I know this is an older post in an older thread, but I was apparently banned for some absurd reason when it first showed up so I couldn’t get a response out. But here it goes:
Being great both academically and athletically is nowhere near impossible or mutually exclusive. There are plenty of schools that do it: Michigan, Florida, Texas, Stanford, Notre Dame, etc. But those are just the ones you think about when it comes to football. Football is not the only sport that gets played on college campuses. Sure it’s the most profitable, but even within national media it’s far from the only one that gets attention. There are plenty of elite academic institutions that are elite in other sports because spending the money required to compete on a national level is infeasible for most schools. Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, Gonzaga, Villanova, Vanderbilt, UCLA, UConn, etc. All of those schools compete for and win national championships in basketball and baseball because they want to be great athletically, but they know it’s next to impossible to do so in football.
IMO, Georgia Tech’s biggest problem with athletics isn’t a lack of investment or care, it’s investing in and caring about the wrong sport. I think most Tech fans, alumni, and administrators like to hold on to the Heisman and Bobby Dodd eras and point to the football history Tech has. But that’s ancient at this point. Since the Civil Rights movement Georgia Tech has been an elite football program for exactly 1 season, and we split a national title. The odds of getting back there are getting slimmer and slimmer. So why not increase our odds of being relevant nationally by investing in the sports we have a legitimate chance to be relevant in. Countless other schools already have laid the blueprint. Even schools that aren’t considered great academically can be great athletically if they are wise with their investments. Indiana, Purdue, Kentucky, Louisville, Baylor, Arkansas, and most recently Auburn. Auburn and Tech are historically above average athletic schools, but are surrounded by elites. Both are second fiddle in their state football wise, but one of them has committed to being the best at every other sport, while the other desperately clings to its football history. Auburn will be the #1 basketball team in the country on Monday, they’ve been to a Final Four and a College World Series since their last 10 win football season in 2017, and they went to a Women’s College World Series in 2015 and 16. They sell out a 9,000 seat arena every home game in a tiny little cow town, and Georgia Tech can barely get 4,000 people to show up in the middle of a major metropolitan area.
And for the record, 19 million people watched the Alabama vs. Georgia national championship game at full capacity this year. A 25% capacity national championship between tiny Gonzaga and midsize Baylor drew 16 million last March. You want to be relevant in sports nationally? Do it in the sports that are financially feasible for schools that aren’t massive land grant flagships. There’s no sense in wasting hundreds of millions of dollars chasing an impossible dream. Let’s get football to a solid ACC Coastal contender, and be elite in the sports we have a legitimate chance to be elite in. Too many Tech fans look at Georgia and Clemson’s success in football and pout woe is me with envy, instead of striving to kick their *** every single year in basketball and baseball like we should be doing. There’s just as much name recognition in that as there is in football. Georgia Tech used to be a national power in basketball and baseball, there’s no reason we can’t be again.
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