James Franklin recently opened up on The Triple Option podcast about the wild behind-the-scenes process of taking the Virginia Tech head coaching job. When asked about connecting with the school’s past legends, Franklin revealed a big secret: he actually called up Mr Virginia himself to ask for his straight-up permission before accepting the position.

“Well, I think the first thing is I called Coach (Frank) Beamer and asked his permission to take the job. I wanted his blessing to take the job,” Franklin told Rob Stone on their podcast when he was asked what kind of advice he received from fellow coaches before taking the job in Blacksburg. “I called him, but he didn’t answer, so I called his wife. She answered and got him on the phone.”

To Franklin, Beamer is Virginia Tech football. He was the head coach of the program for almost three decades, spanning from 1987 all the way until his retirement in 2015. Perhaps it was out of respect, but Franklin felt it would be disrespectful to sign the contract without discussing it with the person who had held the post for this long.

Once Cheryl Franklin connected them, Franklin laid his cards on the table and got the blessing from the House.

Franklin compared the phone call to one of the most nerve-wracking milestones in a man’s personal life. He said reaching out to Beamer felt exactly like sitting down with a traditional father-in-law to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

During their conversation, the first piece of advice was focusing heavily on the absolute golden rule of Virginia Tech football: owning the home state. Beamer reminded him that back in the day, the Hokies dominated local recruiting, especially in the talent-heavy 757 area code.

Franklin fully embraced the philosophy and doubled down, saying that before you can even think about convincing high school kids from other states like California or Texas to move across the country, you have to prove to the local Virginia kids and their families that they can achieve every single one of their football dreams without ever leaving home.

So far, James Franklin has done a splendid job with in-state. Before becoming the Hokies’ head honcho, Virginia Tech was ranked outside of the top 100. Within a couple of months, Franklin had taken Virginia Tech to a top-25 recruiting class in the 2026 cycle. When it comes to in-state, he managed to convince 14 homegrown players to stay in the state. On top of that, of those 14 players, 6 or more of them are top 25 in-state players, which apparently tied a 14-year high for the program.

The other advice Beamer shared

“The other thing that was huge was his ability to retain his staff. Bud Foster was a huge part of Coach Beamer’s success, and vice versa. That’s more difficult now than it’s ever been because when you have success, other programs try to hire away your coaches.”

Keeping a staff together is far more difficult in today’s college football landscape. As soon as a program enjoys sustained success, other schools begin targeting its assistant coaches for bigger opportunities. Franklin has experienced that firsthand over the years, losing several highly regarded coordinators to head coaching jobs, including Joe Moorhead to Mississippi State, Ricky Rahne to Old Dominion, Manny Diaz to Duke, and, ironically, Brent Pry to Virginia Tech.

One of the first things Franklin did was bring in former head coach Brent Key to call the plays (DC). He doubled down and retained a couple more, like Ron Moore (OL coach) and Fontel Mines (WR coach). Needless to say, Franklin has the perfect blueprint to make the Hokies a national powerhouse once again.