Virginia Tech Football: Hokies and Pry can’t land top recruit

There is still a lot of time before signing day and the Virginia Tech football team, mainly head coach Brent Pry has been on the recruiting trail early this season. One of his recent stops was on Sept. 1 when he took a helicopter from Blacksburg to Salem, Va. to see linebacker Chris Cole, but his efforts came up short.

Cole chooses SEC over ACC

Cole announced Sunday that he will attend the University of Georgia to play for the nation’s current No. 1 team and two-time defending National Champion Bulldogs. In the big picture, was Cole going to choose Virginia Tech over Georgia? No, but you can’t say the Pry didn’t get it his best effort. Cole spoke about it being hard to tell Pry that he was coming there.

“The hardest thing during this recruitment process was just telling them no.”

Virginia Tech was in the final six schools that Cole made his decision over. Aside from Georgia and Tech, it was the University of Miami in Florida, the University of Tennessee, Penn State, and USC.

Linebacker is a position of need for the Hokies in the future and Cole would have stepped right onto campus and started, but you can’t blame him for choosing Georgia over Virginia Tech as the Bulldogs right now are the pinnacle college program.

Pry is in his second season as Virginia Tech head coach and this is going to be a very big recruiting window for the former Penn State defensive coordinator. Losing out on Cole is not a very big surprise, but now Pry and his staff need to prioritize their next moves. The transfer portal is turning into a nice advantage for teams to change from year to year, but the Hokies need to hit big in recruiting over the next couple of months for the future.