Projecting the Costal programs in a few years

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Nawaab

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Projecting the Coastal programs in a few years

In no particular order:

Virginia Tech: Annual Top 10 program. I thought with any kind of competent hire to replace Beamer, they would be back to a consistent Top 25 program. The fact that they kept Bud Foster (best "keep" of the offseason?) while getting an offensive mind like Fuente is insane. I think they won the offseason. Fuente by himself may have been good, but with Foster.... they are going to be back at the Michael Vick era level.

Miami: Annual Top 15-25 program, potential to be Top 5. Best head coaching hire of the year (unless someone gets Chip Kelly). It's hard to read what Richt is going to be able to do there, but he's öööö good coach and an even better recruiter. I don't know if Miami will be MNC level, but they are going to be a 10 win type team every year. I have a feeling these guys are going to be really, really good under Richt. I think he got a fire lit underneath him by McGarrity.

UNC: Annual Top 40 program, potential to be annual Top 10. I haven't come to a solid conclusion on Fedora yet. The offense speaks for itself, and Carolina can recruit with any program in the country if they want to, but they are the greatest tease in college football for a reason. As long as Fedora and Chizik are there, I don't see them winning less than 7,8 games a season, with a chance to be the in the playoff at their best.

Virginia: Annual Top 40 program. I don't think Mendenhall is going to win championships, but I don't think the people in Charlottesville are going to complain. I think they will be a consistent 8,9 win team. Mendenhell is an iron-forger, and they might be the toughest team to play year in, year out in the ACC now. If Mendenhall can recruit like London, they can be an annual Top 25 program and occasional playoff spot darkhorse. The talent is there.

Pitt: Annual Top 50 program. Doesn't seem like Pitt will get the players that the above coaches can, but they always have future NFL players at skill positions. I expect them to be a lot like Virginia, but not as much talent available across the board. Narduzzi is probably going to be the most overlooked coach in the division now, but he strikes me a lot like Dantonio in his approach. A lot to like, but don't know how far they can go with the resources they have.

Duke: Annual Top 50-75 program. They already are what they were going to be. What Cutcliffe did here is incredible, and they are a solid, respectable team year in, year out now. It's going to get harder for them now, unless the Duke alumni start pouring money into football, but I would expect them to be able to compete in every game they play under Cutcliffe.

Georgia Tech: I have absolutely no clue. It seems like a 0-12 or 12-0 season are both on the table with Paul Johnson as coach in any given year. I can't read our program's direction going into any season. When the games start, it either seems to work, or it doesn't. I believe one thing for sure... next year is the last year we can win the Coastal with the way we've been doing things. By 2017, we are going to be looking up at a lot of the teams from down below if we don't make an investment to keep up.
 
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Grow some balls. VPI isn't going to be an annual top 10 program. Their head coach has 1 year of ööööing experience and you're creaming your pants
 
Diseqc said:
Grow some balls. VPI isn't going to be an annual top 10 program. Their head coach has 1 year of ööööing experience and you're creaming your pants
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I'd think we'd all be creaming our pants if we had the chance to have a TCU/Baylor offense with a Bud Foster defense, and a school that allowed us to recruit anyone we wanted in the Virginia/DC area.
 
You're way, way off on VPI. They have the weakest HC in the Coastal now. The swapped places with the Hoos today. Without Beamer they will become what they should have always been, an isolated, mediocre program.

Even with their decline the Coastal is going to be an absolute bitch in about 2 more years.
 
ConyersJacket said:
You're way, way off on VPI. They have the weakest HC in the Coastal now. The swapped places with the Hoos today. Without Beamer they will become what they should have always been, an isolated, mediocre program.

Even with their decline the Coastal is going to be an absolute bitch in about 2 more years.
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Apparently, he's gay for Fuente
 
ConyersJacket said:
You're way, way off on VPI. They have the weakest HC in the Coastal now. The swapped places with the Hoos today. Without Beamer they will become what they should have always been, an isolated, mediocre program.

