"A year before Virginia Tech came as close as it ever has to winning a national championship, it installed an empty trophy case in its football facility. The idea, the program's leadership believed, was that the case would eventually be filled. Frank Beamer had built the Hokies into a power, Michael Vick turned the program into a national brand, and championships were sure to follow."
"As the years passed, the empty case instead became something of a punchline to mark Virginia Tech's slow fall from the upper echelon of college football to a middle-tier ACC team to an afterthought. The case was removed in 2014, and things have only gotten worse, culminating with this year's 3-7 campaign in which the school fired head coach Brent Pry after just three games."
"All those things need to be in place. ... I think the previous coaches here were in some challenging situations. That's the truth of it. There's some things that we're going to have to look at, and it's not just James Franklin. It's the marketing office, the ticketing office. Everybody's got to take some time and look in the mirror and say, 'Are we operating like a big-time program?'"
Virginia Tech once anticipated national championships and installed an empty trophy case as a symbol of future success under Frank Beamer and Michael Vick. The empty case became a symbol of decline as the program slipped from national contender to a middle-tier ACC team and was removed in 2014. The slide continued, culminating in a 3-7 season and the firing of Brent Pry after three games. James Franklin was hired as the new head coach to begin rebuilding. Franklin emphasized restoring big-time operations across areas like marketing and ticketing and called for institutional self-assessment, and he acknowledged his surprising dismissal at Penn State while noting lessons from building that program into a consistent power would be relevant.
Read at ESPN.com
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