Don’t get too far down the road, we really need to look at this season as a major shift. We’d have to check, but this season the early firings of head coaches at the FBS collegiate level might be setting
some records, it certainly is ringing alarm bells, and roiling coaching searches.
Been Here Before
In a sort of blast from the past, we get to revisit the unenviable event of a coaching change. This is actually the second change, but the 2015 event had to have been the most momentous because it was Frank Beamer’s swan song, and his departure was largely voluntary, though very necessary for both the program and Frank. The coaching search was hopeful, and there were many post-season names in the hopper.
Gobbler Country covered many of the major candidates for the change, and only a few really hit at their new programs. The end result of the review series that, under prior management and staffing, we conducted a pretty thorough survey, and Justin Fuente ended up being a major coup, for all of the folks out after Babcock’s job, out there.
The sour note to the entire replacement of the coach was what was predicted as the hiring was announced and the program began to populate the ranks of the assistants. Fuente ended up being “the guy who followed THE GUY”. His tenure was marked by early success, 2 solid seasons and a 50/50 split of bowl games. However, his public relations, recruiting, and old-fashioned coaching methods did not sit well with a good number of players. The locker room fell apart, the assistant coaching staff degraded into a squabbling ineffective mess, and coincident with the 2020 COVID fiasco, the entire football program just went under. Fuente was fired two games before the end of the 2021 season and has never returned to coaching.
Hope Hit the Rocks, Again
The hiring of Brent Pry as a head coach just became a head scratcher from the beginning. Rumors abounded about other more prominent candidates deferring, and the lack of any real transparency in the search seemed to lead to the same sort of decision that resulted in the Fuente 2019 rescue attempt where a suitable DC could not be found to replace Bud Foster. We noted back then that the Pry choice was a too light (as in ZERO) in the head coaching experience department.
Pry was a wonderful personality. He definitely glued the recruiting back together, though his successes were modest (mostly consensus 3-star players). He had an open and engaging personality – which differed greatly from his predecessor, but what came out of it after 3 struggling seasons was just that, struggle. The team just never seemed prepared. The assistants were inexperienced at their levels of responsibility, and there was little or no progress made at finding and fielding better talent at critical positions. But the field organization was completely lacking, and the teams were woefully inconsistent and lacked overall discipline.
Pry’s early dismissal, this season, was a program disaster. There are no two ways about it, and the final story is yet to be written. We’ll write it after Thanksgiving and the anticipated loss of the Commonwealth Cup. Face it, the probability is there short of some miracle somewhere. That does set the stage for the reason for this coaching search series.
The Administration Keeps Making Critical Mistakes
You read that headline right. The old school of college football has largely passed most fans perceptions and expectations by the wayside. 2025 college football is now a professionalizing sport. I use the word “professionalizing” vs. “professional” because the final events haven’t finalized the shape, regulations, and configuration of the “new” sports league. The reality is that we are about halfway along the process and the current chaotic mess is still in effect.
The one thing about a truly professional league is that the pro system is largely or at least mostly transparent. Even with mostly private ownership the NFL has strict rules, union contracts, professional contracts, and a congressional antitrust exemption (though in theory that’s gone by the wayside, it’s really still in effect – “de facto” vs. “de jure” reasons rule, here.
The Virgina Tech Board of Visitors (BoV) just doesn’t seem to have a clue as to what to do to fix all of this failure. Someone, and we doubt it was Timothy Sands, fired Pry after the 3rd game of the season and put new OC Philp Montgomery in charge of the team as an interim head coach. Everything else remained the same.
The first mistake that has been made by the BoV is that they gave Montgomery no public means of support. Normally most organizations firing a coach this early would publicly give the interim coach an opportunity to “win the job” (much as Georgia Tech did with Brent Key). The lack of any endorsement either public or private made the job of even fielding a football team ready to play nearly impossible. Everyone in the program is subject to dismissal after Thanksgiving so the priority is finding a new job, not winning the remaining football games.
The second mistake was in announcing that the AD had been semi-cut out of the search process and that the athletic department was going to be “professionalized” (There’s that word again.) in so many sorts of vague minor announcements. They formed a committee of interested connected parties with two major members, Bud Foster and Bruce Arians, as the “football organizational expertise” and left not one note of hope to the existing team. They effectively slammed the door on the existing revenue producing part of the Athletic Department. But it was the closet door, and the “search committee” was in the closet.
The third major error was in the entire methodology and presentation of the supposed increase in the Athletic Department spending. What was presented to the public was largely a PowerPoint presentation of a set of monetary goals, and promises, but there was almost no detail as to how a program, already strapped for cash and falling behind, was going to come up with said promised money. To add more insult to the injury, the perceived process of increasing “revenue” was to tap the “same-ole same-ole” methods of hijacking more student activity fee money (a seat premium to attend the university as it were) and “philanthropy” (meaning begging big donors for even more money). If there was an actual attempt to reform and reorganize the Athletic Department into a more business-oriented model, where actual revenues were generated to be used by the department, there were loud crickets chirping. The promised change isn’t actually much of one.
The final insult came just last week as it came to light that the committee and presumably BoV members in the know are signed up to Non-Disclosure Agreements. That further slammed the door on public transparency and roiled already muddy waters in monitoring and reporting on the process. When that happens administrations are generally hiding things that they don’t want the public to know. That can be completely innocent as a necessary prelude to contract negotiations, or it can be a net negative. Whether or not it comes out in the post event wash remains to be seen.
What We Do Know
We know that one thing about the process that has been publicly promised is that a new structure is being considered for the Athletic Department where some form of separation of duties will be entertained between the Athletic Director and whatever General Management position for the football program is invented. That, of course, came to light just before the information door was slammed shut on the committee closet. Now, we have heard largely nothing. So, looking for coaches might be premature, since that’s supposed to be the responsibility of the new General Manager in conjunction with the committee. At a practical level, a new coach probably won’t be hired until the coaching carousel starts spinning after the season ends, in December.
So that lays the groundwork for the next few speculative articles about the potential hiring of a new coach. One thing we are largely clueless about in regard to football management is who could be the General Manager, and maybe the coaching guesses will be a bit premature. The reality of sports journalism is that we need to cover things as best as possible and put our twist on it as we see it sitting with Gobbler Country’s readership.
The List: Some of the Potential Coaches
Just like we did in late 2015, we’ll take a look at the known coaching possibilities and give some background on each one and offer a grade for the choice. The following is a list of the current level of interest given through personal contacts and our X feed in no particular order:
James Franklin (fired head coach of Penn State) – Bryan already addressed this one, but it’s good to mention.
Dan Mullen (current coach of UNLV who might be looking to get back to Power level coaching)
Alex Golesh (current coach of South Florida)
Ryan Silverfield (current coach of Memphis)
Matt Campbell (current coach of Iowa State)
Byron Leftwich (a BA protege, and current assistant at Colorado)
Shane Beamer (current South Carolina coach)
Jimbo Fisher (former FSU and TAMU head coach)
Pat Fitzgerald (current coach at Northwestern)
This isn’t an all-inclusive list. As we hear rumors or get any solid indicators, we’ll look at them and at least put up a quick hitter. Some of these might also be combined, depending on the grade and probability of even an interview happening. Bryan and I will also be talking about that critical GM position, but that’s a bit murkier subject.
