Lunch Bunch Todd Stansbury

IronJacket7

Helluva Engineer
Messages
2,558
This is a recap someone did from gojacket.com. There is a lot of interesting nuggets from the recap of what Stansbury is wanting to do. The person who did the recap below was also late to the lunch bunch so no telling what other interesting points were discussed. Thought I would share with you. Recap by LegalBee.

If anyone on here was able to attend please add to for discussion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, I was 30 minutes late because of construction traffic on Roswell Road. Took me another 45 minutes once I got to I-285 and Roswell Road.

Others please fill in what I missed and make any corrections:

- When I came in, he was talking about how GT needs to embrace and champion our uniqueness, not do what everyone else is doing. We have no peers and should not look to others for how to do things. Our academic peers (MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie-Mellon, etc) do not participate in major athletics, and our athletic peers do not have our academics, so we should stopping pretending we are comparing apples to apples and make it clear that they are all apples and we are an orange. If you want an orange, this is the only place to get it.

- Our target is 14 to 18 year old kids. They do not read the AJC or watch local TV, so we should not care how they report us. We now have the ability to go around the media and tell our own story directly via video and other technologies. Recent viral video of swim team in snow got us more publicity than anything in traditional media could have. Wants in-house division dedicated to selling Tech directly to our targets.

- GT is changing uniform supplier. Who exactly is still under discussion. Older fans can never understand the importance of uniforms to the kids.

- Have to get students more involved in athletics. Studies show if they have not attended a live sports event before the ago of 20, they most likely will never attend one in their lives. Really need to target kids under 10 in order to have a chance for them to become lifelong fans.

- Can never make attending game same as on TV, so need to make attending game something you cannot experience on TV.

- We need to be innovative in everything we do. Wants to create a "sports incubator" to develop new way of doing sports. Looking to create our own "Gatorade" that changes how sports is done. Innovation was very common theme.

- We should make easier for potential athletes to find Tech rather than Tech finding them. While at Oregon State, their woman's BB team went to final 4 due in part to a 6' 6" center from a small town in British Columbia. She graduated with a 4.0 in engineering and studied rocket science for fun. No way Tech could have ever found her, but she should have found Tech.

- Graduation is not the finish line, but the starting point. Need to focus less on graduation rates and more on what graduates are doing 5 and 10 years later.

- There is always good debt and bad debt, but we need to work on having any future debt having a dedicated funding source (donations or revenue) before incurring. Also feels like we have current mind set that we are missing too many good ideas because afraid we cannot afford them. If it is truly a good idea, we can probably find the funding.

- Hired a Disney executive while at UCF to help with game day experience. Learned so much from that they will apply to GT.

- Cannot control some things, like Atlanta traffic. So instead of fighting it, use to our advantage and target people already in downtown to stay and watch a GT event instead of heading home.

- New uniform colors will be controlled much more closely. Currently 30 to 35 colors available in book store and even 10 to 15 versions of GT logo. All will be limited to highlight our brand. Wants anyone seeing GT gear to immediately know it GT and no one else.
 

Enuratique

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
334
Thanks for posting. Innovation in game tech is something that is atrocious we haven't already been a vanguard of. I could see us running practices with special cameras attached to the helmets of each player, and then the coaches can review what the players are doing from the players POV. Seems obvious to me, seems something any CS grad student in computer vision should be jumping at the opportunity to work on. I know I would have.
 

Jay Alexander

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
271
This is a recap someone did from gojacket.com. There is a lot of interesting nuggets from the recap of what Stansbury is wanting to do. The person who did the recap below was also late to the lunch bunch so no telling what other interesting points were discussed. Thought I would share with you. Recap by LegalBee.

If anyone on here was able to attend please add to for discussion.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, I was 30 minutes late because of construction traffic on Roswell Road. Took me another 45 minutes once I got to I-285 and Roswell Road.

Others please fill in what I missed and make any corrections:

- When I came in, he was talking about how GT needs to embrace and champion our uniqueness, not do what everyone else is doing. We have no peers and should not look to others for how to do things. Our academic peers (MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie-Mellon, etc) do not participate in major athletics, and our athletic peers do not have our academics, so we should stopping pretending we are comparing apples to apples and make it clear that they are all apples and we are an orange. If you want an orange, this is the only place to get it.

- Our target is 14 to 18 year old kids. They do not read the AJC or watch local TV, so we should not care how they report us. We now have the ability to go around the media and tell our own story directly via video and other technologies. Recent viral video of swim team in snow got us more publicity than anything in traditional media could have. Wants in-house division dedicated to selling Tech directly to our targets.

- GT is changing uniform supplier. Who exactly is still under discussion. Older fans can never understand the importance of uniforms to the kids.

