GT - competing at a higher level

[GTFLETCH]

Dang...wasn't aware I was supposed to name EVERY QB that came through tech. Thanks for adding more ammo to my point though.

Joe Hamilton was actually one of the top athletes in the Southeast when he as being recruited. Much like JeT, or the Michael Barrett QB we're recruiting from South GA, Hamilton was probably what would be considered a 4 star recruit (they didn't give out star rankings back then...it was before the days that rivals/scout/247 took over the recruiting world):

Named the South Carolina prep ?Player of the Year? by Jeff Whitaker?s Deep South Football, which gave him a 10.0 rating . . . Selected Mid-Atlantic Offensive Player of the Year by SuperPreps, which tabbed him the No. 3 player in South Carolina . . . Named to Blue Chips Illustrated Dream Team all-America squad . . . Ranked the No. 1 athlete in the ACC Region by Blue Chips . . . . Tabbed the nation?s No. 5 combination running-passing quarterback by National Recruiting Advisor . . . Rated the No. 28 prospect in the Mid-Atlantic Region by Tom Lemming Report

Hamilton wasn't some 2 star under the radar recruit. He was a highly rated QB/athelete.

Shawn Jones to this day is actually still my favorite GT player. As far as his recruiting goes, I really can't tell you much about it. I was in elementary school when Shawn Jones was our QB, and I didn't follow recruiting or sports all that much then.

As for Donnie Davis's career at GT, I would advise you to do some research on it. His "failures" were not due to his talent or abilities. If I talked more about it then I would have to get into "he who shall not be named". He was more a victim of circumstance rather than talent.

Ok..So Donnie Davis with Paul Johnson would produce better results than Donnie Davis with Bill Lewis..

 

[herb]

Ok..So Donnie Davis with Paul Johnson would produce better results than Donnie Davis with Bill Lewis..

Donnie Davis with my dog as coach would produce better results than Donnie Davis with Bill Lewis

 

[sgreer]

Any teams used to support your argument that existed prior to flunkgate, probation, APR and a vastly improved ACC are irrelevant.

Recent success is not due to landing multiple blue chip athletes, though we've had a few. That success is due to having just enough of the right combination of ingredients all at the same time under the right coach in the right system. It's a recipe for success but much harder to sustain than having gobs and gobs of blue chip athletes like the factories.

Seriously, you are using a soccer match to prove your point? Talk about reaching.

JeT wanted to play qb above all else. outlier.
Shamire wanted the GT diploma above all else. outlier.
What else ya got?

I didn't say there were zero blue chip athletes interested in GT over the factories, just very, very few and for very specific reasons that are not the norm for blue chips.

Parker is a good example of a blue chip athlete that came to Tech but he has a different priority set than 90% of blue chip athletes. Also, he had a brother on the team before he got here. Let's see how many times we can duplicate that scenario.

We must continue to mine the diamonds from the rough better than the rest of the field. Gotsis was pure luck but he's an example of an NFL talent that escaped the factories. He's not a diamond in the rough, he's a needle in a haystack. How many needles can we continue to find and put together enough of them on one team at the same time? Hmmm....

Smelter was another needle in a haystack...

 

[flea77]

Flea, I don't think it's a either/or (or binomial) situation. If you are an idiot who can play college level FB, you are not going to GT. You will go to a factory school, play FB. Then disappear. The paradox is...any student (athlete or not) who can get into and "do" GT has the drive to succeed even if they choose to go to a SEC school or equivalent. I have hired a lot of people in my day. Some of the best people I have had working for me attended schools that most of us don't consider tier 1 (GT/Ivy/Stanford/etc.) schools.Don't get me wrong..GT was a very good choice for me. But as I have travelled around in my career, I found I was living in neighborhoods that people who attended "lesser schools" also lived in. In other words, there was never an "all GT" neighborhood where us smart people lived and all the rest had to live somewhere else.

don't get me wrong...I love my GT engineering degree. I realize, more as I get older, that it is something that only a very small % of people can achieve. However, I also realize that you can be succesful no matter where you can to school if you have what it takes to do so. Sort of like you can play in the NFL no matter where you play college FB.... if you have what it takes. You don't have to go to OSU or Bama. If you are good enough, athletically or academically, the pros will find you. Success isn't about the name of the college on the diploma....it's about the name of the individual on the diploma.

