one point in our conversation that VT had exactly two full-time recruiting people at the time. That was part of the problem. The uncompetitive assistant coach budget was the other big issue. Well, the “head of recruiting” John Iezzi said that Fu showed up in the office the next day (it’s the offseason) and told the staff that some news was going to come out, and that some people would not be happy with it. But he asked them to trust him that it was something that was going to help the program. So this guy suggested that the Baylor thing was about the second scenario. And that it was 100% calculated. And maybe it was. By all accounts, Coach Fu really enjoyed raising his young family in Blacksburg VA, which is a small town. Just to footnote this so you don’t suspect I’m making it up, here’s the podcast where Iezzi told this story: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/john-iezzi-interview-sons-of-crootin/id1306454306?i=1000465163844 At the same time, I wouldn’t blame Justin one bit if he seriously wanted the Baylor job. For one, Texas/Oklahoma is his home. I’m a native Virginian who spent a decade working in a different state… and I jumped at the opportunity to move back closer to home. I don’t know, there’s something about us humans where we want to stay close to our roots. Many of us do, anyway. So I can understand that. I also heard that some of Fu’s assistants wanted him to take the Baylor job. I don’t know that he was ever even offered the job… but the staff knew it would be better pay. Plus, Fu’s staff at Virginia Tech was largely a combination of guys from TX/OK and former VT players. I’m sure the TX/OK guys would love to make more money and get back closer to home.

Happy to share partner. And certainly no arguments from me about people being emotionally invested in the school, not the coach. But think about it in the context of VT’s history for a minute… For those of us under age 50, Frank Beamer was the only coach we ever knew. We have never played the coaching carousel game before. What’s more, Virginia Tech is located in a very rural part of Virginia. To us, it always represented the common man. We never had the nicest stuff… but we were willing to outwork everybody in sight. That was the mentality, anyway. Coach Beamer put VT on the map with that ethos. So we were in no man’s land when he retired. It became clear to me early on that Coach Fu is cut from the same cloth. It was the Notre Dame game his first year that sold me. The game was in South Bend. The temperature was in the teens and blowing snow. Yet Fu’s strength coach is out there in a short sleeve shirt and sunglasses like it was nothing. Then ND jumped up 17-0 in the first quarter… and Fu went ballistic on the sidelines. He doesn’t do that very often. But it sure got the team’s attention. They rallied and won the game in the fourth quarter. A replay of that game is still up on YouTube I believe. So for me, Justin was a Virginia Tech guy. The program looked like a modern version of what it had always been… with the same mentality and values. That’s why I was very disappointed with how the fans turned on him despite the fact that he never had a truly bad season. At VT, we’re supposed to take care of our own.

Oh man, you are a tough one Cr. Going with Chris from Twitter over me? Here’s the thing – I took the initiative to come say hello and see what you good folks are all about. Can Chris from Twitter say the same?? I suppose I could share my Twitter handle with you… but all it does is shamelessly promote my business. Unless we have some real estate investors in here, I seriously doubt anyone cares to see that stuff. I am happy to share a few of my old VT posts with you though: https://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2020/december/1/what-if https://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2021/august/19/call-arms https://www.thekeyplay.com/content/2021/november/16/perspective And by the way, if you guys want to see the kind of energy Coach Fu brings check this one out: https://vimeo.com/778946687/c89bfaaffd The ACC Championship Sounds of Game Day piece was really good for some inside looks too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPi9Woat7sY So now that I’ve taken the time to post all this, I’m going to feel pretty silly if Coach Fu isn’t your guy. Hah. It’s been nice chatting with you though.

Looks like we've got ourselves a fine line in the sand here. Whose random word will we be trusting – mine or Chris from Twitter's?

