Beamer is retiring after 29 seasons and will now be followed by a 39-year-old coach who has spent the past four seasons at Memphis, turning a struggling program into a victor.
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Garry Smits at Jacksonville.com wrote about Georgia firing Mark Richt on Sunday and slipped this line in the article: “Richt has been rumored to land at Virginia, which accepted the resignation of coach Mike London on Sunday about the same time the Richt news broke”.
A 1999 graduate of Murray State, where Beamer, a Virginia Tech alum, had served as head football coach before being hired by his alma mater in 1987, Fuente and his wife, Jenny, have three daughters – Cecilia, Caroline and Charlotte. It will also reportedly keep beloved defensive coordinator Bud Foster and associate head coach Shane Beamer on staff in Blacksburg. He quickly engineered a turnaround, guiding them to their first 10-win season since 1938 a year ago, and a No. 25 ranking in the final AP Top 25, a program first.
The move comes as an expected development in this season’s nationwide coaching carousel, especially since a 1-3 start to this season that featured a nationally-televised 56-14 home loss to Boise State.
“Mike London has been an outstanding representative of the University of Virginia”, Littlepage said in a statement. The school will pay him approximately $2.6 million through 2016.
Clearly, there are some elements of London’s style that the Cavaliers would welcome in their new coach.
London went 27-46 in six seasons with the Cavaliers, including 4-8 this year.
With the retention of Coach Foster, Fuente stated that the defense will look the same, however the offense will undergo several changes. The Cyclones finished second to last in the conference standings, and it will likely take time for Campbell to turn this program around, as he will need to bring in his own recruits. London replaced Al Groh, who was sacked after going 3-9 in his ninth season at UVA in 2009.
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While the Hoos came back in 2014 to post a respectable 5-7 record, they missed the postseason after losing to arch-rival Virginia Tech in the season finale. “But it was nice to know … you want somebody who wants to be at Virginia Tech”.
