Will Bud Foster replace Frank Beamer as Virginia Tech head coach?

With Frank Beamer out at the end of the season as Virginia Tech head coach, will Bud Foster be the replacement as we’ve all suspected?

On Sunday, just one day after they moved to 4-5 on the season with a win over Boston College, Virginia Tech announced that head coach Frank Beamer will be retiring as head football coach, effective at the end of the season. After 29 years at the helm in Blacksburg, it’s a true end of an era for not just one of the great coaches, but one of the great men college football has ever seen.

However, in the middle of all the reminiscing and tears, there is now the question of who will be the next man to try and lead the Hokies back to dominance? Of course, throughout the last decade or so, people have seemingly had the answer to that question ready in their back pocket for this particular moment — longtime defensive coordinator Bud Foster.

Foster has been with Beamer throughout his entire tenure as head coach of Virginia Tech, joining him as an inside linebackers coach in 1987. After handling more position coaching details, he was named the co-defensive coordinator in 1995 and he took over on a sole basis in 1996. Since then, he has constructed some of the better defensive units in college football. As a matter of fact, in 1999, he was named Defensive Coordinator of the Year by the American Football Coaches Association, the same year the team went undefeated and made an appearance in the BCS title game.

With the success that he has maintained for the most part as the Virginia Tech defensive coordinator, he’s consistently been put at the front of the lists whenever a college coaching job opens. Yet, despite the opportunity being there to take off and head up an entire program on his own, he’s stayed put in Blacksburg by Beamer’s side through thick and thin. Because of this, many have come under the belief that there has been some super-secret agreement between Foster, Virginia Tech, and even Beamer, that the job in Blacksburg would be his when the time is right.

Well, the time is apparently going to come in a few months when the 2015 season comes to a close and Beamer goes off to enjoy himself in retirement. Will it be as simple as the season ending and the Hokies stating what we all believe to be the obvious? That being Foster, at 56 years of age, will be the man to lead this program going forward.

It could indeed be that simple and maybe there has been that agreement in place all along. Maybe right now, as we speak, Foster is already sitting in his office putting together his plan to get this program back to the place it was in the early 2000s.

Seems easy enough, but then when you really think about it, there are some other options that could be on the table for one of the most prominent programs in college football for the better part of the last 30 years.

My money right now is on Foster taking the reins and the writing on the wall that we implored we’d seen for so many years coming to fruition. But, it’s also hard to ignore that other intriguing names aren’t out there, who might end up being the change this program needs.