Thank you for the warm welcome. To your questions… Coach Fuente always structured his game plans to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. Year one at VT he had some explosive playmakers on offense and a good/not great defense. So they let it rip. Year two all the offensive playmakers left, but the defense was one of the best in the country. So his game plans were far more conservative. Ball control. Win time of possession, field position, and hidden yardage. Every year was a little different. And he was really good at game-planning for individual opponents as well. Their game plan against Clemson in 2020 was fantastic. VT’s defense was not good that year… but they had Clemson on the ropes until the QB fumbled a snap that Clemson ran back for a TD. As for recruiting – I think the high school recruiting was consistent. He had one subpar year but every other class was top 30. Where VT shined under Fu was with the transfer portal in the early days. He seemed to be one of the first to realize that you needed to have a separate process for evaluating and recruiting portal players. And it paid off. VT pulled in two NFL RBs – Khalil Herbert and Raheem Blackshear through the portal. They picked up several other key players through the portal over the years as well. Justin utilized it exceptionally well. And he made the comment that it’s a far more holistic process. The high school recruits expect glitz and glamor. The portal players just want you to give it to them straight. On the admin... Resources were definitely an issue. VT was way behind on recruiting infrastructure. And the football staff budget was towards the bottom of the ACC. But I do get the sense that there was a little bit of a disconnect with the admin as well. If you listened to his interview with Doug Gottlieb, Justin talked about how Virginia Tech was much more of a “northern” school than he expected. Then he talked about how the culture and the values would have to be a good match for him to get back into coaching. We can read between the lines a little bit there. What’s Fuente like as a person? He’s a good dude. Family man. Believes in doing things the right way. And he recognizes that success comes from all the hard work these young men put in. He’s not a big ego. He seems to genuinely love the game and the competition. And no, not many disciplinary issues. If we’re talking on the field, VT was always one of the least penalized teams in the ACC under Coach Fu. Off the field, there were a few guys who got kicked off the team over the years. But by all accounts, they were in the wrong. And Coach never let those issues infect the locker room.

I don't subscribe to the tribal mentality partner.

Yep – I am absolutely in the minority. I tried to tell them they were making a mistake… they slandered me at the time. But I think they realize it now. I just commented on the recruiting situation in an above post. In addition to that Coach Fu had a couple major hurdles. The first is that VT’s recruiting fell off in a big way in the last several years of Coach Beamer’s tenure. Fu inherited a good team in 2016. And had three offensive players not tried to go pro early after that year, they would have been a top ten team in 2017. But then nearly the entire defense graduated. And of the three guys who didn’t graduate, two of them got in trouble over the summer and were suspended. They had exactly one returning starter on defense in 2018. The new guys were all freshmen and sophomores. And they probably weren't as talented as VT recruits in the past. That was a tough year. And DC Bud Foster had some major health problems that year to boot. That led to what was the only subpar season of Coach’s tenure at VT outside of the Covid year, which I don’t count. They were one win away from getting back to the ACC Championship in 2019. And they had a good recruiting class coming in after that. But long-time DC Bud Foster retired. I believe Justin wanted to hire Barry Odom as the replacement. Odom was his DC at Memphis. But he couldn’t afford him at VT. Fuente’s staff budget was less than $3.2 million. The OC was making less than $500k. And they had to promote a new DC from one of the position coaches willing to work for a similar amount. So VT had a new DC going into 2020. He’s a good coach and a good man… but he wasn’t ready for the role yet. AND then we had the Covid fiasco which cancelled Spring ball and made Fall camp a revolving door. It was the perfect storm. That was the one year VT’s recruiting class wasn’t great too. So the fans wanted to run Coach Fu out of town after 2020. The tribal mentality set in. Then if you look at 2021 – Virginia Tech started the season 4-4 with three losses that came on the final play of the game. That includes a loss to highly ranked Notre Dame in the final seconds. They could have easily been 7 and 1. But the fans absolutely rebelled and it seems the administration acquiesced. Ironically, VT finally agreed to pony up for assistant coaches when they hired the new coach. This year’s budget is over $5.2 million. That’s a 65% increase… and Virginia Tech put the worst-coached team on the field this year that I’ve ever seen. And I grew up going to games back in the late 80s when VT was awful. Had they allowed Coach Fu to hire an experienced DC in 2020 I think he’s still coaching there today.

Here's the thing - when Coach Fu got to VT they hadn't been using the online recruiting services. Virginia Tech was the very last Power Five team to start using those things. Coach Beamer built the program on relationships with high school coaches in the state and didn't recognize the big shift that was happening in college football. What's more, Virginia Tech had exactly two people working full time in their recruiting department. That's it. Even the bad ACC teams had at least six or seven guys focused on recruiting full time. So Virginia Tech was years behind everybody else with regards to recruiting infrastructure. That's what Justin walked into. Against those odds he inked the 26th rated class in 2017, 24th rated class in 2018, 27th rated class in 2019, and then the 59th ranked class in 2020. He had another top 25 ranked class committed for 2021 at the time Virginia Tech decided to let him go. Several of the top recruits in that class went elsewhere after that. VT fans point to the 2020 class and say Coach can't recruit. But that's the only class that was outside of the top 30 composite rankings. And he did it with far less resources than pretty much every other Power Five program. I'll add, I think his staff was really good at evals. Especially on the offensive line. So I think Coach Fu gets a bad wrap on recruiting. Plus, he's a Texas guy. That's where a lot of his high school relationships are. He managed to bring a number of Texas kids out to Virginia the last few years.