Here's a thought

orientalnc

Helluva Engineer
Retired Staff
Messages
9,869
Location
Oriental, NC
I can't see this team winning more than 3 games at their very best.
I am not sure if it was miscommunication or missed assignments in the defensive backfield, but our pass defense cost us in a bunch of 2021 games: Pitt, UVA, Miami, and BC were all games we could have won had we just played average pass defense. I am hoping we have some notion about fixing that for this season. If you are correct, this will be his last season at GT.
 

iceeater1969

Helluva Engineer
Messages
9,625
I think you will find that you need talent, scheme, facilities and a supportive community to win. That's not just true for football, it's pretty much true for running organizations in general.

So you wannabe Top 25? Translate that into wins son ... and plan on that. I think you will find that means winning 8-9 games a year. And here's a newsflash. Tech legend Kim King came to that conclusion 20 years ago. Try to keep up.
$$
The ga tech research dollars per year = 1,000,000,000$. .
Tech athletics is around 10% of that iirc.

Of the top football teams listed ( or Auburn where u teach) how does their research compare to gt s level and how does it compare to their Athletics.

Fun on campus.
In 65 I was offered a flunky job at the research lab. Research IIRC was small compared to football.then.
Took a job at robbery and went to every game watching Kim King . Got to know players - gt football was a big relief valve.

Alumni Assoc list - when I was helping Todd Spencer the gtaa did not have any use of the ALumni list.
I quit giving to the AA .and give direct to gtaa.

With our limitations in course offerings and all the research $ seems like the hill could devote a lot of extra effort to make gt football central to the students experience.

.
 

MidtownJacket

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
4,861
I am not sure if it was miscommunication or missed assignments in the defensive backfield, but our pass defense cost us in a bunch of 2021 games: Pitt, UVA, Miami, and BC were all games we could have won had we just played average pass defense. I am hoping we have some notion about fixing that for this season. If you are correct, this will be his last season at GT.
For me, this is the (admittedly unexpected) element of positivity.

I believe - we will find out this year if I’m crazy, or confused or just drank too much bourbon (spoiler alert I did) - that we suffered from an OC that wasn’t able to tell CGC to mind to his D. Euphemisms abound.

We now have a guy at OC who is on the level recognized as a no none sense guy. My sincere hope is that CCL will remind CGC that if we allow more than 21 ppg he is done for.. well for..
the sandlot GIF


I expect our D to step forward and our O to do the same. It’s addition by subtraction for me.

CGC I think muddied the water and pulled CDP off of what he wanted to do. We got smoked. I think he also didn’t have time to coordinate the D and with the split responsibilities we got exposed.

I’m expecting, praying, donating and hoping that this will be fixed.
 

Vespidae

Helluva Engineer
Messages
5,305
Location
Auburn, AL
With our limitations in course offerings and all the research $ seems like the hill could devote a lot of extra effort to make gt football central to the students experience.
There are limits (caps), to how much financial assistance a university can provide athletics. That’s why revenue and private donor fundraising is so important.

I will say athletics is central to Auburn’s engagement. The same donors who pay $100 million for a new school on campus also fund athletics. These are huge billionaire donors, the largest being Jimmy Rane (Yellawood). Everyone … students, faculty, alumni … are encouraged to be active in athletics.

That is not true at Tech. Every organization has its own Development team which competes with the GTAA and the Alumni Association for donations. It’s an organized mess. You are correct that the Hill could do more, but … it’s not in their interests to do more. That’s why nothing there has changed.

