Football Is Simple

[MWBATL]

It is blocking.

It is tackling.

It is speed.

Everything else is window dressing and distraction.

And it simply boils down to money. Money attracts the best athletes, and those are the guys who can do the 3 things above the best.

The correlations is not perfect, as bad leadership can cause a place with good money to fail, and good leadership can cause a place with weak money to punch above its weight...but the variations are not nearly as dramatic as many people want them to be. There are not Rocky Balboa's in the real world.

All of which is to say that CPJ was not half bad, and that CGC has a steep hill to climb, no matter what.

It is my sincere hope that once we get a few years under our belt with CGC, that many will finally realize that it is the leadership at the very top that *must* change to create excellence in GT Athletics.

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

Good post, but I would probably have listed them this way:

It is speed/size

It is blocking

It is tackling

The bottom 2 on this list are much harder if the guys you are blocking/tackling have the first item and you don't. And, that is true NO MATTER who is coaching. With that said, good coaching is paramount.

I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusion about the "very top leadership".

 

[CrackerJacket]

BamaBuzz has his mind rite. Strength thrills, but speed kills.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Usually if the opposition is bigger, faster and stronger than you, you’re screwed. However, that did not apply in the Miami game. Sometimes really bad coaching by the opposition combined with really good coaching on your side can overcome it. But when the opposition is bigger, faster and stronger and well coached, you’re basically screwed. For example, the Clemson and Georgia games.

 

[bobongo]

BamaBuzz has his mind rite. Strength thrills, but speed kills.

Speed kills at the "skilled" positions, but on the line heft matters. It's not all that matters, but when your DL is outweighed by the opposition's OL by 56 lbs. per man (as in the Ugag game), no amount of dexterity is going to compensate for that. It is just too much, and we have got to get bigger on the DL. We need beef.

 

[stech81]

Good post, but I would probably have listed them this way:

It is speed/size

It is blocking

It is tackling

The bottom 2 on this list are much harder if the guys you are blocking/tackling have the first item and you don't. And, that is true NO MATTER who is coaching. With that said, good coaching is paramount.

I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusion about the "very top leadership".

I guess now you can add 2 more

Throwing
Catching

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

I guess now you can add 2 more

Throwing
Catching

Well, I thought about those, but if you don't (or can't) do the other 2, these will probably not matter much, so I left it simple like MWB.

 

[Boaty1]

Speed kills at the "skilled" positions, but on the line heft matters. It's not all that matters, but when your DL is outweighed by the opposition's OL by 56 lbs. per man (as in the Ugag game), no amount of dexterity is going to compensate for that. It is just too much, and we have got to get bigger on the DL. We need beef.

I get what your saying. But I would argue the things that separates the best from the rest is speed on the DL.

 

[steebu]

Well, it's not as though speed/strength are mutually exclusive. Just look at that Clemson D-Line. Those two 300-lbers manning the tackle positions could probably chase down a lot of skill position players.

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

Well, it's not as though speed/strength are mutually exclusive. Just look at that Clemson D-Line. Those two 300-lbers manning the tackle positions could probably chase down a lot of skill position players.

Yes, and that particular "freakish" type of guy is what, in general, GT has never been able to get. But, we are not by ourselves - many, many teams have great difficulty finding big nasties, cause there ain't enough of them to begin with, and the pool of these guys that are ready for any type of academic rigor is very, very small. Now, with that said, it is my understanding that Christian Wilkins is very bright. He will be finishing up his Master's Degree while playing 4 years for Clemson.

 

[grandpa jacket]

It is blocking.

It is tackling.

It is speed.

Everything else is window dressing and distraction.

And it simply boils down to money. Money attracts the best athletes, and those are the guys who can do the 3 things above the best.

The correlations is not perfect, as bad leadership can cause a place with good money to fail, and good leadership can cause a place with weak money to punch above its weight...but the variations are not nearly as dramatic as many people want them to be. There are not Rocky Balboa's in the real world.

All of which is to say that CPJ was not half bad, and that CGC has a steep hill to climb, no matter what.

It is my sincere hope that once we get a few years under our belt with CGC, that many will finally realize that it is the leadership at the very top that *must* change to create excellence in GT Athletics.

Money rules all not just football.

