Not disagreeing with you entirely, but I’m not sure you should be holding up the Nike/Oregon partnership as an example of what branding can accomplish. Over the past four years, they are 18-18 in their conference, and 21-21 overall against P5 competition. That is a huge drop-off from the preceding six years, when they were collectively 50-6 (89%) in conference and 59-10 (85%) vs P5. Basically, since their appearance in the first CFP, they’ve been a non-issue in college football.
Examined in that context, their flashy (I’d actually say gaudy) ‘bling’ uniforms come off as empty hype, not substantive branding.
I agree it takes more than just branding. My point was that the hype brought attention which lead to better players going there that most likely wouldn’t have prior to the brand rebuild.
It takes a good coach to win games, but as we’ve seen, it can’t happen consistently without recruiting at a high level. If CPJ could’ve recruited well, he would still be here and we’d be winning a lot of games.
We’ve also seen from Tennessee that recruiting itself isn’t the only answer. They consistently recruit well, but consistently suck. I personally think CGC can coach and recruit. I really like Thacker, Key, and TC (don’t know much about his coaching or recruiting, but love his passion). Jury is out on Coach P and some others that I haven’t taken time to dig into.
If we can build our brand and get some higher end players to come to GT, I feel like we will have a much better chance to consistently win. Assuming we keep the coaches that can coach. Which means we meed money. Which means building our brand is even more important because it’s obvious our alumni base doesn’t like to contribute to our efforts at a high rate.
