The wait is finally over and Virginia Tech’s 2025 season has arrived with their biggest opener in years as they take on No. 13 South Carolina in the 2025 Aflac Kickoff in Atlanta.
The Beamer Bowl element to this will certainly be a major talking point, but there’s also a bunch of ‘what ifs’ that have led us to this Beamer Bowl moment.
It all starts with COVID and the cancellation of the 2020 Penn State at Virginia Tech game which caused the VT-PSU series to fall apart, creating this opening in the first place. South Carolina is undoubtedly a very good football but if the Hokies were playing Penn State, you’d have a Brent Pry returning to Happy Valley headline but also less pressure given how Penn State is among the top national title contenders and on another level compared to a very good South Carolina that is expected to contend for a spot in the playoff but isn’t considered a national title threat.
That would have been much more of a no-lose situation for Brent Pry in terms of his very warm seat to start this season.
Then there’s the what if about Shane Beamer.
Yes, you’ve probably read plenty of stories that Beamer had his sights set on South Carolina and has no plans to leave. To an extent, I can believe the latter point to be true. However, I’m not sure I believe the former as much given what interest he received from Virginia Tech back in 2020.
Beamer has been open about how he did hear from some people connected with Virginia Tech that VT was interested. However, I talked with a source who has been a sponsor of VT Athletics not too long after the offseason following the 2020 where VT chose to keep Justin Fuente instead of making a change while South Carolina hired Shane Beamer.
From that conversation, it became clear that the drive for Beamer was outside the walls of Merryman, not inside of it. That source shared with me that the push for Beamer wasn’t a quiet one either with donors threatening to pull money and support from VT Athletics if the Hokies didn’t replace Fuente with Shane Beamer after the 2020 season. Those threats specifically included the removal of cars donated to VT Athletics for the coaching staff.
Meanwhile, Whit Babcock was set to be focused on two candidates if he moved on from Fuente from what I heard: Luke Fickell and Tony Elliott.
Instead, VT decided to reload the resource war chest amidst COVID instead of moving on from Fuente then, waiting another year to hire Brent Pry while Shane Beamer took over at South Carolina during the offseason after the 2020 season.
In essence, it was a donor coup of sorts that failed with Babcock maintaining his control and getting to make the move he felt was best for VT Football on the timeline he felt was best rather than a Tennessee-esque donor power play.
A little under five years later, Virginia Tech enters this Beamer Bowl with both Whit Babcock and Brent Pry being on very warm seats at minimum while Shane Beamer is bringing back Steve Spurrier levels of success to South Carolina. Tech enters this game as clear underdogs who have a chance to pull off the upset, but nobody would necessarily fault them for losing this game to a very good South Carolina team.
While it may not be fair, a loss even as a clear underdog would likely further embolden donors who were making contact with Shane Beamer previously and enable them to make potentially a more successful push to get their way this time and have new leadership come to Blacksburg. Whit Babcock only had missed on one football coach hire at that time and VT Athletics looked in a stronger positive relatively speaking back in 2020 with Tech's overall athletic profile being quite strong.
This time, Babcock looks like a more vulnerable AD making an understandable and right call for a massive athletic funding surge, but one that feels a little slow to the punch. Add in how VT has stumbled in things like the Director's Cup with Tech's overall athletic performance suffering a decline over the past few years and it's a situation ripe for frustration to overwhelm it and force a change.
Of course, who knows whether Beamer would take the VT job this time if he actually had the chance to take it given what he’s built in Columbia and how a big job at another school he’s worked at previously, Oklahoma, could also come open this upcoming cycle.
This was a Beamer Bowl that was close to never being: from the VT-Penn State series cancellation creating an opening to add this game to the schedule to a near donor coup that failed to open the door for Beamer to come home. Now, Beamer is thriving at South Carolina with the door on him ever taking over as VT's head coach being potentially closed while Babcock and the coach he chose are both on very warm seats at minimum entering this fall.
Lose this game, even to the expectations set by Vegas of a roughly one-touchdown margin, and it could kick off the march to the end of Babcock's tenure and turn the heat up further on Pry amidst some donors feeling very
So yeah, good luck Brent Pry. The stakes aren’t the fairest but in college sports, things aren’t always fair.
