BRENT PRY SAW the familiar number on his phone screen and answered. Two Virginia Tech boosters were on the line. They wanted guidance on who to hire as his replacement.
What did he think of James Franklin? Would he maybe make a call to gauge Franklin's interest? He listened, incredulously.
"It was pretty strange, to be honest," Pry told ESPN.
Pry had been fired as Virginia Tech coach after an 0-3 start to the 2025 season, his fourth with the Hokies. Franklin was fired as Penn State coach a month later. The longtime friends had already spoken about other job opportunities and the possibility of working together again, the way they had for 11 years in State College and at Vanderbilt: Franklin as the head coach and Pry as the defensive coordinator.
Then Pry got the call.
He felt conflicted. Why should he help the people who had just told him to get lost? He, like all football coaches, has an ego, and it was wounded. But as painful as it was to get fired, he and his family still loved Blacksburg and the community. He still wanted to see Virginia Tech succeed. "Take me out of it," Pry says. "I always thought James would be a good fit at Virginia Tech."
So, Pry set his pride aside. He told them they should go "full tilt boogie" to try and hire Franklin.
They did. A few weeks later, Pry got another call. This time, it was Franklin. He was considering taking the Virginia Tech job and wanted to know if there were any defensive coordinators Pry would recommend.
Pry thought about it, and then said something that still seems a little wild: "Well, me."
THE QUESTION PRY gets most frequently is, "How did it feel to walk back into the building?" There is no precedent for a head coach to return as an assistant only months after getting fired from the school. There are a handful of coaches who got fired and then returned years later, among them Ed Orgeron currently at LSU, Zach Arnett currently at Mississippi State and Bobby Petrino at Arkansas a few years ago.
Nobody had ever dared do what Pry did.
"I couldn't have done it," Franklin said.
Pry came to Virginia Tech in 2022 filled with hope. Though he had never been a head coach before, Pry felt connected to the place, having served as a graduate assistant with the Hokies under longtime defensive coordinator Bud Foster and legendary coach Frank Beamer in the mid-1990s. He went to high school in Virginia about 80 miles from Blacksburg.
His folksy charm, big smile and can-do attitude quickly won over the fanbase. He set about reestablishing recruiting ties across the state with a barnstorming bus tour and a return to a Beamer-era favorite: cookouts for high school coaches in town during clinics. Pry personally handled the grill and flipped the steaks.
Foster, who remains at Virginia Tech in an advisory role, gave him some advice early: "In Blacksburg, they put you on a pedestal. If you're out to eat, people are going to want to take a picture or ask how the team's going to be. I told him, 'Take a minute, set your fork down, take a picture, tell everybody how much you appreciate them and you're going to be looked upon in a favorable way.' Brent bought into that."
On-field results never really came. In three-plus seasons, he went 16-24, including 1-12 in one-possession games. In his final game, a 45-26 home loss to Old Dominion, the Hokies were booed loudly as they headed into the locker room at halftime. After the game, then-athletic director Whit Babcock told Pry there was a meeting planned for the following day to discuss his future.
A little before noon Sunday, Babcock delivered the news. Pry was able to hold a team meeting to say goodbye to his players. He broke down as he addressed them.
"I just told them how much I appreciated them and their efforts and loved them," Pry said. "I'd love to be here with you and battle out of this hole and make the season right. I'm going to be here for you, whether I'm your head coach or not."
Then he left.
Late at night over the next two days, Pry and his wife, Amy, returned to clean out his office. What he really wanted was to avoid seeing anyone. They put everything into boxes, loaded up the truck and that was that for their life at Virginia Tech.
Pry had no idea what he wanted to do next. He took some time with his wife at their lake house, and they planned to renew their vows in Las Vegas in December. They then asked their teenage daughters if there was anything special they wanted to do now that they had time together. They asked to visit friends in State College, have Thanksgiving with their family in Louisiana and go to an Olivia Rodrigo concert in Charlotte, with a trip to the Carowinds amusement park.
