Good day team.
There has been a ton of discussion recently about the challenges Georgia Tech faces on the recruiting trail and what our reasonable expectations should be as a program in this area. As most of us agree, a programs ability to recruit talent is one of, if not the most important barometer in determining a program's success. Generally speaking, the teams that recruit the best are the teams that are contending for championships. While there are certainly outliers, it is hard to point to a program that is consistently successful that does not recruit at a high level. Likewise it is also hard to point to a school that is consistently recruiting at or near the bottom of their conference that finishes consistently in the middle of the pack of their conference.
With this being the case, I think it is important to understand how Georgia Tech recruited in the decade leading up to Paul Johnson and how they have done in the decade since he has been here. I understand there have been some changes to the collegiate landscape during the span we are looking at and can agree these changes might have caused our ceiling to be somewhat lower than it was at the turn of the century. However, some of the arguments that are used to support the current level of recruiting are simply not based in fact. Arguments such as the restrictive nature of our curriculum and the effect it has on recruiting and the belief that we have never been able to win head to head recruiting battles with the national powers that are in our neighborhood as Stansbury says.
Please note: It was more difficult finding information on the Oleary years because they were just before the Rivals or Scout datebases started keeping track of "class rankings." If anyone has anything to add from a data perspective I certainly welcome it.
http://www.espn.com/recruiting/s/2000/0203/333209.html
The link above is Tom Lemming's recruiting class ranking from 2000. Scroll to the bottom and you will find it. Our Georgia Institute of Technology comes in with the #12 ranked class in the nation. Ahead of the likes of Georgia, Auburn, Miami, Oklahoma & LSU. We beat out powerhouse programs consistently in 2000. Players such as Hobie Holiday, Daryl Smith, Tony Hollings, J.P. Foschi & Keyaron Fox were all pursued by virtually everyone from the ACC and SEC. This class followed what was good a class in 99 as well but this 2000 class is what put the nation on notice that the program that Oleary had built was going to be a force on the national stage in recruiting.
http://ramblinwreck.com/georgia-tech-inks-another-highly-regarded-football-class/
For the 2001 class I could not find a class ranking for that year. If anybody can find one I would love to see it. What I was able to find was various sites that listed our recruits accolades individually. This class was loaded with players that were rated among the top 50 in Georgia and top 100 in the south. For the sake of this discussion, I'm going to assume that players listed as one of the top 100 players in the south would be the equivalent of a Rivals 300 player today. Considering that players from the south make up over half the Rivals 300 annually I think that is a safe bet. Players that were listed as the top 100 players in the class of 01 that committed to Tech include:
1. Demarious Bilbo
2. Dawan landry
3. Reuben Houston
4. Tabugbo Anyansi
5. Kyle Wallace
6. Levon Thomas
7. Gerris Bower-Wilkinson was listed as one of the top players in California and a Prep Star top 285 in the nation player. I will include him in what would be a Rivals 300 player today.
Let's compare the class of 01, which I am sure would have been ranked in the top 25 at least, with Johnson's entire decade of recruiting in terms of top 300 players. Since the 08 class, here are the number of Rivals 300 recruits that Johnson has signed.
1. Denzel McCoy
2. Anthony Williams
3. Louis Young
4. Jabari hunt days
5. Justin Thomas
6. Bruce Jordan swilling
7. Jaylon King
So as you see, the 01 class had as many top 300 players in it alone as Johnson has signed during his entire tenure.
Obviously O'Leary chose to move on to ND after this season so our great run in recruiting stopped there. But I think it's reasonable to say that he was maximizing our potential on the recruiting trail and showing GT could compete for big time talent with anybody. It was a good time to be a Jacket and looking back I would have loved to see us hire from within the program to keep this good mojo rolling. I think it was a huge mistake to bring in Gailey who had extremely limited experience with the collegiate game and it clearly took him too long to figure out the recruiting game at GT. Our program went from 3 straight solid classes with many wins against the perceived powers in recruiting, to scouring the land looking for overlooked gems. Our recruiting took a huge hit as we fell into the 50's in terms of class rankings. Some will point to flunkgate in 03 and the response by the hill to that debacle as the reason Gailey's recruiting fell off the face of the earth. If that was the case though, how do you explain his class in 07? In 07 Gailey signed 8 4 star players. This was more than the rest of his classes combined. The argument can't be that there were more academically qualified 4 star kids in that year than all the years before combined can it? The answer is no. Gailey just nailed his top targets which is what recruiting boils down to. This was a top 20 class and proved what Oleary had proved just 6 years prior. That GT can recruit competitively with the national powers.
In 08 Gailey was following that class up with what was easily on pace to be his second best class and maybe challenge the 07 class proving 07 wasn't a fluke. Upon his firing in December he already had commits from multiple 4 star players. Uzzi, Chis Jackson, Sean Renfree and A.J. Jackson were all on board and we found ourselves back in the top 25 of the recruiting ranking before we let Gailey go. Chan Gailey had figured out how to recruit to Georgia tech just as George Oleary had. Both coaches showed with the right vision and with right assistant coaches that the ceiling for Georgia Tech in recruiting high enough to compete for conference championships.
I thank Gailey for what he did with the class of 07. He laid the foundation for what was Johnson's 2 most successful years with that class. And make no mistake Johnson coached his butt off with those teams. An ACC Championship and Orange Bowl berth. A victory over the mutts in his first year. He set the world on fire. The problem is however that almost all of the best players he has had while at tech were a result of Gailey's recruiting. He has never been able to find a back as good as Dwyer or a receiver as good Thomas. The best defensive player of his tenure is easily either Derrick Morgan or Morgan Burnette. I believe the best qb he has had was Nesbitt although I understand the argument for Thomas. (which incidentally is one of his few Rivals 300 recruits).
Johnson's classes have continually fallen short of top 40 status, having one ranked as low as 84, and his ability to bring in good talent at a consistent level is the reason for the downturn in our program. I believe like most on this board that Johnson is a good coach and that he does give us a unique advantage with his offense over schools with more talent. And I think that is great for a place like Navy which has no shot at recruiting high end talent.
That is certainly not the case at GT however. At least it wasn't when he took the job at GT. Upon arrival at GT he inherited a program that recruited top 25 classes in 4 of the 9 previous years and Gailey had it poised to be 5 out of 10. While nobody is going to confuse that with the recruiting being done at Alabama or FSU it is miles from where we are now. I would argue those numbers would look even better if Gailey hadn't of had such a steep learning curve upon arrival but it is what it is.
To sum it up, I believe this shows that GT recruited much better in the decade leading up to Johnson's arrival than we currently are and this certainly shows that we HAVE been able to win recruiting battles with the perceived powers in our region before Johnson arrived. It also shows the argument about a limited curriculum and it's effects on recruiting are overblown. To my knowledge our course offerings have not shrunk over the past decade. Also if you believe that Johnson gives us a better chance to win with less talent, which I believe to be a reasonable argument, you must also be willing to accept the fact he is a significant part of the reason we are going to have less talent. His offense nor his personality are conducive to luring the type of recruits we proved we could get before his arrival. Honestly both act as a repellant.
It all boils down to wins and losses however. And right now he is not winning at a level that is up to where the programs standards have been for at least 3 decades now. So in discussion of what our program would recruit like without Johnson, let's not make us to be Kansas or Indiana or Oregon State. Before Johnson got here we recruited just fine. And we will do so after he is gone as well if we have the right leadership.