Even with their decline the Coastal is going to be an absolute bitch in about 2 more years.
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VT is the predominant football school in one of the most fertile recruiting areas in the country. They can admit whoever they want, and have them coached by one of the best defensive coordinators in the country on one side, or one of the best young offensive minds in the country on the other. Sure, Fuente might flop, but seeing what he did with Memphis, I'd bet on VT going to back to how they were under the peak Beamer years.
 
Jeezus, UVA got Mendenhall? Coastal became a freaking minefield.
 
cyptomcat said:
Jeezus, UVA got Mendenhall? Coastal became a freaking minefield.
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It's going to make every game on the schedule a lot more exciting, that's for sure. We'll have a great matchup against every team we play, and it will be fun seeing how PJ plans and counterattacks against some of the best coaches week after week.
 
Well half of every team in the division's regular season schedule is against division foes, so teams will accumulate losses. Some of the programs that look good on paper or look to have made good hires will fall behind just because that's the nature of sports. Other schools may experience short term success but be unable to retain the coach who gets them there.

Honestly, I think us, Miami, and Duke are the only teams not in any danger of losing our coach due to a better job opening. I agree that UVA probably won't have more than moderate success, but if they do, Mendenhall is still fairly young and could attract other offers. Fedora has roots in Texas and was also the OC at Oklahoma State for a few years. If he sustains success at UNC, who knows if he'll stick around. If Narduzzi is good at all, Pitt is going to have a hard time keeping him, because they're Pitt. If Fuente gets VT back to a top 10 team, he's going to get offers from some elite programs. Maybe he ends up marrying the program like Beamer did and Foster has, but I think it's doubtful.
 
Regarding Fuente specifically, he had a couple really nice years at a school that had been bad for awhile. Clearly he did well there, but virtually all coaches at non-power 5 schools who get jobs at p5 schools do so because they did well.
 
Just about every Tech player and their mom got hurt. By the end of the year we basically had a high school 3-star team playing against grown seniors and only losing by a possession or two. Flush the season and move on. The experience will come in handy next year.
 
I think the jury is still way out on Va Tech. Fuente has done some nice things with Memphis, but it's not like they play in the most demanding conference. They get props for a big win over Ole Miss - but they got absolutely dumptrucked by Navy. And they took a whipping at Temple.

Mendenhall is a much more proven commodity. Yet it remains to see how he can recruit at a more traditional school than having a school where you can get your pick of Samoans and whitebread good Mormon athletes. Virginia has recruited well - London has put together some talent there - but let's see if Mendenhall can add to London's classes.

UNC ... it ain't easy to stay on top in the Coastal, boys. They'll get athletes. They always do. But how long will Fedora hang around? And let's see if they can maintain this success.

Duke ... Cut's done a good job of recruiting and he is a dang good coach. But they finished horribly down the stretch. Is that a harbinger of things to come?

Miami ... I think Richt's a good coach. But I am not going to anoint him the savior of Miami football. He'll get athletes as good or even better than he had at Georgia. But there is a reason Richt isn't the coach at Georgia anymore. And it ain't recruiting. He'll make them something they haven't really been in the Coastal - a contender. Sure, he's 13-2 against Tech all time. But he had some tremendous talent those years, too. He inherited good talent and built upon that. However, he's beatable. Even when his teams have been No. 1 to start the season. (45-42, anybody?)

Pitt will always be a solid program. They'll play hard, they'll have very good talent but the last time they were a top 5 program was back in the early 80s (thank you Dan Marino to John Brown in the Sugar Bowl). In the last 32 years, they have finished in the top 20/25 four times.

Georgia Tech. Stay healthy, Get back on the plus side of the turnover margin. Pass protect. Assume rightful place in ACC Championship Game and start new winning streak over Mutts.
 
gtfan088 said:
Well half of every team in the division's regular season schedule is against division foes, so teams will accumulate losses.

