In August, at a golf course about 25 minutes southwest of Virginia Tech’s campus, school leaders gathered for a three-day retreat to discuss university issues from enrollment to research to national politics.
On the first day, just after lunch, athletic director Whit Babcock walked up to the lectern and delivered a dire warning with a prepared statement and a 36-slide presentation that drew a lot more national interest than the average strategic summit of campus leaders.
“If we don’t radically leap forward now,” Babcock told the group, “we’re likely sealing our own fate for years and generations to come.”
For decades, Virginia Tech athletics had gotten by while doing more with less. The Hokies even took pride in it. But sitting near the bottom of the ACC’s financial leaderboard had caught up with them, creating a forgettable past nine seasons on the football field and threatening to hurt the brand of the school itself.
Babcock’s message got through. In September, sixteen days after head coach Brent Pry was fired amid an 0-3 start, the board approved an influx of $229 million to the athletics budget over the next four years. Then on Monday, the school hired former Penn State coach James Franklin, landing a man who was leading the No. 2 team in the country just weeks ago.
Wednesday’s energetic introductory news conference at Cassell Coliseum basketball arena, which Franklin entered to “Enter Sandman,” reflected the excitement in Blacksburg that the Hokies can return to the level they lived at for two decades as one of college football’s most consistent brands.
“You could not have found a coach that’s gonna pour his heart and soul into this place more than me and my family. I give you my word on that,” Franklin said.
But how did a program with so much going for it become an afterthought, known more for the team’s entrance to the field rather than the performance on it? Those around the Hokies, including six current or former staff members and officials granted anonymity to provide candid insight on their experiences, painted a picture of a failure to adapt to changing times, the loss of a recruiting advantage and a familiar story of what happens when a program defined by a single coach struggles to move on.
“The fan base is as good as anyone,” a former staff member said. “They fired their coach and the stadium is still 90 percent full against Wofford. How many places would that happen? And it’s in a winnable league. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be winning 10 games and playing for the Playoff.”
Franklin is tasked with recapturing the standard the Hokies have strayed from since legendary coach Frank Beamer (center) retired. (Brian Bishop / magn Images)
Frank Beamer arrived in 1987 and took the football program and the university national on his way to the College Football Hall of Fame. The Hokies won at least 10 games 13 times from 1995 to 2011, with seven conference championships and a run to the BCS Championship Game in 1999 behind Michael Vick, a Heisman Trophy finalist.
But leadership got complacent because Beamer had kept winning. Until he didn’t.
Beamer retired in 2015 having posted three mediocre 6-6 regular seasons in four years. Recruiting had fallen back as well. When Justin Fuente arrived as the next head coach in 2016, the new staff was shocked at the lack of infrastructure and resources for a program with its history. The Hokies’ most recent ACC title game trip came in Fuente’s debut season.
“The motto of the department at the time was, ‘Do more with less,’” recalled the former staff member. “There were 65 Power 5 teams and we were one of two that didn’t have (film database) Hudl, which everyone uses to recruit. … We eventually got it, but when you’d ask for things, they’d say, ‘Coach Beamer didn’t need this.’”
An indoor practice facility opened in 2015, but it didn’t have heating. A new weight room opened in 2021, but new weights had to come later. The program still doesn’t have a standalone football office facility, long considered the norm at the Power 4 level. Fuente arrived with five operations and recruiting staffers, at a time when Clemson had 22. Attempts to hire better coordinators were shot down due to funding.
“We missed the boat on that,” said a former administrator. “We should have had more analysts and been on the forefront. We just didn’t have the money to do it.”
Virginita Tech gave Pry more resources than Fuente, but the Hokies still lagged behind their peers for much of his tenure.
“It’s a big time college football atmosphere with a fan base that loves this place, but outside of the gameday, there’s a lot that it’s like, ‘Man, this place does not stack up,’” a team source said. “It’s really from everything outside of gameday where it’s like, we’re extremely behind.”
