Personally, hard for me to consider a defensive end who hasn't played a snap a "big loss". Yeah it kind of sucks, but I'm not going to be watching any of the games thinking, "If only Akins was still here." And he must really hate it if he isn't even going to participate in spring practice. Seems like he would at least practice to see how he did or at least keep him in shape since he's going to be here anyway.
Without any (I mean any) information at all, this sounds like non-football issues. I won't speculate further, because I could be totally wrong. However, the timing is incongruent with this being a football-related decision. If it were, I'd expect the request to come at the beginning of Spring semester (like VL), or after Spring practice.
When did he start school? I know midterms is this week & that winter semester (quarter for me) can be a bad time at GT.
Do we know where to yet?
A Defensive tackle...looked good in his redshirt season and this really hurts our depth at DT moving forward.
This now means in the last two classes we have only signed 1 DT.
Makes the 2015 class crucial for signing good DT's.
Did you go to Tech? It's no walk in the park, even with tutors. This ain't FSU where handlers hound professors and write papers for the SA's and that's in the easy majors which they don't have any at Tech. I'm surprised more SA's don't wash out academically. That alone is a huge testament to CPJ and staff.That's a shame. I was hoping to see him this year in the the two deep. Hard to imagine that it wasn't football related to me. Football players get a ton of help in the classroom. Not cheating help but help with tutoring, forced study hours and other factors. I have a feeling that he either wasn't getting along with the coaching staff or he just didn't think he would get as much PT as he wanted. Maybe it was academics that's just really tough to believe even at GT.