It’s difficult to remember the last great moment that Virginia Tech football had, where the Hokies entered the national conversation in a positive way, where they brought Lane Stadium to a roar, where we were reminded of what the program used to be under Frank Beamer.
Was it a win over Tulane in the 2023 Military Bowl? That was a good day, but not an exceptionally great one. It probably was, however, the last time the folks in Blacksburg felt all warm and fuzzy for head coach Brent Pry, as he capped off his second season at the helm of the Hokies with a beat down of rival Virginia and a bowl win over a ranked team.
Perhaps it was when Virginia Tech, unranked, upset No. 10 North Carolina to open the 2021 season. That game though was more about how overrated the Tar Heels were, not about how good the Hokies might be. It turned out to be Justin Fuente’s final season as he limped to a 5-5 record before resigning.
Maybe it was in 2017, when the Hokies opened the season with a win over rival West Virginia in a ranked-on-ranked matchup at FedEx Field with Josh Jackson and the Edmunds brothers leading the way.
We might have to go all the way back to the last awesome season of the Beamer era, in 2011, where Logan Thomas powered the Hokies to a victory over a ranked Georgia Tech team in Atlanta. That Virginia Tech squad would go on to play in the ACC title game and Sugar Bowl — albeit losing both — to finish the season 11-3. It marked the sixth (and final) time that the Hokies reached the 11-win mark.
This is all to say that the last decade of Virginia Tech football has been largely forgettable and full of mediocrity. While pinpointing greatness in the post-Beamer era of Hokies’ football can be a burdensome challenge, it’s quite easy to recall all the blunders and disappointments. Saturday’s result was the latest in a long line of letdowns for Virginia Tech fans, as they watched Pry’s team squander a 10-point halftime lead and get outscored 34-0 in the second half — at home on a Saturday night in Lane Stadium — to Vanderbilt. It was a must-win game and the Hokies flopped.
The week before that, Virginia Tech fans had to watch the Hokies trudge through a 24-11 loss in Atlanta to South Carolina, a team coached by Beamer’s son Shane. Virginia Tech is now 0-2 to start a season for the first time since 2010.
Want some more discouraging stats? There’s plenty of them.
In the post-Beamer era, Virginia Tech is 7-18 against ranked opponents and just 1-6 against ranked teams under Pry’s watch.
Here’s another: Since that win over West Virginia in 2017 in Landover, Maryland, the Hokies are 0-15 in non-conference matchups against Power 4 opponents and Notre Dame. The Hokies haven’t won a non-conference home game against Notre Dame or a Power 4 opponent since 2009.
Virginia Tech hasn’t had a double-digit win season since Fuente’s first campaign in 2016, a feat that was accomplished with a team made up of players mostly recruited by Beamer.
One more: Virginia Tech hasn’t played in a New Year’s Six bowl game — much less contended for a spot in the College Football Playoff — since 2011. Between 1994 and 2011, the Hokies played in 13 NY6 games, including the 1999 national championship.
That game where Michael Vick nearly guided the Hokies to immortality, seems like a century ago. So much of college sports has changed in the last five years with NIL, the transfer portal, revenue sharing and conference realignment. Now think about how much it’s changed in 26 years.
What’s obvious for Virginia Tech after that wildly bad second half performance against Vandy — which featured an incredibly cowardly surrender punt on fourth-and-inches with a 3-point lead — is that Pry’s time as head coach needs to come to an end. For many Virginia Tech fans, it reminded them of the 45-10 home loss to Duke in 2019, a result that sealed the court of public opinion on Fuente, even though he lasted for two more forgetful seasons.
While Pry inherited a program that needed to repair its recruiting relationships across the region after Fuente fumbled those away, his tenure has largely been plagued by losing big games on big stages and failing to meet expectations. He hasn’t beaten Miami or Clemson. He’s lost games to Rutgers, Marshall, Old Dominion and West Virginia.
Pry seemed like a better fit for the job than Fuente. He was a former grad assistant under Beamer and Bud Foster in the 1990s, and then established himself as a sharp defensive mind and dogged recruiter under James Franklin at Vandy and then Penn State. But the results are the results. Pry has won just 41 percent of his games, while Fuente won 58 percent.
Less clear is what Virginia Tech does after it moves on from Pry.
The Hokies, whether they want to accept it or not, are firmly in the middle class of college football. That much was made obvious by athletic director Whit Babcock last month in a presentation he gave to the school’s Board of Visitors. Babcock said that to compete at the top of the ACC, Virginia Tech needs an annual athletic department budget of $200 million — a figure that the Hokies are about $58 million short of.
“Our resources don’t match our expectations,” Babcock said in August. “If we don’t radically leap forward now, we are likely sealing our own fate for years and generations to come… I feel like I’ve been crying wolf and the wolf is really coming.”
This was Babcock not just signaling, but firing off flares and fireworks about the sort of existential crisis that Virginia Tech is in when it comes to money for sports.
This is the new era of college football. Funding is the most significant factor in building a championship program. Gone are the days where a team could Beamer Ball its way 25 consecutive winning seasons. Gone are the days where you could build a fence around one potent recruiting area — like Virginia’s Tidewater, aka the 757 — and pipeline all of its best players to your university, talents that included perhaps the greatest defensive end of all time in Bruce Smith, a game-changing quarterback in Vick, and an All-Pro and Super Bowl-winning safety in Kam Chancellor (this is where it’s worth pointing out that Virginia Tech has produced just four first-round NFL Draft picks in the post-Beamer era, with zero of them coming from offensive skill positions).
Simply put, Virginia Tech hasn’t had the money to get great players in this new era and doesn’t have a coach who is equipped to do-more-with-less.
Despite all the heartbreak, unmet expectations and losses, Virginia Tech fans keep showing up to Lane Stadium. They keep screaming “Enter Sandman.” And they keep upholding one of the best atmospheres in all of college football.
But as the fanbase grows more disenchanted with Pry, how long does that last?
Moreover, can Virginia Tech afford to swing-and-miss on another football hire? If the Hokies miss in the upcoming coach carousel season, will we begin to only remember them for what they used to be? Will they travel down the path of former national champions and contenders turned in has-beens and what-ifs?
When Virginia Tech entered the ACC in 2004, it was seen as one of the conference’s signature football brands. Now, two decades later, it’s on the brink of becoming just another middle-of-the-pack team.