In between, Pry spent time writing notes on his phone about all the things he would do differently if he ever got to be a head coach again. Much has been made about a lack of funding and resources at Virginia Tech during his time there. Pry says he wishes he had pushed harder for more, particularly when it came to the salary pool for assistants.
As he sorted through all of that, he started getting interest from SEC schools about open coordinator jobs and said one Group of 6 school was interested in making him a head coach. Then he learned that Virginia Tech was circling Franklin.
Pry and Franklin have known each other for more than 30 years -- going back to East Stroudsburg in Pennsylvania. Franklin played quarterback there in the 1990s, and Pry's dad, Jim, served as his offensive coordinator. Brent joined the staff for Franklin's final two years of college. Franklin loved and admired Jim Pry and developed a friendship with Brent. In 2011, Franklin, then the Vanderbilt coach, called and offered Pry his first power-conference coaching job.
Since Franklin and Pry had already talked about coaching together again at other schools, Pry asked his wife what was once unthinkable: "Would we consider staying at Virginia Tech?"
Pry would have a great situation, working with a friend and a leader that he trusted. But there would be one catch. He'd essentially be accepting something that college football coaches never get: a demotion.
They began to seriously consider the idea. Amy and their daughters had planned to stay in Blacksburg, anyway, so the girls could finish high school there. Could it work if Brent stayed, too?
"I wasn't expecting it," Franklin said of Pry's suggestion that he stay in Blacksburg.
Pry told him, "I'm not saying that we could do it, and I'm not saying that you would, but I'm just putting it out there as we keep working through this thing."
Pry and Amy talked about the idea for weeks, their feelings changing one day to the next.
"It was up and down for us," Pry said. "It was 'Can we do it?' It was 'Screw Virginia Tech. We're not doing it.' For a couple of nights, she'd be on board with staying and I wouldn't. And then the sentiment would flip and we'd both be feeling the other way. That was the hardest part."
Franklin ultimately took the Virginia Tech job in November. At his introductory news conference, he cried as he spoke about Pry, and the crowd clapped in support.
"I always say I'm not going to get emotional and then I get emotional," Franklin said. "Brent Pry's a good friend ... I know he poured his heart and soul into this place. I know this place is better today because of Brent and the commitment that he made. ... I just wanted to make sure that I gave Brent the respect that him and his family deserve."
Pry didn't have a lot of the baggage that a spurned former head coach often deals with. It never got as toxic in Blacksburg as it did in other college towns eager for a head coaching change. Nobody put "For Sale" signs in his yard, or flew banners over the stadium asking for him to be fired.
"When he was let go, everybody was disappointed," Foster said. "They weren't disappointed in Brent, they were disappointed for him. That's different, in my opinion. They weren't ready to run him out of town. He was a young head coach, and he hired young, inexperienced coordinators. But the people loved him and his enthusiasm, his love for Virginia Tech. We just lost too many tough close games at the end and eventually enough was enough."
Returning would be hard, but not humiliating. His daughters wanted to stay. They were never harassed after Pry was fired, never made to feel unwanted or uncomfortable. Pry and his wife had made friends in the community and still felt welcomed. He had a comfort level with Franklin that he would not have if he had gone to a different school.
Plus, he knew the investment Virginia Tech had made to improving football would give the school a much better chance to win. So in early December, Pry and Virginia Tech finalized a deal for him to serve as defensive coordinator. After he took the job, Foster called and let him know "there was no drawback from anyone about him coming back."
"I've been fired twice and love both places. Neither place fired me. People fire you," said Hall of Fame coach Mack Brown, who coached against Pry during his second tenure at North Carolina. "If you're not angry at the place, it makes it OK. If your kids are angry at the place and your wife's angry at the place, it doesn't work."
When Pry walked back into the building, he had put the anger and bitterness behind him. He felt excited about going back to his first love, working on defense. When Franklin brought him in front of the room at their first team meeting, Pry got a standing ovation.
"Everyone loved Coach Pry, and we hated to see him go," Virginia Tech safety Tyson Flowers said. "When he came back, the energy he came in the room with, he was smiling. We hadn't seen him in months. That's your guy. He recruited you. He met your family. He visited your house. To see him come back, it was a really cool moment."
