Atlanta – Come Saturday morning, once Dave Braine returns to Blacksburg, Va., the reunion of the old coffee klatch at Hardee’s on Main Street will be in full sip. The coffee will be piping hot, the conversation convivial and warm, nowhere near as scalding as it was back in 1992.
“He can’t coach.”
That, Braine recalled, was the gist of the coffee talk that fall, when he was the athletics director at Virginia Tech and Frank Beamer was struggling through his sixth season as the Hokies’ head football coach. Why, it was enough to make an AD verklempt.
“It got so bad, I couldn’t even go have coffee with ’em anymore,” said Braine, now the AD at Georgia Tech. “They were on my case too much about Frank. I couldn’t even go to church without people getting on me about it. Most of the time I’d sneak in a little late, so I’d only hear it on the way out.”
On a cold Monday morning, two days after that dismal 2-8-1 season ended, Braine was summoned to the office of the university president, Dr. James McComas.
“The meeting lasted maybe 10 minutes, max,” Braine said. “He asked me point blank: ‘Do we need to get rid of our football coach?’ I said: ‘No sir. He’s a good coach. But we need to give him more money to hire some assistant coaches.’
“We needed,” Braine recalled, “to make some changes in the coaching staff.”
A few alterations to the staff and 13 years later, and look at the Hokies now. The defending Atlantic Coast Conference champs are ranked No. 4 and stand 3-0 after Saturday’s rout of Ohio. The preseason pick to win the Coastal division, Virginia Tech hosts No. 15 Georgia Tech on Saturday in newly expanded Lane Stadium, where Beamerball has long since become the mainstream religion.
And Beamer himself? The guy voted Big East coach of the decade for the 1990s and reigning ACC coach of year? Beamer’s arguably become the ACC’s best coach and is unquestionably one of college football’s miracle workers.
“What Frank’s done is remarkable,” said ESPN analyst and ex-Pitt coach Mike Gottfried, who in 1979 hired Beamer as his defensive coordinator at Murray State. “He’s taken a school that had had success, but made ’em consistent. His teams are like him: They’ll always be good offensively, good defensively and have great special teams.
“When I think of Frank, I think of what he’s done at Virginia Tech, what Bill McCartney did at Colorado and what Bill Snyder’s done at Kansas State. Those three are the ones that come to mind.”
Three coaches who, in the past 15 years, have built programs into powerhouses, whose teams’ successes are inextricably linked to their names. Now 179-100-4 in his 25th season as a head coach, Beamer is the third-winningest active I-A coach behind two others who built dynasties: Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno. Under Beamer, once a Hokies defensive back in the late ’60s, Virginia Tech is one of just five I-A teams to play in bowls each of the past 12 seasons.
“That’s a rags-to-riches story,” Braine said. “Well, not rags to riches, but …”
As Beamer’s boss, Braine knew the coach was making well below $100,000 in the late ’80s.
“Now he’s making, what, $2 million?” Braine asked. Beamer will be, once his agent, Jimmy Sexton, and Virginia Tech complete negotiations on a seven-year contract that will carry Beamer into a comfortable retirement.
“What Frank’s done wasn’t impossible, but it was next to impossible,” Braine said.
Starting with a 9-3 turnaround in 1993 that concluded with an Independence Bowl victory over Indiana, Virginia Tech is 114-76 in 12-plus seasons. There were the back-to-back 11-1 finishes in 1999 and 2000 behind a quicksilver young quarterback named Michael Vick; the 1999 season ended in an epic loss to FSU in the national championship showdown in the Sugar Bowl.
