Why former Memphis, Virginia Tech head coach is returning to TCU football
Justin Fuente is one of thousands of coaches who adores college football too much to give it up completely, but the state of the sport has effectively deterred him from wanting to coach it.
The transfer portal, NIL, revenue sharing, agents, opt outs and other realities are not for everybody, especially coaches who worked before those all become ubiquitous with the college game. These new wrinkles have unintentionally led to the departure of many people from college football.
“It’s not 100 percent of it but I’d say it’s that and the other large part of it is where I am at with my family with our three girls,” the former TCU assistant coach said Monday in a phone interview. “I missed so many things over the years with (his children).”
Rather than return to a college football sideline, or coaching booth, Fuente will occupy a seat in a college football radio booth. The former TCU running backs coach and co-offensive coordinator will join TCU radio play-by-play voice Brian Estridge as the color analyst for the 2025 season.
Fuente was an assistant coach at TCU from 2007-11, and a part of the staff that led the team to the perfect season in 2011, and Rose Bowl win.
Fuente was the head coach at Memphis from 2012-015, and at Virginia Tech from 2016 to 2021. He and Tech mutually agreed to a split late in the 2021 season. Indiana offered him an assistant position in 2023, but he declined and has not coached since.
“The current state of things I am not super interested (to coach) in,” said Fuente, 49, who lives with his wife and their three daughters east of Allen. “It’s just such a big commitment with the players, and the basis of the relationship now is purely transactional.”
How a spot in the booth became available at TCU
This scenario became possible when former TCU defensive back Landry Burdine began contemplating leaving his role as the team’s radio analyst at multiple points throughout the 2024 season.
Burdine’s twin sons, Blake and Brooks, were standout athletes at Aledo high school. Brooks will play baseball at the Air Force Academy, and Blake plans to play football at Trinity University in San Antonio. Burdine wanted weekends available to watch his sons play; Estridge, who has a son who plays baseball at Air Force as well, encouraged him to do it.
“I really loved doing the games and I had struggled with this decision all last year,” Burdine said Monday in a phone interview. “We have a daughter at Arkansas and she’s going into her senior year and I have never been to a Dad’s weekend there, and I really just wanted to be available to do these things.”
Burdine had served as the sideline reporter for 10 years on TCU radio broadcasts before he replaced John Denton as the primary color analyst starting in 2022.
Burdine was one of the last two people who still worked in an official capacity for TCU football with ties to previous coach Dennis Franchione’s regime, which began in 1998 and is viewed as the rebirth of the program. Current TCU assistant athletic director Mike Sinquefield is the last person with the program who was with team before “it all started.”
Fuente’s return to TCU football
On the subject of coaching again, Fuente won’t say “never.” He was a college coach for more than 20 years, and had good seasons at Memphis and Virginia Tech.
Hired to replace longtime coach Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, in 2016, Fuente was named the ACC coach of the year when the Hokies reached the ACC title game and narrowly lost to Clemson.
He had a good team in 2019 that finished 8-5, and narrowly missed 10 wins. The majority of important players were coming back, but COVID hit the Hokies and the team never fully recovered. The team was 5-6 in ‘20, and 5-5 in ‘21. He agreed to leave the job late in the 2021 season.
“We had a great team coming back and it was just really, really hard,” Fuente said. “COVID was hard on everybody. It wasn’t just us. It had a negative effect on everything and our season was really hit hard.”
Fuente’s family returned to the DFW metro area, and he wasn’t in a big rush to coach under the new “rules” that operate more like chaos. Justin and his wife, Jenny, have daughters who are in the 12th, eighth and sixth grade, respectively. The timing to all of this worked.
“I have reflected on how the whole sport changed during my career, and maybe I am naive, and I know they can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but I haven’t lost hope they won’t get their arms around this,” Fuente said of college football. “I don’t think there will be free agency twice a year. Or some other things.”
Fuente is not a complete neophyte in the broadcast booth. He has worked as an analyst on several second and third tier bowl games the last two years, and he’s comfortable on the mic’ and sitting next to Estridge.
And Fuente is not a newbie to TCU.
“Practice looks and sounds different, just because of the leadership,” Fuente said of the differences between a Gary Patterson and Sonny Dykes practice. “It’s still a great brand with great people around the program.
“I don’t think people really understand what it takes to have a football program, and TCU has always had an embarrassment of riches when it comes to people who want to support the program. That has not changed.”
Ultimately Fuente is no different than many college football supporters who don’t love the new “rules” of the sport, but not enough to quit it, so he’ll call it rather than coach it.
This story was originally published July 21, 2025 at 2:54 PM.
