AD sabotage the football program

eetech

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
198
I don't think so. The only thing close to"sabotage" I am aware of would be how Radakovich agreed to play Clemson away two years in a row and then coincidentally left to be the AD of Clemson that same year.
This is not fair at all.

The decision to play Clemson away 2 years in a row did not affect the number of home/away games at all. Since we play them annually, the only way this will have an influence in the number of home games we play them is if we end the annual series, and the last game is played at Clemson.

The reason we made the switch was to have Clemson and Georgia home games in alternating seasons. It was a good financial decision that has prevented us from being in a deeper financial hole than we already are. A significant chunk of Tech revenue comes from Clemson/GA fans buying 3 game ticket packs and the change meant that we were able to sell more of these 3 pack tickets.

There is a reason Radakovich was hired by Clemson. He was a very good AD at Tech despite some mistakes. He helped Tech climb out of a very deep financial hole, and many of his decisions were the reason we were able to replace both Gailey and Hewitt.
 

Skeptic

Helluva Engineer
Messages
6,372
This is an opinion, not a fact. Do you really think kids want to come and choose from just a handful of majors, wear Russell, have a locker room from the early 2000’s, and a sub par weight room while the other schools showing interest have the top of the line weight room, better uniforms, better locker rooms, more degree options without calculus. Which would you pick if you were being recruited for a job and one of the offers was just light years better? Btw I used the locker room and uniform in my argument because those are new and we have t had them long enough to really affect recruiting imo.
There is a reason that Swinney continues to fight off any attempt by any sport to occupy part of the new football facility, and there have been several kind of half-*** efforts. What he tells the AD -- who is on board with him for obvious reasons -- and the chancell0r is that he will help any sport raise money for their facility which he contends is unmatched in bonding a team. They just can't move in with the football team. Every recruit swoons over it -- the slide is a big deal apparently -- and football is the leading element of campus growth and student enrollment toward a goal of 30,000. it's now about 18,000 and was 13,000 not that long ago. Multiply each of those students by $1,800 a credit hour and you get the idea of what football means to the school. And to that end, Swinney keeps his facilities for a reason. Can Tech raise that kind of money? Or does it even want to? I don't know and I am not suggesting they should ... but that is the competition out there.
 

tech_wreck47

Helluva Engineer
Messages
8,670
Let me ask you this. What resources do you think will help us land these mystery recruits? We now have state of the art brand new locker rooms and an indoor practice facility. There are many major programs out there that do not have such. Miami has not indoor practice field and UGA's "half field" is a joke (though they are building one now I believe). UGA just got new locker rooms this year, same as us.

You think a recruit cares that we have 2-3 more assistants on staff? No...they don't. The elite kids care about one ultimate thing and that's prep for the NFL. I'll bet if you polled elite recruits their top three selling point are probably 1. NFL prep, 2. facilities, 3. coaches. We run a system that does not prepare guys for the NFL on offense and our defense also suffers because they have to practice against it. And let's face it. Our coaches have done a poor job developing players and the last 3 drafts show this.
So you don’t think locker rooms, a bigger staff to help prepare kids for the next level, uniforms, weight room ect doesn’t play a roll in the ability to land a couple extra better kids per year? If you look around the country and the teams that have put into their program you will see that those things can help in recruiting. Just look at Duke lol. Also I’m not talking about 5 star recruits that UGA and Miami get, we can’t hide kids in programs like those schools. I’m talking about landing the better recruit when going against the NC states of the world. For instance give me 3 more Parker Braun type players a year. And if you don’t think the resource I mentioned can help with that then that’s fine we will just have different opinions on that matter.
 

Deleted member 2897

Guest
You think a recruit cares that we have 2-3 more assistants on staff? No...they don't. The elite kids care about one ultimate thing and that's prep for the NFL. I'll bet if you polled elite recruits their top three selling point are probably 1. NFL prep, 2. facilities, 3. coaches. We run a system that does not prepare guys for the NFL on offense and our defense also suffers because they have to practice against it. And let's face it. Our coaches have done a poor job developing players and the last 3 drafts show this.