 

[Dirty Jacket]

OL and DL, tackling
Speed is cute but doesn’t matter if you couldn’t get out of the backfield

 

[GTonTop88]

Touchdowns and field goals

 

[Skeptic]

It is blocking.

It is tackling.

It is speed.

Everything else is window dressing and distraction.

And it simply boils down to money. Money attracts the best athletes, and those are the guys who can do the 3 things above the best.

The correlations is not perfect, as bad leadership can cause a place with good money to fail, and good leadership can cause a place with weak money to punch above its weight...but the variations are not nearly as dramatic as many people want them to be. There are not Rocky Balboa's in the real world.

All of which is to say that CPJ was not half bad, and that CGC has a steep hill to climb, no matter what.

It is my sincere hope that once we get a few years under our belt with CGC, that many will finally realize that it is the leadership at the very top that *must* change to create excellence in GT Athletics.

Would you clarify this for me? Is the "not half bad" a cheap shot? And "leadership at the very top" means ... what? Who? Are you waving the Clemson or FSU money model? I am not critical of it altogether, just uncertain of your meaning. You kind of zig and zag a bit so help me out here. Do you think Johnson did not provide leadership and Collins will? Or one or more of the three ADs did or did not? (The one who hired Johnson was lobbying hard for the Clemson job the minute he found out Phillips was retiring; the second was a very bad joke looking for a football reference on his resume, and the third seems engaged but just made a questionable first major hire. Is that the MO of athletic directors?) As for your "steep hill to climb", Johnson has the school positioned. It's up to the grads to pay for it. So help us out with a little clarity.

And by the way, Johnson got football right: It is, he said, is numbers and angles.

The devil is in the details.

 

[MWBATL]

Money rules all not just football.

Well, money and sex rule the world...in football, I would think it is only the money part of that formula....

 

[MWBATL]

Would you clarify this for me? Is the "not half bad" a cheap shot? And "leadership at the very top" means ... what? Who? Are you waving the Clemson or FSU money model? I am not critical of it altogether, just uncertain of your meaning. You kind of zig and zag a bit so help me out here. Do you think Johnson did not provide leadership and Collins will? Or one or more of the three ADs did or did not? (The one who hired Johnson was lobbying hard for the Clemson job the minute he found out Phillips was retiring; the second was a very bad joke looking for a football reference on his resume, and the third seems engaged but just made a questionable first major hire. Is that the MO of athletic directors?) As for your "steep hill to climb", Johnson has the school positioned. It's up to the grads to pay for it. So help us out with a little clarity.

And by the way, Johnson got football right: It is, he said, is numbers and angles.

The devil is in the details.

By "the top" I mean the President of the Institute (and perhaps the BOR). The money must flow from somewhere......we are too small with too small an alumni base to compete monetarily with the Clemsons, Georgias and FSU's of the world, but with support from the top we could reduce our academic restrictions and find creative ways to add revenues and both are necessary in my view to really be a consistent Top Twenty program. I loved CPJ and love the enthusiasm from CGC, but I sincerely think more is necessary for either to succeed at the level some fonts on here want.

 

[Skeptic]

OL and DL, tackling
Speed is cute but doesn’t matter if you couldn’t get out of the backfield

Cute? Cute? More than one hall of fame football coach has looked longingly at a practice field and observed that one cannot coach speed. If you watched any of the Army-Navy game, or for that matter any of a Temple game from YouTube, you see the difference immediately from the ACC. It is speed. Check out the end of Miami-New England Sunday. You will see what a 4.3 sprinter's speed does.

http://www.espn.com/

 

[COJacket]

By "the top" I mean the President of the Institute (and perhaps the BOR). The money must flow from somewhere......we are too small with too small an alumni base to compete monetarily with the Clemsons, Georgias and FSU's of the world, but with support from the top we could reduce our academic restrictions and find creative ways to add revenues and both are necessary in my view to really be a consistent Top Twenty program. I loved CPJ and love the enthusiasm from CGC, but I sincerely think more is necessary for either to succeed at the level some fonts on here want.

Again if you look at the facts and analysis that BC did if we could raise and reallocate just 8-10M more, which would put us in Duke’s range, and took a good portion of that and applied it to recruiting CGC could maximize our results. We will always have some of the academic/major restraints. With CGC let’s get rid of all other restraints