On December 23, 1986, the day after Virginia Tech made Frank Beamer’s hiring as the new head coach official, then-Roanoke Times columnist Bill Brill made his opinion known to his readers.

Brill opined that Tech hiring Frank Beamer, a 1-AA coach, “was kind of like the kid waking up Christmas morning expecting the latest in toys and instead getting a sweater.”

Cheryl Beamer read it and got pretty upset, but Frank, calm guy that he was, simply responded, “Maybe that kid needs a sweater.”

The other names mentioned for the job at the time were guys like Bobby Ross (who won a National Championship at Georgia Tech and took the Chargers to the Super Bowl) and Bruce Arians, and Steve Spurrier was also mentioned. If you had polled Tech fans at the time, I’m guessing that Beamer would have finished in last place behind those other three guys. All of them had more experience or bigger names, and Arians himself was a Tech guy.

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