Written by Matt Zemek at Bloguin
In a season marked by an unusual degree of coaching turnover, a third retirement hit the news wires on Sunday, as Frank Beamer announced that he would step down at Virginia Tech when this 2015 campaign ends. Beamer joins Steve Spurrier and George O’Leary as a retiree after many decades in college football’s arena of tumult and shouting.
Two stories emerge more than others in the wake of Beamer’s retirement. The first is that patience is certainly recommended at programs which lack national stature or overwhelmingly high expectations.
It is true that Virginia Tech was a winning program in the several seasons preceding Beamer’s arrival in 1987. Predecessor Bill Dooley, who also won at North Carolina in the 1970s, produced winning seasons from 1980 through 1986, so it wasn’t as though Beamer took over a program in shambles; anything but.
However, Virginia Tech was a loosely-floating independent without the stature of then-independent programs such as Penn State, Notre Dame, Boston College, Pittsburgh, and others. The Hokies climbed as high as the Peach Bowl in college football’s postseason pyramid, but no higher. Penn State played for national championships (and won a few) in the 1980s. Notre Dame is Notre Dame, even today. Boston College won the 1985 Cotton Bowl. Pittsburgh won the 1982 Sugar Bowl. Virginia Tech, compared to those programs, was a nobody, and so when the Big East formed a football conference in 1991, the Hokies didn’t look down on the competition. They were looking up at other schools with far superior reputations and achievements.
When Beamer went 5-6 in 1991 and then 2-8-1 in 1992 — several seasons into the job — a modern-day view would have said that a firing was in order.
At Nebraska or Texas, yes.
At Virginia Tech — more precisely, the Virginia Tech of 1992 — no.
Good thing the school stuck it out, eh?
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