Written by Matt Zemek at Bloguin
It’s deja vu at Oklahoma, in a beautiful and redemptive way.
It has been a recurring theme for most of the past five years: A number of college football’s more entrenched and credentialed coaches were running up against the reality that their programs were getting stale, or at the very least, losing the momentum they once possessed.
Mark Richt hasn’t won an SEC title in 10 years at Georgia. This season, he was essentially eliminated from the SEC East race before the clock officially struck midnight on the month of October, beaten by a first-year coach at a program with a mediocre (but not terrible) backup quarterback. Richt’s starting quarterback has struggled, as the Georgia program — though avoiding collapse — has certainly fallen short of reasonable expectations for most of the past eight seasons, the 2011 and 2012 seasons being the exceptions.
Frank Beamer, ruler of the ACC from 2004 through 2010 and king of the Coastal division in 2011 as well, couldn’t sustain the machine-cranked consistency he had so admirably forged for nearly two whole decades in Blacksburg, after a slow start in the late 1980s and very early 1990s. Loyalty to assistant coaches — making sure they received competitive salaries — is one of Beamer’s best virtues as a person, but offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler was plainly not the answer for Virginia Tech in recent years. Auburn fans could have told you as much.
Beamer will step away from coaching at the end of the season, having done more than anyone thought possible in Blacksburg. Yet, after so much success, he arrived at a point where the success he sustained for a very long time could not replenish itself. He ran out of magic.
The third Hall of Fame-worthy coach who has plainly struggled over the past half-decade entered this season facing a familiar mixture of hope and doubt, but on the second Saturday of October, located on the grounds where the State Fair of Texas is held, he was in no mood to throw a party.
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