During the 1992 football season I sat in the stadium at Rutgers and watched the Scarlet Knights pull off a tremendous comeback, rallying to defeat Tech 50-49. It was a defining moment for the Virginia Tech football program under Frank Beamer, as a defense that had become increasingly porous finally collapsed. It also marked the last time Tech scored 49 points in a game and lost. When you hang seven touchdowns on the other guy you really ought to win.

Last Friday night in the Insight Bowl, Tech again scored 49 and lost, this time to Cal. Once again, a defense that had become increasingly porous finally collapsed. Following that 92 disaster, then-Athletic Director Dave Braine forced major changes upon Frank Beamer. Frank dodged the firing squad only by agreeing to jettison a number of members of his defensive staff, including guys he had played with at Tech and had basically been coaching for him ever since. Tech�s current athletic director has no such authority, but it has become apparent that radical surgery on Tech�s defense is again needed. That was a very average Cal team that torched the Tech defense, one that couldn�t begin to marshal the athletic ability at Tech�s disposal. It was the scheme.

The culprit in 1992 was the Wide Tackle Six defense used by Frank Beamer, a holdover from his coach at Tech, Jerry Claiborne. Claiborne regarded the passing game as a passing fad, and his defense was designed to stop the run. By 1992, however, the increasing sophistication of passing attacks had rendered it hopelessly obsolete. It was supposedly junked in 1993, but elements of it have been sneaking back into Tech�s defensive strategies and tactics ever since. It needs to again be pitched onto the trash heap.

Tech�s defensive Job One is to stop the run, and they do a pretty good job of it. Tech�s best defensive efforts of the season came against a Syracuse team that possessed little offense other than tailback Walter Reyes, and against a Miami squad that emphasizes the run first, but had found its cupboard of top-shelf tailbacks temporarily bare.

An increasing number of teams, however, do not cooperate with Tech�s defense by agreeing to concentrate on the ground game. The co-called West Coast offense is sweeping through college football. It accentuates a short passing game with short drops by the quarterback, which tends to negate Tech�s once-fearsome pass rush. WVU, Pitt and the Hoos, the teams that lit Tech up during the regular season, run variations of this offense. Cal also uses it, and we saw it run to perfection Friday night. Tech�s defense was deployed to stop the run, and it is no wonder that the Cal quarterback erupted in laughter. The situation was tailor-made for their offense. Tech stopped the run, but doing so by allowing the opposition to pass at will so that they had little reason to run was probably not what Bud Foster had in mind.

�Tweaking� is a buzzword we are hearing often these days from the Tech football compound. I freely admit to being an amateur coordinator, but it seems to me that �restructuring� is what we need to be hearing. Tech�s talent level is down somewhat from what we had been accustomed to, most glaringly at linebacker, where there have been a number of high-profile recruiting misses [Brooks and Blackstock would have come in very handy last Friday]. Among the reasons given by our missed targets is concern that our defensive scheme would not properly prepare them for the NFL riches on which most of today�s top high school talent is focused. Cornell Brown and Corey Moore were outstanding collegiate defensive ends, but found a very steep curve in learning new positions in the pros. One player made it, one didn't. These examples were not lost on other high school players, especially with a coach in the neighborhood who loudly and incessantly trumpets his experience, both real and imagined, of coaching NFL linebackers.

The one constant in college football is that there are no constants in college football. Change is inevitable, and ongoing. There was a time when the primary duty of a defensive coordinator was determining how to best stop the single wing, another when the wishbone swept through football. The hefty salaries of coaches depends in large part on their abilities in finding new ways to attack and defend, and many are very good at it. What worked today might not work tomorrow, or, in Tech�s case, what worked yesterday does not work today. Tech had a very good run with its current defensive thinking, but the Cal game, and the Pitt game, and the Hoo game, offer solid evidence that it has run its course.

Bryan Stinespring certainly showed that he is capable of change, as Tech�s offense looked much different from what we had recently seen. With the head-scratching exception of the period during the second half when Bryan appeared to be searching the playbook for a fourteen-point play, it was a varied offense that utilized all weapons on hand. The defense now has to change its thinking.

There was talk Friday night from Bill Roth and Mike Burnop that a pro-style 4-3 Tech defense was in the cards. Given the ease in which West Coast offenses can shred Tech�s defense, it would seem to be an idea whose time has come. The West Coast offense is here to stay, at least until enough defensive coaches figure out how to stop it, and Tech�s current run-oriented defensive scheme looks ill suited to do that.

The question arises as to whether Bud Foster can install and coach a defense with which he has no experience. My opinion is that he has certainly earned the right to give it a shot. This is not 1992 and a 2-8-1 Tech team; it is 2003, and Tech is on an eleven-year bowl run and has firmly established itself as a winning program. These coaches have done a pretty darn good job for Tech in the past decade plus, and I am willing, for what that is worth, to put faith in their abilities to keep doing so. Our coaches are our coaches.

Like most of us who are firmly entrenched in our fifties, Frank Beamer has shown strong resistance to change. He has built a pretty solid program mostly doing things the same way year after year, continuity he points to with pride. There comes a time when change is necessary, however, and this would appear to be one of those times. As in 1992, Tech�s defensive scheme is outmoded and needs changing. It was forced on him in 92 under the threat of losing his job. That will not happen this time, but Frank must realize that a defense that surrenders fifty-two points has structural problems that need addressing on a structural level. This has been building for some time, and the Insight Bowl was rock bottom. It is time not for tweaking but a fundamental change in defensive thinking.

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