Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m back from a reporting trip to Boston, where I was introduced to my new favorite college basketball player: Vermont’s Gus Yalden.
In today’s SI:AM:
🦃 James Franklin’s new job
⚾ Mo’ne Davis’s return to baseball
😞 Raiders embarrassing loss
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Hokies get their man
College football’s coaching carousel will really start spinning after the end of the regular season in two weeks, but things got started a little early with Virginia Tech’s hiring of James Franklin on Monday.
The Hokies were looking for a new coach after Brent Pry was fired on Sept. 14 following a 0–3 start to the season, and Franklin was searching for a new job after he was canned by Penn State on Oct. 12. Now, both sides get what they wanted. Virginia Tech secures an experienced coach with a proven track record, while Franklin lands another head coaching job at a power conference school with a history of success.
In the nearly 30 years that Frank Beamer led the Hokies (from 1987 to 2015), the program consistently ranked among the best in its conference and often among the top in the nation. Virginia Tech won seven conference titles under Beamer (three in the Big East and four in the ACC) and lost the 1999 national championship game to Florida State. But the school has struggled to replicate that success following Beamer’s retirement. Justin Fuente, Beamer’s immediate successor, had two good seasons before the momentum fizzled out and he was fired in 2021. Pry went 3–8 in his first season and then barely got the Hokies to bowl eligibility in ’23 and ’24.
However, in hiring Franklin, Virginia Tech gets a coach much more similar to Beamer than the two candidates the school tried to replace him with. Fuente came to Blacksburg after serving as the head coach for only four seasons at Memphis, during which the Tigers compiled a 26–23 record, and Pry had never previously been a head coach. (Pry had spent the previous decade before being hired by the Hokies as an assistant under Franklin—first at Vanderbilt and then at Penn State.) Franklin’s résumé is much more impressive. He first built a winner at Vanderbilt and then carried that success over to Penn State, where he developed the Nittany Lions into a perennial Big Ten championship contender. While Virginia Tech rolled the dice on two less-experienced coaches, the school knows what it’s getting in Franklin.
Franklin isn’t a perfect coach, of course. He wouldn’t have been looking for another job if he were. He’s an elite recruiter and an effective spokesman for his program, but he’s known for occasional questionable in-game decision-making and has a reputation for struggling in big games (like the 30–24 home loss to Oregon that marked the beginning of the end of his time at Penn State). Virginia Tech, though, seems like the sort of place that will maximize his strengths and minimize his weaknesses.
Franklin will have access to talent-rich recruiting hotbeds in Virginia—from the D.C. suburbs to the Tidewater region, which produced Hokies legend Michael Vick. He’ll also join a conference that is far less daunting than the Big Ten. Winning at Penn State is hard when you’re competing against perennial national championship contenders like Ohio State, Michigan and recently Oregon. The quality of competition in the ACC is high, but there are no real annual juggernauts. Florida State is in disarray. Miami has strung together a couple of good seasons but failed to take the next step toward national championship contention. Even Clemson is 5–5 and headed toward its worst season in more than a decade. The door is open for Franklin to turn Virginia Tech into an ACC championship contender, and, perhaps eventually, a nationally relevant program again.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Pat Forde explains why James Franklin is better set up for success at Virginia Tech than he was at Penn State.
- Bryan Fischer graded the Hokies’ Franklin hire. Spoiler alert: He thinks it’s a great move.
- The new Women’s Pro Baseball League, set to launch next year, will feature a familiar face. In today’s Digital Cover, Emma Baccellieri examines Mo’ne Davis’s return to the baseball field.
- The Cowboys beat the Raiders on Monday Night Football in their first game since the death of Marshawn Kneeland. Gilberto Manzano has more on how Dallas honored its departed teammate.
- The Raiders, meanwhile, need a total overhaul after another embarrassing loss at home, Matt Verderame writes.
- There’s a new No. 1 team in Conor Orr’s NFL power rankings.
- Orr also argues that Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase should not have been suspended for spitting on Steelers safety Jalen Ramsey.
- The other major story in the NFL right now is the grievance the league has filed against the players' union over the publication of team report cards. Albert Breer has some inside details on why the league is upset and what steps were taken before filing the grievance.
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. A rare onside safety punt attempt by the Raiders. Las Vegas didn’t come close to recovering it, but it’s still interesting to see a play that uncommon.
4. The frenetic final possession of the Heat’s win over the Knicks.
3. A beautiful assist by the Canucks’ Kiefer Sherwood.
2. Evan Mobley’s comically premature attempt at a buzzer beater. He threw it up from the opposite free-throw line with 10 seconds on the clock at the end of the first quarter.
1. The Raptors’ defense to seal a win over the Hornets. After RJ Barrett’s go-ahead layup, Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes blocked shots to preserve the victory. Toronto has now won eight of its last nine after starting the season 1–4.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | James Franklin Goes to Virginia Tech as First Coaching Carousel Domino Falls.
