As soon as James Franklin was hired at Virginia Tech, the goals and expectations quickly changed for the program and the fanbase. Coming off a 3-9 season in 2025 that saw former head coach Brent Pry fired in mid-September 2025 following a loss at home to Old Dominion.
About a month later, Franklin was fired, and the Virginia Tech search committee quickly zeroed in on Franklin to be the next coach in Blacksburg. About 10 days before Thanksgiving last November, the school officially announced the hiring of Franklin, and things were all of a sudden looking up.
After beginning the season 4-0, the Hokies hit a road bump with two losses to Pittsburgh and California. However, a bounce-back win last weekend at home against Georgia Tech got Virginia Tech to 5-2, one win short of becoming bowl-eligible with five games remaining. On Saturday night, Franklin and his team rallied in the fourth quarter with 10 points to pick up a 20-16 win over Clemson in Death Valley. Veteran Virginia Tech football commentator Mike Burnop asked Franklin after the game about becoming bowl-eligible, and the first-year head coach kind of shot it down.
"We're appreciative of that, but that's the standard,'' said Franklin to Burnop. "That's what we're going to do. We're going to go to bowls, so I appreciate that the fans and everybody are excited about that, but that was always the standard, and we don't want to set goals with a low bar. We want to set really aggressive things that we're going to work towards every single day, and at the end of the year, they'll tell us where we're going.''
James Franklin reveals new Virginia Tech football standard
Man, that's some serious coach speak if we've ever heard it. However, when the season began, the likely win total for Virginia Tech was either six or seven, depending on who you asked. After the last decade of frustration, most, if not all, Hokies would have taken that as a realistic expectation. However, if they were going to exceed that, then winning a game on the road at Clemson, SMU, or Miami would be needed. Well, they got that win on Saturday night.
Sure, it was the statement win that Franklin was looking for in his first season in Blacksburg. He got it and got it out of the way before having to try to pick it up against two ranked opponents. Becoming bowl-eligible is a nice standard to have, but Franklin is a couple of missed field goals away from being 8-0 right now. Imagine if they were 8-0 instead of being 6-2 following the win in South Carolina on Saturday night?
Virginia Tech gets a much-needed bye next weekend before a Friday night trip to Texas to play SMU on Friday night, November 6. With the sixth win secured, all Hokies fans are going to pay more attention to where the projections are going to be week to week. According to Franklin, that's the standard moving forward each year.
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