True. But a lot of guys playing ball at " factories" do disappear after the are done w ball. In general , if you " get out of GT, you have a good shot at success. I think GT is different. Something that needs to be Sold in the recruiting process. It sold our family.

 

[GTfan4Life]

Ok..So Donnie Davis with Paul Johnson would produce better results than Donnie Davis with He Who Shall NOT Be Named..

Donnie Davis with my dog as coach would produce better results than Donnie Davis with He Who Shall NOT Be Named

Okay, FIFY - Quit using that kind of language on this board. We're better than that.

 

[Sideways]

Kinda, sorta. I used individual rankings of the players. I didn't use class rankings as those were pretty spotty back then.

EDIT:

See link. Darryl Smith was easily a 4 star...but on here he wasn't even ranked.

https://scout.com/college/georgia-tech/Season/2000-Football/Commits

Darryl Smith was from here in Albany. His mother was a teacher at Dougherty High School. Don't know about his recruiting rankings, don't care, in high school and in college when he hit someone they stopped like instantly. High character person in high school same thing in college I guess. Glad he was on our team.

 

[Sideways]

This is the truth. I have done business with/became friends with 2 guys who played FB in the SEC. At places we call "factories". They were very succesful sales people and were able to utilize their alumni network well. And, without apology, exploit their "celebrity" status in their states to make sales. One of these guys, I hunt deer and turkey on his farm in his south Georgia. Stay at his lake house on Lake XXX and bass fish. Or have utilized his beach house from time to time.

When I read most posts about how the typical guy who plays FB at an SEC school ends up at McDonald's or living under a bridge, I just have to laugh. I think if you are halfway intelligent and have a strong work ethic, playing FB at a school where FB is king is the kind of 'ticket punching" endeavor that getting an engineering degree grom GT is or getting any kind of degree from an Ivy school.

Yep. Sometimes it is not the grades you make but the hands you shake.

 

[WreckinGT]

CPJ also inherited Steven Threet, who transferred to Michigan to never be heard from again.

Threet transferred before Gaileys final season.

 

[Sideways]

True. But a lot of guys playing ball at " factories" do disappear after the are done w ball. In general , if you " get out of GT, you have a good shot at success. I think GT is different. Something that needs to be Sold in the recruiting process. It sold our family.

We played West Virginia in a bowl game back in the 90s I think. Don Nehlen (spelling?) was their coach. Asked about Georgia Tech, he simply said: paraphrasing here: "Georgia Tech? There is something about that name" It is hard to quantify what that "something" is that so attracted your attention Flea but it is similar to what Justin Thomas told his father during the recruiting process along the lines of: "The people at Georgia Tech are just different" Yep so it appears.

 

[first&ten]

Threet transferred before Gaileys final season.

I thought he was coming to Tech to play for Gaily, but when PJ was hired and with the TO he decided to transfer before even arriving. Sometimes the memory bank isempty!

 

[takethepoints]

On higher education:

You can get a great education at any college if you put your mind to it and select a major that the place is half-decent at. The difference between a place like Tech and most schools is that it is very, very good at everything it teaches. That really is something that can be sold, at least to some players and their families.

Oth, since the top schools are good at everything two results ensue. First, the faculty, knowing that they are expected to do it, demand a high level of effort from all students in all programs. When you head a program that does a good job and expects a lot at a school where a lot of the others don't, you always worry if you can keep your numbers up and you trim corners every now and then to keep students. (I speak form experience on this.) Second, competition among the students themselves is bound to be higher. This varies; I know of one Ivy that has a hard time getting kids into all grad programs because the lowest grade anyone gets is a B. In general, however, the good schools make it harder to get decent grades, particularly in programs where screwing up could lose people money or their lives.