Your point about research is interesting. I’ve long maintained that Tech’s success in this area is why athletics is no longer much, if any, of a priority for the Hill. Tech is a cash cow for the state of Georgia. Simply put, the Hill doesn’t need athletics as much today as it did 40 years ago. Petit was transformational for Tech and you really can’t discuss Tech sports without also discussing GTRI.
 

dressedcheeseside

Helluva Engineer
Messages
14,212
again, collins being a bad coach isn’t really relevant to the broader discussion we are making an effort to explain to you.

we have to be able to recruit. i really don’t know how else to explain this. we were getting bullied by clemson under johnson for years and uga was pulling away too after kirby’s first year. there is no way the team is gonna compete unless the coach is bringing in good athletes similar to coach collins class in 2020 he also has to be a better coach than collins on game day. collins brought in a class that high and according to many of y’all he is the worst coach ever. why is it so impossible to say that we hire someone that can do better on gameday and recruit well?

you have said effectively nothing but keep harping on collins being bad. this is pretty bad process and seems more slanted to you just wanting the option, not the program to compete at a level we can compete at
Clemson and UGA bully 90% of the teams in college football. That’s hardly a fact to base your argument on.
 

JacketFan137

Banned
Messages
2,536
Clemson and UGA bully 90% of the teams in college football. That’s hardly a fact to base your argument on.
we play them every single year and we haven’t really been competitive at all with them since about 2015. with only one win (2016 uga) since then. that’s unacceptable no matter how you slice it. auburn has to play bama, who’s been better than both for the most part, and they’ve made their games so competitive.

i’m not saying we’re ever gonna rattle off 8 in a row and blow them out, but we have to do SOMETHING to try to close the gap and that something is gonna be finding a coach who can recruit at a high level. if you don’t have the bare minimum size and speed on the roster it will continue to be non competitive
 

iopjacket

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
805
You haven't seen this team yet. How can you make a claim like that without even seeing THIS team play?

That's, in my mind, a defeatist attitude, and I struggle with that.
It's just his opinion, man and here is mine. About the only way I see us winning more this year, is if Chip Long is determined to get the Offence rolling and then rides Collins relentlessly to coach the defense.

It's just my opinion, but I think Collins really lacks organizational skills. He may be able to follow, but I have lost faith he can lead. As the saying goes if you can't do either, get the hell out the way.
 
Last edited:

RamblinRed

Helluva Engineer
Featured Member
Messages
5,848
There are limits (caps), to how much financial assistance a university can provide athletics. That’s why revenue and private donor fundraising is so important.

I will say athletics is central to Auburn’s engagement. The same donors who pay $100 million for a new school on campus also fund athletics. These are huge billionaire donors, the largest being Jimmy Rane (Yellawood). Everyone … students, faculty, alumni … are encouraged to be active in athletics.

That is not true at Tech. Every organization has its own Development team which competes with the GTAA and the Alumni Association for donations. It’s an organized mess. You are correct that the Hill could do more, but … it’s not in their interests to do more. That’s why nothing there has changed.

Your point about research is interesting. I’ve long maintained that Tech’s success in this area is why athletics is no longer much, if any, of a priority for the Hill. Tech is a cash cow for the state of Georgia. Simply put, the Hill doesn’t need athletics as much today as it did 40 years ago. Petit was transformational for Tech and you really can’t discuss Tech sports without also discussing GTRI.
I think you hit it on the head. GT's admin is concerned with competing with Ivy League schools and CalTech and MIT.

While it is hardly a super strong correlation, if you look at P5 endowments per student and compare it to performance on the football field, it is at best uncorrelated and at worst something of a negative correlation.

The other piece to understand is that most of the endowment money is given for specific purposes and cannot be re-directed. So it is largely off limits to the AA.
 

BuzzDraft

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
227
...
Interestingly enough, Richter was a UW grad that also had a pro career. But at the time of his being named AD at UW he was VP of PERSONELL.
In other words, he knew how to evaluate people. IMO, this is sorely lacking in our current AD.
Not only that, he was VP of Personnel at OSCAR MAYER! ... for 17 years after his NFL playing days ended. He had no sports admin experience at all before becoming AD.
 

