Virginia Tech landed its top football coach target, James Franklin, who was just fired five weeks ago after 11-plus years at Penn State, to replace the head coach that Tech fired in September, Brent Pry, who, as the world turns, was Franklin’s defensive coordinator at Penn State and Vanderbilt.
The news is hitting the wires Monday evening.
A press conference rolling out Franklin as the new guy in Blacksburg is set for Wednesday.
This isn’t Anthony Poindexter is the next UVA head coach, and wait ‘til you see who he brings with him; it’s the real deal.
At the start of this story, I need to mention that Franklin, nonsensically, negotiated the $49 million buyout he was owed by Penn State to a mere $9 million, and he’s not even getting that money in a lump sum.
Guy could have taken a TV studio job and made $8 million a year through 2031.
Instead, dude negotiated against himself and threw away millions.
I’m shocked he didn’t just agree to give them $9 million and call it a day.
Anyway, instead of getting $8 million a year guaranteed through his age-58 year – whatever he is set to be paid at Virginia Tech, and those details haven’t been made public yet, would have counted as an offset toward what Penn State was going to pay him – he gets whatever Tech can rustle up from its donor base, plus the pennies on the dollar he’s getting from Penn State.
The sound you hear is the lunch pail being passed around the suddenly resuscitated, but no more flush than it was a few hours ago, Hokie Nation.
Franklin, obviously, just wanted to get back into coaching, and as soon as he could; and just as obviously, it had been made clear to him that there was no interest from LSU, Florida or Auburn, SEC schools with significantly more in terms of resources to bring to bear.
This is good news, no doubt, for Virginia Tech – which is replacing a first-time head coach, in Pry, who clearly wasn’t up for the job, going 16-24 in parts of four seasons – for a guy who was in the College Football Playoff just last year, and then was inexplicably dumped after a 3-3 start.
ICYMI
- Penn State fires James Franklin amid three-game losing streak
- Virginia Tech | Brent Pry fired: ‘Results on the field were not acceptable’
Whatever; I mean, all the guy did there was bring them back from the utter depths of the Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky scandal to the CFP.
“I’m honored and humbled to join the Hokie family,” Franklin said in a statement issued through Virginia Tech Athletics. “My vision is simple: to restore unmatched excellence, to build something that lasts, and to serve this University, the Commonwealth of Virginia and our amazing fan base with honor, integrity, and passion. I look forward to getting to work with our players, our staff, and the entire Virginia Tech community.”
The timing of the hire is great for all involved, allowing Franklin to begin assembling a staff – wonder if he poaches his former staff from Penn State, which includes a pair of ‘Hoos, the aforementioned Poindexter and also Marques Hagans? – and putting together something resembling a front office to begin reaching out to high-school recruits and making inroads on the transfer portal meat market.
ICYMI
How much money he will have to put toward talent acquisition will be the question.
The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, back on Sept. 30, approved a strategic plan committing $229 million in additional planned investment in athletics over the next four years.
The trick being: where to get the money.
The money is supposed to come from increased donor support – $120 million in increased donor support, to be precise – with the rest coming from “campus subsidies,” most notably, an increase in student fees.
The student-fee increase is what it is, a relatively fixed amount; as to the other part, the BOV can’t necessarily just wave a magic wand to make $120 million in new donations to appear from the thin air.
To that point, that figure, $30 million per year, would require Tech to double its current level of annual athletics donations.
It could be the thinking here that landing the home-run hire in Franklin – cold water alert: his Penn State teams were 4-21 vs. AP Top 10 teams – will get the donors to take another stab at whatever they can find in the couch cushions.
Because remember: Tech has to pay Franklin whatever they’re paying him, assuming they’re paying him – he doesn’t appear to be the shrewdest of negotiators; he could very well be paying them – and pay off Brent Pry’s buyout.
And then, come up with a working budget for NIL and House settlement payouts.
Those issues were going to be there whoever the next coach would be.
Franklin has proven he can win games – nine games at Vandy in two different seasons, before NIL; double-digits at Penn State six times, though he never could win the big ones.
The UVA money people spent $35 million on the 2025 football roster, and the word a few days ago was that the budget for 2026 was going to be at $40 million.
As Hokie Nation passes around the lunch pail, the Wall Street UVA alums are doing their version, involving wine and cheese, to see how close they can get to $50 million, and beyond.
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Chris Graham