A lot of players in high school who have multiple choices aren't really looking for that. They should be, of course, since it is effort and a willingness to compete that often (luck counts) leads to success later. But I ran into this a lot: "I can't major in <your choice of difficult major here>! I'll never succeed at it and I don't want to waste the effort." Sometimes the kid was right; not everyone in college has the gumption to take on a challenge. More often, however, it was a matter of self confidence; the student didn't think they were up to snuff, even if they were. So they took the easy way out.

This makes recruiting more difficult for sure.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

On higher education:

Point of Emphasis #1: You can get a great education at any college if you put your mind to it and select a major that the place is half-decent at.

Point of Emphasis #2: The difference between a place like Tech and most schools is that it is very, very good at everything it teaches. That really is something that can be sold, at least to some players and their families.

Point of Emphasis #3: "I can't major in <your choice of difficult major here>! I'll never succeed at it and I don't want to waste the effort." Sometimes the kid was right; not everyone in college has the gumption to take on a challenge. More often, however, it was a matter of self confidence; the student didn't think they were up to snuff, even if they were. So they took the easy way out.

I would add another level of detail to the second piece you said, and why that matters. (By the way, I totally agree with #1.) If you read salary surveys and employee surveys, Georgia Tech grads make significantly more money on average than many other places. Something like 50% more than from uGA, for example. This is where your second point matters so much. If you compare the top 5% of any college and what they accomplish in life, you might find very similar results. However, how do you think on average graduates of Georgia Tech with a 3.2 GPA, or 3.0, or 2.5 end up doing?

I would love to see data on that part of our graduates - pick the big large middle of the bell curve of graduates and compare them.

On point #3, that is the "soft bigotry" that lives in our public school systems today and social culture. Many kids have been told their entire lives that they aren't smart and need to be good at sports to have any hope of getting a scholarship. I know that is real and a major part of why we struggle with recruiting. Its a shame and never should be. When I applied to Georgia Tech a long long time ago, its probably the place I barely got into compared to the others. And I was scared to go somewhere that I looked at the numbers (GPA, Average number of AP classes taken, SAT scores) and thought "why would I go there when I'll be in the bottom 20% of students?" We all love to like those things on social media when Georgia Tech publishes them. But they inadvertently tell many of our recruits that they don't belong here (I think). Which is absolutely NOT the case. Its more than numbers and standardized tests. Its time management, its effort, its passion, its grit. I didn't take Calculus in high school, and in Calc I my first quarter, I was surrounded by kids who did, but wanted to take it again to ease into Tech. GRREEEEEAAAT. But I finished in the top 35th percentile and got a B. I beat two-thirds of them. And I ain't smart. It was hard as HELL.

You can do it. Don't accept mediocrity. Push yourself to all that you can be. You can do that at Tech.

 

[OldJacketFan]

I would add another level of detail to the second piece you said, and why that matters. (By the way, I totally agree with #1.) If you read salary surveys and employee surveys, Georgia Tech grads make significantly more money on average than many other places. Something like 50% more than from uGA, for example. This is where your second point matters so much. If you compare the top 5% of any college and what they accomplish in life, you might find very similar results. However, how do you think on average graduates of Georgia Tech with a 3.2 GPA, or 3.0, or 2.5 end up doing?

I would love to see data on that part of our graduates - pick the big large middle of the bell curve of graduates and compare them.

On point #3, that is the soft bigotry that lives in our public school systems today and social culture. Many kids have been told their entire lives that they aren't smart and need to be good at sports to have any hope of getting a scholarship.

This...............On point #3, that is the soft bigotry that lives in our public school systems today and social culture. Many kids have been told their entire lives that they aren't smart and need to be good at sports to have any hope of getting a scholarship.

I've seen this over and over. It's amazing what happens when you turn it around and demand a young man be as good in the classroom as he is on the football field.

 

[COJacket]

This is the truth. I have done business with/became friends with 2 guys who played FB in the SEC. At places we call "factories". They were very succesful sales people and were able to utilize their alumni network well. And, without apology, exploit their "celebrity" status in their states to make sales. One of these guys, I hunt deer and turkey on his farm in his south Georgia. Stay at his lake house on Lake XXX and bass fish. Or have utilized his beach house from time to time.