With all due respect, you're thinking about this in reverse. Recruits don't care how many people we have on staff, correct. But that's not the point. The point of a large staff is to be able to evaluate magnitudes more people and to be able to communicate much more effectively with all the recruits. When you have a recruiting staff of 30 people, the recruits you're chasing don't know its all these interns and robots and assistants and what not - they just get the sense you really love them because your 'coaches' and 'the program' are always communicating with them and posting edits about them.

The last 2 sentences I'm just going to ignore because they are straight up false. If you think our defense doesn't play against scout teams who mimic our next opponents, well then...sigh.
 

jeffgt14

We don't quite suck as much anymore.
Messages
5,879
Location
Mt Juliet, TN
Let me ask you this. What resources do you think will help us land these mystery recruits?
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Deleted member 2897

Guest
Get over yourself. People see things differently than you do.

I’m still not sure how anyone can say we don’t have both an institutional issue and a coaching, but I don’t go around saying nobody will ever be able to take those who disagree with me seriously. Very dramatic.

Thanks for agreeing with me. I never said we don't have a coaching issue. The topic was about what the previous AD/s have done to our program by letting us slip behind. I don't need to get over myself, because its a fact. All the numbers bare that out. Yes they booked a CARGO PLANE to fly our guys over to England to play Boston College. Yes we tried to hire new coaches before and it was turned down. Etc etc etc. You can stamp your feet and get mad when you read these things, BUT THEY ARE TRUE. Who cares if CPJ is here coaching next year or not? I don't care. But that's a different topic than the one discussed about what previous AD/s did here. Stop letting your bloody life consuming hate of CPJ blind you to reality.

"people see things differently than you do" LOL, I mean yea, if they don't read the newspapers.
 

bikeseat

GT Athlete
Messages
301
Bikeseat, would you agree GT is way behind in resources compared to other schools? And if so in your opinion, does it affect the program and recruiting?

arguably way behind. Fixing the russell deal went a long way to fix that perception. The guys have gotten more gear this season than I did in 4 years (t shirts, bookbags, shoes, hoodies etc)

The thing is we all know players at different schools and we always compare. Off the top of my head, GT's food is incredibly subpar and there was a constant feeling of things just being done as cheaply as possible.

In '16 we never even got tax slayer bowl rings despite beating UGA for instance. But having Adidas is already paying dividends in our general attractiveness to recruits. Old folks might not like the blue pants but that gets us on all the different Uniform pages on twitter and IG which every prospect in the world follows.
 

smokey_wasp

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,486
Ok, so first our recruiting is not the same as under those other coaches. 2nd we are way behind in resources compared to other programs, this was not the case under those other coaches. If you look at a constant theme, the more we have fallen behind in resources the more games we have started to lose. You act as what you are saying is a fact, yet you have no hard evidence for it, that’s called an opinion. You are choosing to not acknowledge that resources do matter. It’s funny, because I’m kind of in the middle, you have those who say it’s all coach and those who say it’s not coach at all, or at least that’s how it comes across. What I can’t seem to understand though is this, the ones who blame CPJ for pretty much all of it and say it’s coaching have literally no facts, it’s just opinions. At least the other side can show proff that teams who spend more and have better resources generally do better. I think blame is on both sides, CPJ could change things up imo, but the program could help him out in allowing him to have better resources to help succeed such as better staffing and more of it. I actually think I’m one of the few that’s in the middle of this.

Let me ask you a question though, I’ve asked this a lot to those who only blame CPJ but every time I ask it gets ignored. I’ll give the short version. Let’s say you are a manager of a sales company, is it fair for your boss to want you to match a competitor company in sales when they have double the sales guys, more money, and nicer product?

In answer to your hypothetical, no, it wouldn't be fair for a boss to expect you to match a competitor who is much better equipped. However, it would be fair for him to expect a competent performance, relative to the amount of resources you have. I am in the camp that we need both more resources and a new coach, though. In fact, I suspect hiring a new coach may be necessary to get people to shell out money for the improvements TStan wants to make.
 

ibeattetris

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,604
This is not fair at all.

The decision to play Clemson away 2 years in a row did not affect the number of home/away games at all. Since we play them annually, the only way this will have an influence in the number of home games we play them is if we end the annual series, and the last game is played at Clemson.

The reason we made the switch was to have Clemson and Georgia home games in alternating seasons. It was a good financial decision that has prevented us from being in a deeper financial hole than we already are. A significant chunk of Tech revenue comes from Clemson/GA fans buying 3 game ticket packs and the change meant that we were able to sell more of these 3 pack tickets.

