You can’t say anything.’ Well, I probably should’ve said something.” “Dad always told me, ‘You can’t get into it with people like that. “I remember a classmate of mine walked by me one day that year and said, ‘Hey, where are you going to be living next year?’ ” said Shane, entering his first season as the Hokies’ running backs coach. Shane also heard some of the ugliness in the hallways at Blacksburg High. He noticed the hurt in his dad’s eyes when the family saw Virginia Cavaliers apparel in a Roanoke mall but nary a Hokies T-shirt or hat. Just when it appeared Beamer was progressing - the Hokies went 6-4-1, 6-5 and 5-6 from 1989-91 - Tech plummeted to 2-8-1.īeamer’s son, Shane, was 15 years old in ’92. The ’92 year may have been the most painful of all. I guess they couldn’t tell me not to be there, but it was the doughnuts that got me in the door.” “I guess those 10 or 11 Sunday mornings are the reason he’s still there today. “I can remember asking Frank question after question after question, and he always had a good answer, and he never got upset or frustrated that I would be sitting there questioning him about something that happened on Saturday. Today, an AD would never, ever be able to do something like that. “That whole ’92 year, I bought doughnuts and coffee every Sunday morning and brought them into the coaches’ office,” Braine said. He had a privileged peek into the inner workings of the football program, thanks to the irresistible lure of fried bread. He let us do our thing.”īraine knew what was going on inside the football program. Jim McComas was the president, and he’d come from the Southeastern Conference and Mississippi State, where he was the president there. “There never was any internal pressure at all,” Braine said. Jim McComas, then Tech’s president, also was a supporter. The truth of the matter is, Braine was among a faction that believed in Beamer. “They were the ones that used to give me the hardest time, and it really wasn’t that bad,” Braine said. They were longtime season-ticket holders and good-natured in their barbs. The most venom from any group came from Braine’s Saturday-morning coffee crowd at a Hardee’s in Blacksburg. As soon as services ended, the man would rip into Braine about letting that idiot Beamer run the program into the ground - Braine stopped attending that church. The interest just wasn’t there in the football program until the ’93 season when we won the Independence Bowl, and we’ve been going to bowl games ever since.”īraine recalls only small pockets of particularly vocal individuals calling for change.Ī man in south central Virginia wrote Braine a nasty letter every day.Īnother man sat behind Braine in church every Sunday. “People forget that when Frank took over the program, there was a whole lot of apathy. Seven days later, they got an answer back in a letter, and it was between that person and me. So, they wrote me a letter, and it was over with. They either wrote me, called me or they came to see me. If somebody didn’t like what I did, they had three choices. “It was before the Internet and talk radio. “It was before the two giant things that run college athletics today,” Braine said. Again, it was a different era, and Tech football barely registered a blip in the public sporting psyche. In his first six seasons, the Hokies were 24-40-2.Īs bad as it was, Braine said there really wasn’t mass uproar from fans. Those issues contributed greatly to Beamer’s rough start. Tech lost 20 football scholarships in the next two years and was banned from postseason play in ’88 and ’89. When Beamer arrived from Murray State in ’87 to take over Tech’s program, the Hokies were just beginning a two-year NCAA probation resulting from improper benefits to players under former football coach Bill Dooley. Beamer, 64, is the product of another place and time in college athletics - a place where “long-suffering” described the Hokies, a more patient time.īraine, 68, was Tech’s AD from 1988-97. Not a bad spread, especially for a guy who almost wasn’t around to see any of it, or help make any of it come to fruition. Beyond the practice fields, on a little berm behind the facility, he can envision what soon will be the site of an indoor practice palace. He can look out and see the patio outside the 17,000-square foot weight room and training center, and the glass doors that lead to a brand new locker room and player lounge. There’s also the pristine 66,233-seat stadium that has expanded by more than 16,000 seats, including the addition of luxury suites, state-of-the-art video board and south end zone seating, during his tenure. He sees the lush green practice fields with a new video observation tower in the middle of them. BLACKSBURG - Every morning, when Frank Beamer rolls back the blinds in his big corner office at Virginia Tech, he’s immediately reminded of just how far the football program has come in his 25 years as the Hokies’ coach.
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