Had an interesting conversation earlier with Virginia Tech sports information director Dave Smith, who graduated Tech in 1970 (a year after coach Frank Beamer) and is entering his 35th school year with the school’s athletic department. He has been involved with the football team for each of his 34 years at Tech, meaning his first season was 1975, the second year of coach Jimmy Sharpe’s regime.

I know very little about the coaches who preceeded Beamer in Blacksburg, so I was surprised to hear from Smith that three of them had ties to Alabama, which Tech plays Saturday in Atlanta.

(By the way, Beamer balked twice this week at media members’ questions regarding his name being mentioned in connection with Alabama’s coaching vacancies in 1996, when the Crimson Tide was trying to replace national-champion coach Gene Stallings, and 2000, when the Tide was looking to replace Stallings’ successor, Mike DuBose. Not surprisingly, Beamer dodged the question and said Alabama had the right coach in place.)

OK, so as you probably know, these are the coaches who came before Beamer at Tech ...

Bill Dooley: 1978-86
Jimmy Sharpe: 1974-77
Charlie Coffey: 1971-73
Jerry Claiborne (Beamer’s coach): 1961-70
Frank Moseley: 1951-60

After we chatted, Smith was kind enough to clarify all the connections between these coaches and Alabama—and its legendary coach, Paul “Bear” Bryant. Here it all is, straight from Smith’s keyboard ...

Bear Bryant and Frank Moseley did play together for Alabama in the early 1930s and were roommates at Alabama. Moseley later served as an assistant under Bryant at both Kentucky and Maryland. [DS: Bryant coached at Maryland in 1945—his first head-coaching job—before working at Kentucky from 1946-53, Texas A&M from 1954-57 and Alabama from 1958-82, a year before his death at age 69.]

Claiborne played for Bryant at Kentucky and stepped into the collegiate coaching ranks as an assistant to Bryant at Kentucky and then Texas A&M. He later rejoined Bryant as the top assistant at Alabama in 1958.

Moseley hired Jimmy Sharpe—an Alabama alum and an 11-year assistant for the Tide—as head coach at Tech. [DS: Moseley was Tech’s athletic director at this point.] Four of Sharpe’s assistants were Alabama grads, including Charley Pell and Danny Ford. [DS: Pell went on to coach at Clemson and Florida. Ford came after Pell at Clemson and led the Tigers to the 1981 national championship.]

Three former Hokies coaches had relationships to the storied Crimson Tide football program.