@Northeast Stinger:
The reality is that unlike MIT, Cal Tech, and probably Carnegie Mellon, GT does play Big Boy Football. But the academic standards are the same. Everyone, okay; most everyone on this Board supports the Institute and its student athletes. However, as a announcer said a long, long, time ago when I was watching GT as a kid on a black and white TV: "You can't be a dummy and go to Georgia Tech!" That still holds true today!
Other schools that are not in the category of STEM can bring in anyone for the most part who are only required to fog a mirror. Stanford has some great kids who are academic stalwarts, but not all of them are in STEM majors.
GT was great back in the time of Heisman and Dodd, as were the military academies. But the evolution of sports, discipline, and pride has caused a disturbance in the balance of the force that has strongly tilted toward athletes not wanting to work as hard academically.
That being said, CPJ and his staff have done a magnificent job of getting quality players who not only can handle the academic rigors of a STEM based education, but want to be at Tech. We can all agree that the pool of players who meet that baseline are those who also look at military academies. Unfortunately, it's not a very large pool of kids to begin with.
As for the margin of error being razor thin, even David couldn't hold off an entire army of Goliaths with slingshots and stones. But he can certainly have his moments and slay enough to get to the ACC Championship Game, Orange Bowl, and be ranked in the top ten from time to time.
That's reality and I'm good with that because if you sacrifice your standards, you become North Carolina or SMU back in the day under the Pony express pay for play model. An Embarrassment!