When I read most posts about how the typical guy who plays FB at an SEC school ends up at McDonald's or living under a bridge, I just have to laugh. I think if you are halfway intelligent and have a strong work ethic, playing FB at a school where FB is king is the kind of 'ticket punching" endeavor that getting an engineering degree grom GT is or getting any kind of degree from an Ivy school.

And much easier.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

And much easier.

Of course the big difference is that your alumni network to hand out freebies because you played football only extends but so deep and wide. Meanwhile, people around the world who went to all kinds of other colleges hold Georgia Tech in high esteem. So rather than give out freebies to a limited network, you're getting a massive network of fan-people who give you opportunities based on merit and reputation of actually being productive.

 

[GTpdm]

Of course the big difference is that your alumni network to hand out freebies because you played football only extends but so deep and wide. Meanwhile, people around the world who went to all kinds of other colleges hold Georgia Tech in high esteem. So rather than give out freebies to a limited network, you're getting a massive network of fan-people who give you opportunities based on merit and reputation of actually being productive.

Exactly. Student-Athletes who graduate from Tech are sought out by engineering firms and Fortune 500 companies seeking to place them in meaningful positions with real responsibilities and promotion potential. Meanwhile, athletes at the factory schools who exhaust their eligibility (note that I did not refer to them as student-athletes, nor did I stipulate that they end up as graduates) are sought out by regional auto dealerships and local hardware stores, to be plopped down in meaningless roles, with their only responsibility being to pull in the business of team fans. Reading skills? Math skills? Management skills? All unnecessary. Promotion opportunities? Minimal. Their "job" is simply to be a former player for Factory U.

 

[iceeater1969]

Like you said you are friends w " 2 guys" who played and are very successful. I know many who I played with at a " factory" who did not get the " celebrity" status... the fact is a degree from GT is valuable. There are only so many " celebrity jobs" available.

The gt degree opens doors your whole career, but it's what you bring through the door that counts. With Gt education and football our student athletes bring extra to any organization. The extra the athletes bring is summed up by the inscription on the gt monument to gt Vietnam vets. It is in court yard in front of admin building.. "To those who fight for it, life has a taste the protected never know."
Kid that can hack it and play football at gt can do pretty much anything their heart leads them. From corporate to civic good they will be difference makers. Will Bryan will do things his dad can only imagine.

 

[4shotB]

The gt degree opens doors your whole career, but it's what you bring through the door that counts. With Gt education and football our student athletes bring extra to any organization. The extra the athletes bring is summed up by the inscription on the gt monument to gt Vietnam vets. It is in court yard in front of admin building.. "To those who fight for it, life has a taste the protected never know."
Kid that can hack it and play football at gt can do pretty much anything their heart leads them. From corporate to civic good they will be difference makers. Will Bryan will do things his dad can only imagine.

iceeater, everytime this thread topic pops up, I always think back to this...I got out in '81. To this day, one of the most remarkable feats of accomplishment that I have very witnessed are those rare individuals who can play FB or basketball at Tech AND get an engineering degree. It takes a hell of a lot to do just one.You just don't meet many people with that unique blend of athletic, academic, self discipline and time management skills. I have a BIL who is a US Army Ranger, has served in combat and is also a well renowned physician in his area of specialty. I regard him in that same light.These are the people who reside in that tiny shaded area on the bell curve to the right of 3 sigma deviations from the mean.

 

[LibertyTurns]

The extra the athletes bring is summed up by the inscription on the gt monument to gt Vietnam vets. It is in court yard in front of admin building.. "To those who fight for it, life has a taste the protected never know."

That’s really cool. Did not know that. Also a very true statement.

 

[LongforDodd]

If I remember right, after first soccer game they closed off all upper decks so a "sell out" wasn't really a full/packed stadium. Again, that is just what I recalling which could be incorrect.

I heard an interview of Arthur Blank right before their last game at BDS and he mentioned that there was "concession chaos" (my term) with the beer sales and that GT and Arthur came to an understanding that closing off the upper north would help the situation.