If Virginia Tech football loses head coach Justin Fuente to the Baylor Bears, Hokies legend Michael Vick is among those who believes former Virginia Tech assistant and teammate Shane Beamer should be the replacement.

Vick endorsed Beamer for the job on Twitter Wednesday.

"@CoachSBeamer is ready, and I mean READY!" Vick wrote in a tweet. "He played for/with the best, and coached with the best. If Coach Fuente decides to leave....Shane could fill the void!

Along with Vick, ESPN college football analysts Kirk Herbstreit and Marty Smith also supported the idea to bring Beamer back to Blacksburg.

"If Fuente bounces to Waco, (Virginia Tech athletic director Whit Babcock) should hire Shane Beamer," Smith wrote in a tweet. "Beamer’s ready. He lived Nick Saban’s Process under Kirby Smart at Georgia, is currently setting stat sheets ablaze under Lincoln Riley in Norman, grew up in Blacksburg & played at VT. And his name is Beamer."

"Love this," Herbstreit replied to Smith's tweet. "And I agree. Look who he has coached w/ throughout his career! Grew up in the same house & played for HOF coach Frank Beamer. Phillip Fulmer in Knoxville. Sly Croom at Miss St. Head ball coach at South Carolina. His Dad. Kirby Smart in Athens. Lincoln Riley OU."

Surprising news broke Tuesday night that Fuente was interviewing for the Baylor vacancy.

Fuente has been the Virginia Tech head coach since the start of the 2016 season. In four seasons at the helm, the Hokies have posted a 33-20 (20-12 ACC) record. Virginia Tech won the Coastal Division in Fuente's first season, but that has been followed by two second-place finishes and a third-place finish in 2018. The Hokies are 1-3 in bowl games under Fuente's watch. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Fuente got his first head coaching job at Memphis in 2012. The Tigers went 26-23 in Fuente's four seasons, finishing with 10 wins in 2014 and nine victories in 2015.

Beamer has been the associate head coach and tight ends coach at Oklahoma for the past two seasons. He walked on as a player at Virginia Tech in 1995, playing four seasons under his father, Frank Beamer, who coached the Hokies for 29 seasons until his retirement in 2015. Shane Beamer spent five seasons (2011-15) as the running backs coach and associate head coach at Virginia Tech.

VTScoop's Doug Bowman explained the awkward position Virginia Tech would be left in if Fuente does indeed accept the Baylor job.

"The problem with trying to hire a coach in January is you’ve also got to convince a coach to go back on his word to his current program, leave players and recruits who are ready to begin off-season conditioning, and convince your family that while it didn’t work in December, it’s time to move now in January," Bowman wrote on Wednesday.



"And then, once you hire that coach, he has to do the same with the entire staff, from assistant coaches to recruiting staff to personnel. If Fuente moves on, Babcock will have his work cut out for him to get the right staff in place throughout the program."

If Shane Beamer was the pick, it would at least cut down on some of the work the new Hokies coach would have to do in order to familiarize himself with the environment.