There is a reason Radakovich was hired by Clemson. He was a very good AD at Tech despite some mistakes. He helped Tech climb out of a very deep financial hole, and many of his decisions were the reason we were able to replace both Gailey and Hewitt.
CPJ did not think it was fair. He and the temporary AD tried to get the agreement switched back, as neither of them wanted it.

I never said Radakovich was a bad AD. I brought up the only possible thing that could be considered "sabotage"
 

heyhellowhatsup

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
239
The ridiculous drug testing rules of the past that were way, way, way stricter than even more prestigious FBS schools were sabotage. Dedrick Mills (not to mention all the others) would've solved lots of problems over the last two years.
 

Deleted member 2897

Guest
I just got done doing an analysis for another board. I could totally hijack this thread and call it "ACC Sabotage", or start another new thread. But to save our friendly moderators even more work, I'll just add the comment here. In the ACC teleconference today, someone asked CPJ about the effects of playing people after they've had a Bye Week (Duke just had one before us when we didn't) and he said it didn't really affect game outcomes (paraphrasing). I just went back and looked it all up, because I had done that before, and that is FALSE. Bye Weeks matter a lot. In fact, we've had Bye Weeks against us when we played the prior week twice as often as we've had them against others. If our win percentages all stayed the same and we had a fair and even Bye Week scheduling, we would have had 1 more win and 1 fewer loss in two-thirds of CPJs seasons. How did I arrive at such an assertion?

I went back and looked up our Bye Week performances under CPJ by going through the ACC football composite schedules (which you can google) to see when we or others had Bye Weeks and then what the outcomes in the games were.

CPJ over the life of his tenure is 47-37 in ACC play. A 0.560 win percentage.

When we've had a Bye Week but the other team in ACC has not: 5-1. A 0.833 win percentage. The only loss was Miami last year with the miracle 4th down double bobble... Pretty amazing statistic right there. And materially different than our long term record in ACC play.

When our opponent has had a Bye Week but we didn't: 4-9. A 0.308 win percentage. Two points - first of all, notice the sheer extreme volume of the number of times that has happened: 13. Second, that again is a materially different win percentage than our long term average.

So there you have it - CPJ was absolutely wrong that Bye Weeks don't matter. That definitely do. At least to us they do. And if our schedules had been balanced and even on Bye Weeks, two-thirds of our seasons would have had 1 more ACC win and 1 fewer ACC loss.

ACC Sabotage. Thread hijack.
 

Lavoisier

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
847
DRad could have got us out of the Russell deal before he left but he re-upped us and then got our ACC title stripped before going to our cross division rival.
 

steebu

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
625
So there you have it - CPJ was absolutely wrong that Bye Weeks don't matter. That definitely do. At least to us they do. And if our schedules had been balanced and even on Bye Weeks, two-thirds of our seasons would have had 1 more ACC win and 1 fewer ACC loss.
ACC Sabotage. Thread hijack.

If Paul Johnson says that bye weeks matter, and that opponents have had 13 of them, people would just say he's making excuses. It's a no-win.

There was an article (someone find it! I don't want to bother) that showed this disparity, to the point that Johnson and TStan had to go to the ACC to make a specific rule saying that no team could play more than 1 opponent coming off a bye week per season. I think it was 2016 that we played UNC, VT, Clemson, and Duke all coming off a bye week which the schools specifically requested and the ACC granted.
 

Deleted member 2897

Guest
If Paul Johnson says that bye weeks matter, and that opponents have had 13 of them, people would just say he's making excuses. It's a no-win.

There was an article (someone find it! I don't want to bother) that showed this disparity, to the point that Johnson and TStan had to go to the ACC to make a specific rule saying that no team could play more than 1 opponent coming off a bye week per season. I think it was 2016 that we played UNC, VT, Clemson, and Duke all coming off a bye week which the schools specifically requested and the ACC granted.

Last year Miami would have had a Bye against us too if not for the hurricane - they moved FSU into that spot. We’ve had multiple years where 3 teams had a week off before playing us. We’ve also had a lot of other crap. For example, in November Virginia plays Liberty. They are the only team in the ACC who plays an FCS or FCS-like opponent that week. Who do they play the next week? Us.
 
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