No one knows the pain of being fired when there’s a job left to be done better than James Franklin. While he found himself some second wind by landing at Virginia Tech, he made waves by hiring Brent Pry, the very coach he had replaced. The locker room’s reaction to the news is just as eye-catching.

The head coach revealed at a press conference on February 4 that when he announced his decision to bring Pry back, the players gave him a standing ovation. Pry was fired just three games into the 2025 schedule, after struggling during his entire tenure as the Hokies’ head coach. Though the dismissal was inevitable, it happened abruptly.

James Franklin also said that Pry, his longtime colleague at Penn State, would have been his choice for the role at Blacksburg. Anywhere else, Pry might have agreed without any questions. But because this was Virginia Tech, it was going to be a tough ask for Franklin. Nevertheless, he lauded Pry’s attitude behind his decision.

“The humility you have to have to walk back in this building as not the head coach is significant. … I don’t know of a lot of people who could do that.”

(This is a developing story…)