CHARLOTTE, N.C. — New Virginia Tech coach James Franklin knows the Hokies’ proud history going back to the Frank Beamer era.
Annual bowl bids. A trip to the national championship game. Special teams play so reliably good that it spawned the name “Beamer Ball,” and the beaten-up metal lunch pail symbolizing a blue-collar defensive ethic.
“You guys all remember that Virginia Tech,” Franklin said Thursday, “but none of the current players do.”
That explains why Franklin’s arrival as the big-name hire after a dozen years at Penn State is about more than trying to win a few more games on crisp autumn weekends in Blacksburg. Rather, it’s an admission that the school must elevate its sports profile after years of seismic changes to NCAA rules and conference alignments. That includes raising more money and investing more in athletics in what the school has described as a “reset” to meet that moment, down to the recent hiring of athletic director Brian White and the ongoing search for a new university president.
As always, the spotlight is on football with its revenue-driving role in college sports.
“Even before the job was open, Virginia Tech I think had realized that what we had been doing for the last nine or 10 years hadn’t worked,” Franklin said during the Atlantic Coast Conference’s preseason football media days. “And there needs to be a commitment.
“And I think this a problem at a lot of places: does your expectations match your commitment?”
A firing marked the start of a change-filled year for the Hokies
Trouble seemingly arrived last fall with an 0-3 start that led to the September firing of Brent Pry as coach. Yet the issues go back further, back to the gradual slide that began in the latter part of Beamer’s 29-year tenure followed by the inability of successor Justin Fuente to sustain the kind of success needed for national relevance.
Yet as the Hokies ousted Pry, they also pointed to a need to reshape their athletics operations to complete with the ACC’s best in a strategy soon called “Invest To Win.”
And changes kept coming:
- By the end of September, the school’s Board of Visitors had approved spending an additional $229 million on athletics over four years.
- By December, the school announced an anonymous gift commitment of $20 million, coming weeks after Franklin’s hiring.
- In early June, school announced the creation of the “Hokie Ventures” nonprofit corporation to support athletics with investment and revenue generation, followed by the announcement of a $75 million gift with the majority earmarked for athletics.
- And late last month, the school hired White away from Florida Atlantic as its new AD.
“In our world, it’s a national conversation: ‘Man, Virginia Tech, they’re putting all their chips in,’” White said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s something you want to be a part of.”
Sports success can boost the financial bottom line in the ACC
There’s a financial incentive to improving Hokies athletics beyond fans buying up tickets, concessions and paying for gameday parking. It could offer a significant bump to the ACC’s annual payout (largely tied to media rights) to the school, which received more than $46.5 million for the 2024-25 season according to the league’s most recent tax filing.
First there’s the 2024 launch of the ACC’s “success initiative” allowing teams to keep the money generated from their own postseason success, most notably with any deep push in the College Football Playoff.
As an example, Clemson and SMU each earned $4 million for bids to the 12-team CFP in 2024, while Miami’s run to last year’s championship game secured $20 million.
The league also changed its revenue-distribution model in 2025 to reward programs that generate higher TV viewership, also a byproduct of teams winning enough to earn marquee broadcast slots with must-watch games.
Those come amid league-wide efforts to generate more revenue while facing a significant financial gap behind the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference.
“There’s so many places around the country that it’s a critical time for, because it’s a critical moment in the history of college athletics with the amount of change that’s happening right now,” White told the AP. “There’s never been a more important time to be the best version of yourself.”
Franklin’s Penn State exit became an opportunity for Virginia Tech
That’s part of why Franklin is here now, absorbing traditions like the use of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as a gameday anthem at Lane Stadium while trying to offer a bridge to something new.
It didn’t seem likely at this time last year, with Franklin coming off leading the Nittany Lions to the CFP semifinals and was set to enter the year with the AP Top 25’s No. 2-ranked team. But things unexpectedly unraveled, swiftly enough that Penn State fired Franklin by mid-October amid a 3-3 start.
“He’s a big name, and it’s just crazy he’s here,” defensive lineman Kemari Copeland said Thursday.
Franklin also represents a marquee addition to the league’s coaching ranks, still headlined by two-time national champion Dabo Swinney at Clemson. SMU coach Rhett Lashlee is among those to cross paths with Franklin before; his Mustangs lost to Penn State in the 2024 CFP first round.
“He brings a lot of experience, he knows how to win and I think he brings a lot to our league and our coaches,” Lashlee said Wednesday back in Texas.
Franklin talked Thursday about the importance of getting Beamer’s blessing in a phone call before taking over. It captured his approach now: embrace the past, but make sure to evolve, too.
“I want the people that love Virginia Tech to watch us and say, ‘That’s what Virginia Tech football’s supposed to look like,” Franklin said.
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AP Sports Writer Stephen Hawkins in Dallas contributed to this report.
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