At that August board meeting, Babcock laid out that grim reality in those 36 slides. Virginia Tech’s $122 million athletics operating budget ranks 14th in the 18-member ACC, the lowest among the league’s public schools. It needed to get up around $200 million, Babcock said. The football budget was $20 million annually behind Florida State, and it’s now behind North Carolina. The University of Virginia’s athletic department gets almost $9 million more each year from student fees and university support than Tech does.
“As much as I and we all love Virginia Tech and its humility, we cannot keep taking pride in doing more with less,” Babcock said.
That $229 million planned investment will come over four years. Part will be raised from an increase in student fees, university support and what the presentation termed “bridge funding,” but it also calls for $30 million annually from donors that is not actually secured, and people around the industry are curious where that will come from.
“I compare them a bit to Clemson in that you’ve got lots of people willing to give you $1,000, but not a lot of deep donors,” said a second former administrator. “We’re not Cal, Stanford, UCLA with Silicon Valley people. We have aerospace and great alums, but they’re not in high-dollar industries and they’re not tied to athletics.”
Babcock also said at that retreat he didn’t plan to remain as AD for many more years, “either my choosing or y’all’s choosing.”
Meanwhile, rival Virginia has turned the corner, upgrading its investment in the roster last offseason and fielding a top-20 team this year, showing everyone the value of paying up and getting the right players.
“It’s just got to be killing them that now, of all people, UVA is in the top 25,” said a third former administrator, “and Tech are nowhere on the radar.”
A mid-September loss to in-state Group of 5 program Old Dominion proved to be the final straw for Brent Pry. (Brian Bishop / Imagn Images)
The Hampton Roads area of the state, which includes Virginia Beach and Norfolk, has long been the state’s most fertile recruiting ground, producing college stars like Vick, Percy Harvin, Bruce Smith, Tajh Boyd, Tyrod Taylor and Ronald Curry. Under Beamer, the Hokies got more than their share, regularly signing half of the best players in the state.
But the expansion of recruiting media made it harder for players to slip through the cracks, and Beamer lost the home turf. In his final three years, Virginia Tech never signed more than three of the top 10 players in Virginia, according to 247Sports’ rankings. Fuente’s focus on prospects from Texas was difficult for in-state high school coaches to reconcile. Fuente never signed more than three of the top 10 players in Virginia and had zero in the 2020 and 2021 classes.
With time, it was Penn State and Franklin who came to dominate the Commonwealth, with the Nittany Lions signing six of the top 10 in-state recruits in the class of 2023, including starting linebacker Tony Rojas. Kaytron Allen, the Nittany Lions’ All-Big Ten running back, is from Norfolk.
“Pry did a good job at first,” said Tyler Noe, the head coach at Cox High in Virginia Beach. “But I think he kind of slid away from it and started trying to go to other places, which I didn’t quite understand as someone who’s from here.”
It wasn’t necessarily an oversight. Behind the scenes, there was also a feeling inside the program that the location of the state’s best talent had changed.
“Nobody wants to hear it, but the better areas are Richmond and Northern Virginia,” said the first former staff member. “Virginia Beach still has players, but some years, you’re not going to take three or four kids out of there like you used to.”
In 2015, in-state players made up 59.8 percent of Beamer’s final roster; Virginia products make up 45.7 percent of Pry’s 2025 roster. In the past 10 recruiting cycles, Virginia Tech has finished with a top-30 class just three times and none since 2019.
“You have to give guys a reason to want to stay in-state, and we just haven’t been able to give them that reason,” the team source said. “Tech is the default school where most of them want to go, but when you’re not winning, it’s hard to get those guys.”
Fuente had several promising quarterbacks commit or come through the program only to finish their college careers elsewhere, from Josh Jackson to Malik Willis to Hendon Hooker. Pry could not turn that trend of botched QB plans around, but people around the program also describe him as someone who just wasn’t ready to be a head coach. His tenure was bookended by losses to Old Dominion, and his teams were a mind-boggling 1-12 in one-score games.