WreckinGT

Helluva Engineer
Messages
3,152
we play them every single year and we haven’t really been competitive at all with them since about 2015. with only one win (2016 uga) since then. that’s unacceptable no matter how you slice it. auburn has to play bama, who’s been better than both for the most part, and they’ve made their games so competitive.

i’m not saying we’re ever gonna rattle off 8 in a row and blow them out, but we have to do SOMETHING to try to close the gap and that something is gonna be finding a coach who can recruit at a high level. if you don’t have the bare minimum size and speed on the roster it will continue to be non competitive
Auburn had a pretty good coach and was recruiting top 10-15 classes for most of that time frame (since 2015). That got them 3 wins over UGA and Bama in 14 games. Tennessee consistently recruits in the top 20 with some top 15 classes. They have won 2 out of 14 games against UGA and Bama with many blowouts. South Carolina recruits consistently in the 18-25 range. They have won 1 of 14 games against UGA and Clemson and they are losing by an average of 21 points in those games. There is no way to get around it. Bama, Clemson, and UGA are on another level. You can pick them off every once in a while if they are down and you have a really good team. If you want to be consistently competitive with them, well good luck with that. You are going to need great coaching and substantial (top 10 at least) talent.
 

CEB

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,533
Auburn had a pretty good coach and was recruiting top 10-15 classes for most of that time frame (since 2015). That got them 3 wins over UGA and Bama in 14 games. Tennessee consistently recruits in the top 20 with some top 15 classes. They have won 2 out of 14 games against UGA and Bama with many blowouts. South Carolina recruits consistently in the 18-25 range. They have won 1 of 14 games against UGA and Clemson and they are losing by an average of 21 points in those games. There is no way to get around it. Bama, Clemson, and UGA are on another level. You can pick them off every once in a while if they are down and you have a really good team. If you want to be consistently competitive with them, well good luck with that. You are going to need great coaching and substantial (top 10 at least) talent.
Whole lotta truth here... I don’t think anyone has illusions of consistently challenging UGA and Clemson right now. I want to feel like we have a shot every year and actually pull it off once in a while. We have 6-7 teams on our schedule that we should be beating often. We have another 2-3 we should beat annually. That’s the first step. Once we’re winning 8-9 annually, we can talk about what it takes to run down those other guys.
 

dressedcheeseside

Helluva Engineer
Messages
14,212
It’s nice to dream about competing with the elites in all of college football. I think we should worry about competing with the mediocre’s and beating the bad teams first.

To be good you need all the pieces of the puzzle. Some of those pieces we may never have. Arguing over which piece is more important than the other is pointless, imo.
 

Blue&Gold1034

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
123
Yea, Rivals has more consistent data further back then 247 since they used to be scout, and I'm not sure how much value is added to the composite by including ESPN's rankings.

I completely get that there are players who didn't want to play in the scheme and that there is a negative impact to recruiting because of that. I just don't think that impact is as great as you or some others like to believe, or that it couldn't be minimized much more than it was.

When he goes to that WR's house, he can point to Demaryius Thomas, Stephen Hill, Kevin Cone, Darren Waller, etc who all played in the offense and made the league. He can point to things like this article where ESPN called GT the best WR factory for the NFL in 2017. I'd say that sounds pretty damn appealing to a recruit, but maybe you don't think so.


As far as Johnson's D coordinators - the first one was fired for being not good, which I think we can agree on. As I recall Johnson wanted to hire Ellis Johnson but was told no you get Al Groh. Al Groh was fired and he was told here now you get Ted Roof, who was also not his pick. When Tech and Ted "mutually" parted ways, he got Woody who has shown himself to be a pretty good D coordinator, but only had him for a year and even Woody suggested it would take a year and a half or so to get the defense to gel and be firing on all cylinders like he hoped. Had Johnson stayed one more year I think the D would have taken a step up in 2019 under Woody. Not surprisingly, the scheme changes between all of these coordinators didn't help smooth out anything since we constantly had guys fit for the previous D.
This is kind of misleading. The ESPN article highlights Calvin Johnson and Demaryius Thomas (both players Johnson did not recruit) as the reason why Tech is #1. You think they would've signed LOI to play for CPJ if he had recruited them? I honestly don't think so. The only player he did recruit ended up going to a Pro Bowl was Darren Waller and it wasn't even at the WR position.
 
Top