Home UVA Football legend Anthony Poindexter bypassed, again, for promotion at Penn State
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UVA Football legend Anthony Poindexter bypassed, again, for promotion at Penn State

Chris Graham
Anthony Poindexter
Anthony Poindexter. Photo: Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire)
Photographer: Doug Murray/Icon Sportswire

There was a segment of the UVA Football community that wanted Anthony Poindexter to be the head coach back when the job came open in 2021.

Poindexter, four years later, still can’t get the full-go defensive coordinator job at Penn State, which has given him the title co-defensive coordinator since 2021, but keeps passing him by for the full gig every time it comes open.


ICYMI


The latest diss to AP came over the weekend, when head coach James Franklin hired Jim Knowles away from Ohio State, at an absurd salary – $3.1 million a year, which is in the vicinity of what UVA is paying Tony Elliott to be the head coach.

The PR around the Knowles hire is trying to make it that Poindexter, an All-American at UVA in the late 1990s, is totally on board with the move, and that, in fact, Poindexter is signing an extension to continue as the safeties coach, and with a raise, though details there are lacking.

Remember that ‘Dex was the co-DC at Penn State alongside Brent Pry, now the head coach at Virginia Tech, in his first year in Happy Valley, in 2021, though Pry was the defensive play-caller.

When Pry left for the job in Blacksburg, Franklin decided to hire former Miami coach Manny Diaz to be Poindexter’s boss.

Diaz left after the 2023 season to take the head coach job at Duke, and Franklin again hired another former head coach, Tom Allen, who had just been relieved of his duties at Indiana.

And now, after Allen left Penn State for Clemson to be the DC there, we see ‘Dex bypassed again.

And the PR machine in State College is telling us that Poindexter is happy as a clam that he’s the bridesmaid, and not the bride, yet again.

If that’s the case, we know why Poindexter wasn’t a serious candidate for the UVA job in 2021.

Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham, the king of "fringe media," a zero-time Virginia Sportswriter of the Year, and a member of zero Halls of Fame, is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].