Go Ahead and Scoff, But Bryan Stinespring Could be a Good Head Coach Some Day

by furrer4heisman on Dec 13, 2009 10:09 PM EST

The news that Richmond was going to interview Virginia Tech's Bryan Stinespring for its vacant head coaching job was met with a lot of sarcastic cheers from Hokie fans eager to rid themselves of the embattled offensive coordinator. While EBJ from Beer Control Offense is on the mark with his assessment of the fans' enthusiasm, I believe Stinespring would be a good fit at Richmond.

Last year I posted a sarcasm-soaked letter to Ball State's athletics director asking him to hire Stinespring. But there's no sarcasm here. The same recruiting ties Mike London had are shared by Stinespring. He could step in at UR and keep the flow of talent coming in as the Spiders move into a new stadium.

There is one thing Stinespring would have to do to be a successful head coach, though. He would need to hire an offensive coordinator. My primary contention with Stinespring has always been his playcalling. If he can find someone he trusts to run the system he wants to install it would work out a lot better than if he tried to call plays and be the head coach.

Who knows what kind of offense Stinespring would want if he were in charge. Right now he runs the system Frank Beamer wants him to run. Whether or not that's what he wants to run is something we won't know unless he gets the reins of his own program, be it Richmond or an FCS or FBS in the future.

Stinespring is a solid recruiter, organizer and delegater. He is a great coordinator of the offense and its system, but struggles at playcalling. I think he has the attributes that would lead to being a successful head coach. However, I don't think he'll get the chance to prove me right at Richmond and who knows if he'll ever get that chance.

And for those of you rooting for Stinespring's departure, remember that he's one of our top recruiters. We certainly would be able to find a better play-caller than Stinespring, but I don't think we'd have nearly as easy a time replacing him on the recruiting trail.

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I agree, and think Richmond could sustain its recent success for a while if they went after him.

The artist formerly known as thehoagster07

by what Juneau about that? on Dec 13, 2009 10:37 PM EST reply actions

While I agree that BS has the characteristics of a good coach, I don’t quite prescribe to this notion of him being such an exceptional recruiter. Wins are the best recruiters. Any OC that has flair and imagination will also turn out to be a good recruiter. Its time to sever ties and move on. Good luck UR.

by IfScraPp on Dec 13, 2009 11:11 PM EST reply actions

First off, I do agree that Stiney could be a good head coach somewhere like Richmond. He does have great knowledge of VA to recruit and does seem to be an organized person. It would be interesting to see if he would succeed there.

However, I don’t think its a huge loss of his recruiting skill is he leaves. You can recruit all the talent in the world, but if you can’t draw up the plays to utilize their talents then all that talent is pretty useless. And that’s pretty much what has happened with Stiney (i.e. Eddie Royal, Josh Morgan, David Clowney).

I think it’d be the perfect time for him to get the job for both VT and UR. We’ve built enough ‘success’ over the past decade where we could bring in a much better play developer/caller.

by VTinACC on Dec 14, 2009 10:23 AM EST reply actions