Five Years Later: Looking Back At Virginia Tech’s 2020 Signing Class

13 Comments

1. 

   phonedude February 11, 2025 at 12:50 PM

   Love these look back articles. Please provide links to prior years too (to make them easier to find).
   1. 

      Will Stewart February 11, 2025 at 2:55 PM

      Most of them were at the Roanoke Times or The Athletic. Andy's only been here since March 2023. Here are the two he's done for us that cover the 2020 and 2019 classes: https://virginiatech.sportswar.com/tag/five-years-later/ 2018 class (The Athletic): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4129382/2023/01/27/virginia-tech-football-recruiting-2018-fuente/ 2017 class (The Athletic): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/3096886/2022/01/28/revisiting-virginia-techs-recruiting-class-of-2017-a-high-point-for-justin-fuente-finished-with-mixed-results/ 2016 (The Athletic): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2356713/2021/02/01/virginia-tech-recruiting-2016/ 2015 (The Athletic): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1572600/2020/02/03/assessing-virginia-techs-2015-recruiting-class-five-years-later/
      1. 

         Andy Bitter February 11, 2025 at 4:53 PM

         Somewhere in the Roanoke Times' labyrinth of archived content there are six or seven more. That site's impossible to navigate, though, so good luck finding them.
2. 

   AnotherTechW February 11, 2025 at 9:26 AM

   2 NFL RBs in the same backfield!
3. 

   vtgriff09 February 10, 2025 at 9:54 PM

   I laugh at historically bad comments. You are comparing apples to oranges. We are between 18% to 27% of our starting roster next year being EVER recruited out of HS by VT. Not ONE year..EVER. If we don't recognize the game has changed, then we are stuck in the past. This "historically bad" class blows away the next 4 classes after that by miles and miles and miles. We will be looking at massively lower numbers of Pry recruits out of HS ever starting...no way to spin 4-6 total players starting being HS recruits out of multiple classes. Again...the game.is the portal, and we didn't get to legally pay players in the 2020 class.
4. 

   GO_HOKIES_GO February 10, 2025 at 5:47 PM

   The VT “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach for the back-end of the Beamer era carried over to Fuente. Most of the cut-rate staff were lackluster recruiters and Foster quit recruiting about 2015. Unfortunately, the brain-trust still doesn’t know what they are doing and the proof is in the pudding (record). Until there is some real reorganization in the football program, VT is doomed to 6-6 records - so it goes.
5. 

   vtgriff09 February 10, 2025 at 3:00 PM

   6 guys from HS that played a lot out of 16 (.375 hit rate). 4 from portal that played a lot. The 4 HS starters started 3 years+ each. Some hits and misses (mostly from some bigger recruits on misses). Not as big of a deal when you see year 4 of Pry, and we have 4-6 HS players we recruited projected to start out 22. So 16-18 transfers will start. I consider that to be historically bad at HS recruiting (as many players in ONE bad class started 3+ years as 4 yrs of classes will start next yr total). The game is the portal.
6. 

   uvabasher February 10, 2025 at 2:39 PM

   It was a historically bad class that couldn’t be salvaged by the transfers and a few diamond in rough guys like Moore and Strong. I’d argue even guys like Warren that decommitted were better served by it. Warren probably would have solely played QB here and would have had a very different career, and not a good one
7. 

   delmarva hokie February 10, 2025 at 2:24 PM

   Wow! Two names in this article (Fairs and Spalding) that are drawing complete blanks in my memory bank.
8. 

   TomTurkey February 10, 2025 at 2:01 PM

   Another jewel to connect dots on issues and answers. Remember that program?
9. 

   OutaStateHokie February 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM

   Mr Bitter, these are the kind of articles that make me resign with TSL. Keep up the good work. Be blessed.
10. 

    DW Hokie February 10, 2025 at 1:53 PM

    I don’t know how college football coaches don’t all go insane trying to deal with the fickleness of roster management.
    1. 

       7Hokie1 February 10, 2025 at 2:18 PM

       Its got to be a pain, but that's why they are paid millions of dollars to run a program.