"I consider myself confident and having somewhat of an ego, but unselfish," Pry said. "There's something that feels good about putting others first and your ego aside. There's satisfaction in that. It makes you feel like you're doing the right thing, which is more important than your ego."
ONCE PRY AGREED to take the job, he had one request. He wanted Franklin to hire Sean Spencer as defensive line coach. Pry and Spencer worked together at Vanderbilt and Penn State and had grown close during their time together. How close? The two were on a recruiting trip in Macon, Georgia, in 2017 when they were assistants at Penn State. Pry loves the Allman Brothers Band, and Gregg Allman had recently passed away. So, Pry decided they needed to go to the cemetery where Allman would be buried. They took an Uber to get there.
"You talk about being good friends? I went to a grave site with him," Spencer says with a laugh.
When Pry called, Spencer was working at Texas A&M and in the middle of the College Football Playoff. But he wanted to "get the band back together" and work with Pry and Franklin again. Spencer spent months living with the Prys until he could find a place of his own.
"I knew it took a lot of humbleness for Brent to do that, but because of James and their relationship, the three of us together had a lot of success and the formula works," Spencer said. "We understand Coach Franklin. Coach Franklin understands us. I knew that if anybody could come back as the head coach after being fired, it was Brent coming back with James."
Beyond their comfort level together, Pry could give Franklin a window into the program that nobody else had. Pry was instrumental in helping keep their core group of defensive players, including Flowers, Kemari Copeland, Kaleb Spencer and Aycen Stevens. He also had relationships with several incoming Penn State transfers from his time previously at the school.
He gave Franklin evaluations on every player on the roster and told Franklin where they had the biggest deficiencies both on the team and with their budget and facilities. Franklin got a scouting report on a program that most incoming coaches never get.
Pry also had a much better understanding of what a head coach has to deal with every day. Duke coach Manny Diaz knows all about that. Diaz took over from Pry as Penn State defensive coordinator in 2022 -- and bought his house -- after getting fired as Miami head coach. He remembers a signing day function in one of his first weeks at Penn State and all the people milling around, waiting for a few minutes with Franklin.
"I just laughed and I slapped him in the back and I said, 'None of these people want to talk to me,'" Diaz said. "I said, 'Hey, go get them, buddy.' And I just walked away. When you're sympathetic to that, you think, 'How do I take care of our defensive staff or recruiting or anything else to try to just let the head coach have one less thing to worry about?'"
Indeed, Pry has given Franklin one less thing to worry about through the first four games of the season. Virginia Tech leads the nation with 45 tackles for loss and ranks No. 3 with 17 sacks. The Hokies are allowing 83 yards rushing per game -- on pace for their best statistical year since 2007. Heading into their Friday matchup with Pitt (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), Virginia Tech is 4-0 for the first time since 2017.
In Week 3, after a 35-26 win at Maryland, Pry lingered on the field with family, celebrating the victory. A group of Virginia Tech fans in the stands started chanting his name.
"It's crazy the amount of people that come up to him and just say, 'We love the fact that you're here,'" Spencer said.
Most fired head coaches are not immediately welcomed back into their old communities. Indeed, Pry said the most common message he got from fellow coaches was "I couldn't have done what you're doing. My hat's off."
"I don't know that anybody said I would've done the same thing," Pry said.
Foster is not surprised by the way Virginia Tech fans have welcomed Pry back.
"This is how Virginia Tech is. The fanbase embraces you here," Foster said. "There's a lot of jobs out there right now, all they do is tolerate you. The people here have taken Brent Pry in as one of their own."
Pry is still human. There are times he thinks about the fact that he used to be the head coach at Virginia Tech. He jokes that most of those times are when he wishes he had access to the bathroom suite in the head coach's office.
He says he's at peace. He has worked through his hurt feelings and bitterness. The whole reason he left Penn State for Virginia Tech was to help the Hokies reverse their downward slide and start competing for championships again.
It didn't work out for him as head coach. But his goal has stayed the same. He's not going to stop trying.