His name is being bantered about here at South Carolina. Not clear yet what position. He was greatly admired when he was here a few years ago and serving as recruiting coordinator. Brought in a lot of studs. Is he likely to be offered a position on Fuentes' staff or do you all see him going elsewhere?
Congrats on the hire and thanks for your feedback.
You'd do well to get Shane back.
Don't listen to the simplistic and ignorant answers that blame our decline on Shane. Truth is, our decline started
almost as soon as we rose to national prominence. When we should have ramped up our recruiting we pretty much either stayed the course or dialed it down, doing nothing aggressive or innovative -- ever. Relatively shortly after our rise under Frank, our RB coach (Billy Hite) wanted a pass from the recruiting trail and Frank allowed it. There may have been good reasons for him not to travel, but those would be the very same good reasons for him to be off the staff. Also, from the beginning, staff seemed to have been judged on Xs & Os only (coaching/teaching ability), but never held accountable for the (arguably) more important task of recruiting with success. We kept guys who were good coaches and coordinators, but below average recruiters. These were simultaneously skills that kept us afloat and the seeds of our demise.
Add to that some odd stuff we did (not strictly chronological):
We hired an inexperienced coach (Stinespring) to be our OC. He wasn't great, but contra many Hokie fans, neither was he our biggest problem. Still, his selection was not our best available choice.
Then there's the fact that Frank built a brand on (among other things) ST and great D. Tht's fine, but then we stopped putting our best athletes on ST. It showed up big time. For years espn babbled on about our ST's; meanwhile we all knew they sucked.
We gave our RB coach (the aforementioned Billy Hite, who is great guy, btw) the power to change plays on the sideline, plays our OC called from the booth. No kidding. How much he did is anybody's guess, but I've been told it was not rare.
We removed our best recruiter out of our most fertile area. A wrist-cutting exercise.
There's more, but you get the idea. No single death blow. More like death by 1,000 cuts
One external factor: for reasons not entirely clear (to me) the most prominent 7 on 7 coaches located in our most fertile recruiting territory (757) did everything they could to keep kids from going to VT. They were fairly successful at it, too. So, Shane's recruiting (like the rest of our staff) has suffered the last 2-3 years for these reasons, and to a significant degree because of Frank's impending retirement. That was a card other programs played against us with great success.
Shane has the "it" factor; he'll be a great asset wherever he goes.
