Frank Beamer: How High Can Virginia Tech Football Coach Climb?

After Joe Paterno's firing last week at Penn State, Virginia Tech's Frank Beamer became the dean of major college football coaches, currently in his 25th year at the helm in Blacksburg. With Thursday's win over North Carolina, he has now amassed 208 wins at his alma mater. Counting his time at Murray State, he has won 250 games as a Division I coach.

The victory over the Tar Heels gave Beamer one more win than Lou Holtz, moving him into eighth place all-time among coaches who have coached at least one major college football program. He is No. 1 among active coaches, but just how much further can the 65-year old move up before he calls it a career?

His next two targets are Nebraska's Tom Osborne (255) and BYU's LaVell Edwards (257). Given that Beamer's teams have now won at least 10 games for eight straight seasons and 12 of the past 13, he should pass both next fall.

After that, there's a significant gap to reach three of the most legendary names in the history of college football: Stagg, Warner, and Bryant. Amos Alonzo Stagg stands at 314 wins, which would likely require Beamer to coach at least six more seasons. Meanwhile, Bobby Bowden (377) and Paterno (409) are not realistically within reach.

Beamer will be 71 by the end of the 2017 season, but he has showed no signs of slowing down on and off the field. He is closing in on his fifth division title in seven years and will likely get a chance for a fifth ACC title in eight years in the league. The Hokies have lost just one of their past 19 games against ACC opponents.

While the ACC has expanded, bringing in Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the biggest threat to the Hokies' empire may come from just up Interstate 81 in Charlottesville. Virginia and second-year coach Mike London are looking to take back control of the Commonwealth for the first time in 20 years, and are narrowing the recruiting gap that the Hokies have built in both the D.C. metro and Tidewater regions.

Prior to Beamer's arrival, Virginia Tech had never won 10 games in a season. Beamer has done it in more than half of his 25 seasons. The program had mild success under Bill Dooley in the 1980s, but Beamer helped find the school a home in the Big East, and he has written the manual for how to build a program without the aid of fertile recruiting grounds in its backyard.

Beamer will likely finish somewhere between third and sixth on the all-time wins list, a remarkable accomplishment at a school that 30 years ago had no semblance of a winning tradition. Without a national title to his name, Beamer has never gotten the credit he deserves for what he's accomplished in Blacksburg. For one of the sport's all-time greats, that's unfortunate.