so justin fuente went to memphis. he turned them around almost immediately, taking them from 107th to 39th to 48th. virginia tech took notice, and they're like "woah, let's hire the memphis coach! he will save us!"
so fuente arrives at va tech, takes over a program rated similar to his memphis team, and gets them to #15 his first year (10-4, 6-2). his second year, he gets them to #21 (9-4, 5-3). this year, his third, they finished #63 (6-6, 4-4) - with a shocking loss to old dominion where VT was a 28-pt favorite.
now they're 6-6 and heading to the Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman!
meanwhile, as all this is going on, mike norvell is humming along at memphis. the tigers got slightly worse in year 1 (from #48 to #50), they improved to #32 in year 2, and this year they fell back a bit to #48. what will next year bring? nobody knows. and we may not find out. why? because perhaps gene has seen enough! he might want to bring in norvell, the three-year program maintainer, here to manhattan, and see if he can pull off his first ever rebuild!
this is so exciting! everybody give it up for three-year sample sizes where literally any other coach probably could have pulled off the same exact results!