- Have to get students more involved in athletics. Studies show if they have not attended a live sports event before the ago of 20, they most likely will never attend one in their lives. Really need to target kids under 10 in order to have a chance for them to become lifelong fans.

- Can never make attending game same as on TV, so need to make attending game something you cannot experience on TV.

- We need to be innovative in everything we do. Wants to create a "sports incubator" to develop new way of doing sports. Looking to create our own "Gatorade" that changes how sports is done. Innovation was very common theme.

- We should make easier for potential athletes to find Tech rather than Tech finding them. While at Oregon State, their woman's BB team went to final 4 due in part to a 6' 6" center from a small town in British Columbia. She graduated with a 4.0 in engineering and studied rocket science for fun. No way Tech could have ever found her, but she should have found Tech.

- Graduation is not the finish line, but the starting point. Need to focus less on graduation rates and more on what graduates are doing 5 and 10 years later.

- There is always good debt and bad debt, but we need to work on having any future debt having a dedicated funding source (donations or revenue) before incurring. Also feels like we have current mind set that we are missing too many good ideas because afraid we cannot afford them. If it is truly a good idea, we can probably find the funding.

- Hired a Disney executive while at UCF to help with game day experience. Learned so much from that they will apply to GT.

- Cannot control some things, like Atlanta traffic. So instead of fighting it, use to our advantage and target people already in downtown to stay and watch a GT event instead of heading home.

- New uniform colors will be controlled much more closely. Currently 30 to 35 colors available in book store and even 10 to 15 versions of GT logo. All will be limited to highlight our brand. Wants anyone seeing GT gear to immediately know it GT and no one else.

There is more "awesome" in this vision from the AD than there has been from that position since Homer Rice.

I'm confident if he executes on these ideas alumni will come out of the woodwork to donate and fund an athletic dept with this type of vision and goals.

...now, let me go find a link so I can donate.

Go Jackets!!
 

ramblinvak

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
546
This is incredible. I know TS is an alum but he truly does understand the culture here and what it will take to succeed.

Honestly I feel the AA could use the same tactics as the Hawks did. Winning helped the Hawks but also rebranding the fan experience and becoming more "hip" has helped them generate interested and "hype" in the organization. I feel GT is no different - same market and same type of competition. I saw how Migos instagrammed a photo of our basketball team after beating UNC. GT needs to imbrace that and promote it. Like TS said, if you sell interest to the kids, the parents will follow.

I'm so excited with the future of our athletics with TS, CPJ, and CJP at the helm! Buckle your seat belts folks, we could be entering one of those golden ages of GT athletics!
 

YJMD

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,628
Just another voice that has finally felt heard. Why would we try to be someone else?
 

Andewa

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
259
Good lord. All of those ideas are perfect. My favorite is the branding. If I see Russell give us one more uniform combo where the helmet and the pants are different shades of gold, I am going to lose it. Russell has no idea what our shade of gold is. OLD gold. It's dark. It's not yellow.
 

DH9387

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
276
Location
Kaneohe, HI
We have no peers and should not look to others for how to do things. Our academic peers (MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie-Mellon, etc) do not participate in major athletics, and our athletic peers do not have our academics, so we should stopping pretending we are comparing apples to apples and make it clear that they are all apples and we are an orange. If you want an orange, this is the only place to get it.
I have used this analogy countless times over the years when people talk to me about how the only thing keeping us down in recruiting is our offense and how if we got rid of CPJ we would instantly jump 20 spots in recruiting. It is absolutely refreshing to hear the AD acknowledge this and not in the Dave Braine way of using it as an excuse as to why we will never be successful but as a catalyst to make changes to make us more successful.
 

MWT89

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
193
Regarding the second point about targeting 14 - 18 year old kids, is he referring to future student-athletes or fans?
 

Yaller Jacket

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
993
This AD is impressive!

Let's also say a good word to Iron Jacket for an excellent report.

MWT, I'm not sure either, but leaning toward thinking he means student athletes.
 

Cam

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,591
Location
Atlanta, Georgia
Which one of the accounts on here is Stansbury's? I feel like all of those comments are things we have actively discussed on here. Things like getting branding consolidated into one set of logos and colors, taking advantage of our unique combination of academics and athletics, switching uniform prividers, innovating practice and marketing technology, etc. I want to think he came up with all of these ideas himself, because it seemed like the previous administration under MBob didn't address these things. Things fans were screaming for.
 

Whiskey_Clear

Banned
Messages
10,486
Sounds like the visionary we have been starving for. Now all he has to do is implement it ;). Can't ever get to the finish line if you can't find the starting line. I feel like TS knew where the starting line was before he was hired and is off the blocks with a burst.
 
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