Former Virginia Tech football coach Justin Fuente was fired by the Hokies in 2021 and has not coached the sport since his ouster. Or has he?
Fuente’s name was bizarrely listed on the Duke University roster under an even stranger title. The page is still listed on Google, but has since been deleted from the Blue Devils’ official website.
Nobody knows where it came from or why it existed. It is all a mystery.
Fuente, who burst onto the scene with a 10-win season at Memphis in 2014, won nine games with the Tigers in 2015. Virginia Tech liked what it saw and hired him in 2016.
That began a steady decline.
Justin Fuente is out of coaching, maybe.
Fuente won 10 games in 2016, nine games in 2017, six games in 2018, eight games in 2019 and then five games in 2020 before being fired after going 5-5 in 2021. He was struggling to recruit and the energy surrounding the Hokies’ college football program fell completely flat.
As a result, Fuente was let go with two games left after bad losses to Boston College, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pittsburgh. That was nearly two years ago.
Often times, a recently fired coach will resurface as an assistant elsewhere, or on the high school level. That was not the case for Fuente, who is probably living pretty comfortably off of his buyout.
And then, on Thursday afternoon, people began to notice that Fuente was listed on the Duke staff directory. His title was “Head Coach Fantasy Football,” which is not a real thing.
Here is how it looks on Google:
Fuente’s profile did not include a headshot. It was filled with all kinds of jumbled text. The name it pulled at the top was Carly Abarbanel, who is on the Blue Devils’ staff for rowing, not football.
However, all of that nonsensical text related directly to Fuente’s experience. The page was for Justin Fuente, the former Virginia Tech head football coach.
Not long after it was discovered, it was deleted.
No explanation was given. The webpage existed, and then it was gone.
Was Fuente considering a job with Duke? Did it not come to fruition but the page was already created?
Is it an inside joke in Durham? None of the math adds up.
Why was Justin Fuente listed by the Blue Devils as the Fantasy Football Head Coach?!?!