After the 2020 college football season, Justin Fuente placed a metal lunch pail behind glass. The dented black box had symbolized the rise of Virginia Tech from afterthought to colossus. For two decades, defensive coordinator Bud Foster had awarded a pail weekly to the player who best exemplified how Virginia Tech wanted to play football — tough, physical, smart. With Foster’s retirement, the Hokies shelved the tradition.
“We need people to create their own program, not just an extension of the last one,” Athletic Director Whit Babcock said at the time.
Fuente’s tenure ended Tuesday morning, during his sixth year in Blacksburg. Virginia Tech paid a sizable buyout to cut ties with Fuente two weeks before the season’s end, with the 5-5 Hokies irrelevant to the national conversation. Fuente, seemingly a coup of a hire when Virginia Tech plucked him from Memphis, was never able to answer the question that will define Tech’s program: Can a coach transfer what made Virginia Tech special under Frank Beamer into the sport’s modern era?
That question vexed even Beamer himself, who went 29-23 in his last four seasons. It has been a decade since Virginia Tech seriously factored into the national picture. Despite their inclusion in the ACC division opposite Clemson, the Hokies last played for the conference championship in 2016, Fuente’s first season.
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When high school recruits consider the Hokies, it’s fair to wonder if they see a sleeping giant or a faded power. Virginia Tech still has the national cachet of the “Enter Sandman” entrance, of Lane Stadium at night, of deep maroon and bright orange. That’s catnip for television producers and a warm blanket for fans who came of age in the 1990s and 2000s. It’s easy for longtime observers to forget how fast the world moves in college football. When Michael Vick appeared on the cover of Madden, players in the 2022 recruiting class were wearing diapers or weren’t born yet.
What recruits care about is what a program can do for their development. There are 24 Hokies on active NFL rosters, tied with Maryland and West Virginia for 44th in the nation, one spot above Illinois. The next coach will tell recruits the same thing all coaches tell recruits: Come here, and you’ll play for championships and prepare for the NFL. At Tech, that requires imagination in place of evidence.
Beamer built a powerhouse on recruiting the Hampton Roads area, building a pipeline from the talent-rich region known by its area code: the 757. Fuente allowed other programs, notably North Carolina since Mack Brown’s return, to pilfer top players from the 757. Fuente’s replacement’s first priority, and realistic aim, should be to build a figurative wall around Virginia Beach.
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But that can’t be the only solution. The next coach needs to find out how to sell recruits from California and Texas and Louisiana on a pretty campus in Southwest Virginia. He needs to energize alumni and ingratiate himself into the tightknit community, something Fuente never mastered as Beamer did. He needs to navigate the transfer portal. “You cannot be insular these days,” Babcock told reporters Tuesday.
Nothing inherently makes Virginia Tech a college football powerhouse, but nothing inherently prevents it from being one, either. The right coach at the right time can transform a program with enough resources. Under Fuente, Virginia Tech went 43-31. In the six years before Dabo Swinney’s first full season as head coach, Clemson went 47-29.
Virginia Tech has enough resources. It is the biggest program in a football-crazed, talent-rich state. It attracts profound support from students and alumni. The Beamer Barn, a $21 million training facility completed in 2015, puts Virginia Tech in better position than most ACC rivals and within shouting distance of the top programs in the nation. Its Drive For 25 campaign, an effort to increase the membership of the Hokie Club donor program to 25,000, has helped nudge its number of athletic donors from roughly 16,000 in 2019 to more than 19,000, putting Tech behind only Clemson in the ACC, according to the school.
Fuente’s replacement will take over a program in worse shape on the field than the one Fuente inherited. But that coach will have the easier task. It is better to replace the guy who replaced the legend than to replace the legend.
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Names such as Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson, Coastal Carolina’s Jamey Chadwell and Louisiana Lafayette’s Billy Napier will surely circulate. Babcock’s first call should be to Marshall’s Charles Huff, a coach who possesses an ideal mix of regional ties and national pedigree. On Tuesday, Babcock said he wanted a CEO-style coach who can recruit Virginia Tech’s footprint. That’s Huff.
Huff, 38, grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and played center at Hampton in the early 2000s. He became a team captain in 2005, the same year Marcus Vick — Michael’s brother — led the Hokies to an 11-2 record and a Gator Bowl victory on the other side of the state.
Huff owns only one season of head coaching experience, currently sitting at 6-4 with the Thundering Herd. But that would be a dismally narrow appraisal. Huff has worked in the past decade for P.J. Fleck (now at Minnesota), James Franklin (Penn State) and Nick Saban, for whom he served two seasons as Alabama’s running backs and associate head coach. He recruited and coached Saquon Barkley at Penn State. The recruiting service 247Sports named Huff its national recruiter of the year in February for his work beating out programs such as Ohio State and LSU for five-star prospects. Huff knows how to build a program and connect with players, and he has proved he can procure talent at the highest level.
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When Fuente arrived at Virginia Tech, he emphasized the program’s past. He chose one player each week to wear No. 25, Beamer’s number when he played. He retained Foster as defensive coordinator. By the end, Fuente had tried, and failed, to make new history. Beamer’s towering success — the near national title in 1999, eight consecutive double-digit-win seasons from 2004 to 2011 — is worthy of celebration. It is up to Virginia Tech to figure out a path into the future, or the past will be all it has left.
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