Some of the programs that look good

on paper or look to have made good hires will fall behind just because that's the nature of sports.

Other schools may experience short term success but be unable to retain the coach who gets them there.

Honestly,

I think us, Miami, and Duke are the only teams

not in any danger of losing our coach due to a better job opening.

I agree that UVA

probably won't have more than moderate success, but if they do, Mendenhall is still fairly young and could attract other offers. Fedora has roots in Texas and was also the OC at Oklahoma State for a few years. If he sustains success at UNC, who knows if he'll stick around. If Narduzzi is good at all,
Pitt is going

to have a hard time keeping him, because they're Pitt. If Fuente gets

VT back to a top 10 team,

he's going to get offers from some elite programs. Maybe he ends up marrying the program like Beamer did and Foster has,

But I think it's doubtful.
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Fify
 
gtfan088 said:
Well half of every team in the division's regular season schedule is against division foes, so teams will accumulate losses. Some of the programs that look good on paper or look to have made good hires will fall behind just because that's the nature of sports. Other schools may experience short term success but be unable to retain the coach who gets them there.

Honestly, I think us, Miami, and Duke are the only teams not in any danger of losing our coach due to a better job opening. I agree that UVA probably won't have more than moderate success, but if they do, Mendenhall is still fairly young and could attract other offers. Fedora has roots in Texas and was also the OC at Oklahoma State for a few years. If he sustains success at UNC, who knows if he'll stick around. If Narduzzi is good at all, Pitt is going to have a hard time keeping him, because they're Pitt. If Fuente gets VT back to a top 10 team, he's going to get offers from some elite programs. Maybe he ends up marrying the program like Beamer did and Foster has, but I think it's doubtful.
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The key to the first part is to have a couple of teams in the division in line for the playoff, and try to have everyone else win 7, or 8 games. Only way to accomplish that is to win the out of conference games.

Also, I don't see most of the coaches that were hired by the Coastal programs jumping around to other jobs. There are a few elite jobs that every coach would dream of taking (ND, Bama, USC), but I think with the way the landscape of the sport has changed, outside of those cream of the crop jobs, there isn't as much impetus to go to a bigger school by default. You can make really good money as a coach at a school like Virginia Tech without the insane expectations and pressures of a place like Georgia or LSU. I mean, the nicest guy in Division I football just got fired because winning 9, 10 games wasn't enough. I think that's part of the reason why these ACC jobs were attractive to big names in the first place. Not being the SEC helps in this case.
 
I think Paul Johnson is a very good coach. I've never cared for the TO and have repeatedly said so but I have enjoyed the success we have had under Paul.

I personally believe that CPJ enjoyed the fruits of a very weak Coastal division for the first few years he was at GT. At the beginning of his tenure, we could cake walk through Duke, UNC and Viriginia (when we played at home...for some reason we've still held that öööö Charlottesville jinx at time during his tenure). Now those teams have gotten better and we've lost 2 in a row to Duke and UNC.

Virginia just definitely upgraded their coach and he's one who has said before that he enjoys coaching defense against option teams. We will see if he has the success at UVA like he did at BYU, but the man is an excellent coach and I would expect he will over time. This year? Who knows?

Pitt still seems to be the weak link in the division to me at this point.

VT - honestly, I find them scary. Keeping Bud Foster certainly didn't make my day because he has 8 years of experience defending the TO and has done well against us. Throw in an offensive minded coach and they should, at least on paper, be a better team. And when you consider they get Brewer back for the entire year next year, Fuente will start with an experienced, talented QB.

Miami - absolutely upgraded with Richt as the coach. No idea who he'll bring in as DC but if he intends to call plays and coach QBs again as he said last week during his "mutual agreement" interview, then that is going to make Kaya dangerous as hell.

But there is certainly no arguing that the road to the ACCCG has most assuredly gotten more difficult.
 
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