“I think it made sense, the hire. The problem that they ran into, though, is when you hire a guy who hadn’t been the head coach, he didn’t know what to ask for,” the team source said. “I think that’s kind of the story of this place right now. They need somebody who knows what it looks like to come in here and get this place in order because it has not been in order.”
Now it’s up to Pry’s former boss.
Virginia Tech hopes this can all pay off. The money. The splashy hire. The positive momentum.
Franklin became the top target for Virginia Tech from the moment he was fired by Penn State in October. Longtime defensive coordinator and search committee member Bud Foster reached out right away. The sides talked for weeks, and while Franklin eyed other jobs that were open (like Auburn) and could open later (like Florida State), the Hokies made clear they wouldn’t wait around forever and could move on to other options, like James Madison coach Bob Chesney. Last weekend, the deal reached the finish line.
“He was the No. 1 pick all the way,” Bruce Arians, the former NFL coach and Virginia Tech alumnus who served on the search committee, said Tuesday on The Pat McAfee Show. “His record speaks for itself.”
Pry had brought much of Franklin’s structure to Virginia Tech, from practice schedules to daily operations, making this an easier logistical transition to a new administration. Some Penn State staff are expected to follow. And Franklin already has relationships with head coaches in Virginia from his recruiting success at Penn State. Though, notably, Franklin said he expected to take a national recruiting approach at times.
“He didn’t have to come down here the four or five times he came down here (as Penn State coach), but he came with his assistant coaches, and (that is) going to open eyes not only for the coaches but the players and the students that see him around,” said Noe, a self-proclaimed UVA fan. “I would trust him with any of my kids that went to Virginia Tech.”
The sky-high expectations that Franklin created at Penn State and eventually led to his ouster don’t exist here, either. The Hokies would love to have Penn State’s problems of only winning 10 games a year. They’re not worried about Franklin’s 4-21 record against top-10 teams. They want to consistently beat Old Dominion and Wake Forest, then compete for the ACC crown in a league where Clemson and Florida State have slipped and Miami is inconsistent.
“This place wants to win, but it’s not LSU where we have to be in the Playoff every single year,” a second team source said. “We want to win championships, but I don’t think the expectations are unrealistic. They’re reasonable. … Nobody’s got a stranglehold on this league. There’s no Ohio State.”
But Franklin demanded a lot from Penn State, constantly asking for more resources and upgrades, which he eventually got, dragging the program into the modern era. He’s not inheriting a resource-rich program. Will he find himself in the same fights in Blacksburg as his predecessors? Babcock wasn’t granted the ability to lead the search alone, and some people wonder to whom Franklin will report.
“The second he steps foot in this building, he’s going to have a laundry list,” said the first team source. “… Just how behind we are in terms of resources, infrastructure, we have to get a building. He’s not going to be happy with what he sees.”
But there remains belief in the mountains that the Hokies can get it right, that the path to success is straightforward if they can all stay on it together. With the potential for more conference realignment in the early 2030s, Virginia Tech wants to be on the right side of any seismic shift, as it was when it left the Big East. The ACC’s new incentives provide more conference money for on-field success and TV ratings. The cost of losing compounds itself.
“The place is set up to win soon and win big,” the first former staff member said. “The fan base is fantastic. The region is great. You just gotta have the right guy.”
Franklin teared up when acknowledging the awkwardness of filling the job of Pry, his friend of 30 years, and spoke over and over again about the feeling of alignment. The coach, AD and president emphasized that they realize what plagued the last 10 years and how that had changed.
“There was a plan, there was an approach and mentality that aligned with what I was looking for,” Franklin said. “It wasn’t like I’m talking about the things we need to have to be successful at the highest level. They were already there.”
Virginia Tech is taking the leap, hoping it’s not too late.