Mostly “Fire Geoff Collins”, some reminiscing, maybe bourbon or other distractions

[SWATlien]

He's lost the fan base. The fiscal disaster would be keeping him.

We can't afford sub 30k attendance next year, this 3-year lull has already lost thousands of fans *forever*

He's done

No one is coughing up $13 million. No one is coughing up $7 million. GT still paying coaches not to coach. It’s not happening.

 

[bke1984]

yep. it's almost like we never lost at all under the previous regime isn't it?

It’s almost like we are in the worst three year stretch the program has seen in 100 years isn’t it?

 

[bke1984]

So, so true. We are an international, Metropolitan STEM school. There are no other schools playing division 1 football, except military academies, like us. NONE.

It has nothing to do with the STEM part or international part. It has to do with the fact that there are about 5-10 teams that do and always will recruit better than everyone else. Why try to do exactly what they are doing and expect to beat them at it?

Now lets say you just want to compete with the rest - ok. Now there are about 40-50 other spots below that where you’re competing for bowl games, division titles, and occasional conference championships - along with occasional wins over the top 5-10 teams. Why try to do exactly what they are all doing and expect to be at the top of that group?

You’ve got to do something to differentiate. Yes, recruiting well is very important. I always wished we’d been able to recruit better defensive players under CPJ. But…giving yourself some sort of competitive advantage in scheme is also important. Doesn’t have to be 3O, but it needs to be something other than the exact same crap everyone else is trying to do week in and week out.

 

[bke1984]

Just watched the presser on YouTube, comments turned off?? unbelievable!!

Meh, what do you want them to do, just set up another public forum where our brand is trashed?

He actually just sounds defeated. His answers are starting to sound a little more reasonable to me - I.e. we got out-coached.

He’s not going to be here much longer. Probably time to stop the tar and feathering.

 

[Gomez Adams]

My two cents:

There is something to be said about the talent pool that GT has to pull from. After all, it is not an easy school. You WILL have to learn the math.

That said, it's one thing to be outmanned because of the school's curriculum. It happens. Stanford has similar issues as do schools like Wake Forrest, Vanderbilt and others.

But our guys aren't being just outmanned. At least, that's not what I've been seeing the last three years.

They are lost.

We have lineman that don't know who to block. Play after play a guy goes right by them, sits on Yates chest or grabs Gibbs in the backfield and they're looking around as if they don't have the first clue how that happened.

We have defensive players that are literally lost. Looking around for who to cover. They don't know how to stay at home or read a play the offense has already run 4 times before.

I see it all over the field on both sides of the ball every game.

That, folks, is down to plain, simple, piss poor coaching from the top on down. Our guys aren't that bad. They're simply not being property taught how to succeed.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

The guys you named are great and were special in their own right but why don't you have a word with high school football players and why they, as a majority, don't think they can get to the next level from the 3O. From personal experience, even mentioning some of the names you mentioned does nothing to convince high school football players that the 3O won't be a hindrance if you are good enough.

By now surely everyone knows how propaganda works. You can repeat a lie often enough until people believe it. “High school kids not wanting to play in an option offense” became a self-fulfilling prophecy because Tech fans repeated it way too often. What a shame.

Pay close attention to players recruited by Collins and see how many of them make the pros. My hunch is the success rate will be about the same but some fans won’t care because the narrative has been changed that we are now getting all these pro prospects. What a shame.

 

[laoh]

The problem with many of our fans is two-fold:

1. Too hung up on recruiting.
2. They don’t understand the gargantuan difference between top 5-10 recruiting & everyone else.

They believe GT should be like all other football factories, and that is not what the Institute is or ever will be. We are very different; we must be different for success at a high level in today’s big boy CFB.

Not sure where you're getting the idea that the fans are expecting us to compete with the factories. Be competitive, yes, but not be a factory. If you've been here long enough, most are reasonably minded, wanting tech to be (in the long run) a consistent 8-9 win team, with occasional breakout seasons like Johnson had.

 

[Gomez Adams]

Not sure where you're getting the idea that the fans are expecting us to compete with the factories. Be competitive, yes, but not be a factory. If you've been here long enough, most are reasonably minded, wanting tech to be (in the long run) a consistent 8-9 win team, with occasional breakout seasons like Johnson had.

Yahtzee.

Nobody in my lifetime ever thought we'd return to the days of Heisman. But by God, getting absolutely thrashed by teams we should be able to at least make a good showing if not win against is simply unforgiveable.

Not even in our darkest days did we really sweat bullets about whether or not we could eek out a win against The Citadel and Temple.

And then wind up losing BOTH.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

(Bear with me, long-*** post.)

Stepping aside and attempting to look at it objectively, this is a fascinating situation from a hiring strategy and budgeting sense.

First off, I’m shocked at the lack of performance (as are most of us). All else aside, I expected at least some performance from the coordinators and assistants. Should we retain them?

On defense, it’s obviously pretty bad. Looking at assistants, I have seen the D-ends getting some good pressure over the past few games. Honestly not sure if that’s play calling or the group, but I can give Marco Coleman the benefit of the doubt, because their performance seems to be somewhat consistent. But the linebackers are meh, and the secondary has gotten increasingly worse not just every season, but every GAME.

Offense, meanwhile, is not awful, but decidedly mediocre. I’m still surprised the O-line under Key is still so bad 3 seasons in. Choice seems to be the only offensive coach that’s not…well, offensive. Would hate to lose him. But I suppose one man cannot make a coaching staff.

All of this is to say, a common (& perhaps justified) thought on this board and elsewhere is that we should clean house of coordinators and assistants, and give CGC a better OC and DC and maybe an experienced analyst to coach HIM up.

But I think there’s a fallacy there. Consider:

1 - common logic has it that the buyout amount goes down dramatically after next year. This means if we retain CGC, he’s at best a lame duck next year in need of a serious change in results.

2 - what coordinator - up and coming or not - will want to come in under a coach who the economics say only has 1 year remaining unless he turns it around dramatically?

I would love to have someone like Nate Woody back as DC. But someone with his talent would be a fool to come here. First off, Woody has already been the victim of bad timing once. Are we going to be able to turn this around with an unproven DC & OC? Particularly ones whom Collins hires?

& 3 - overall, what up-and-coming coordinator will want to coach under Collins given his record - and his, well, schtick?
—-

In addition to that, let’s look at the buyout. Per the terms of his contract, If we fire Collins after this year, we owe him $13.8M (minus whatever he’s hired for in another role - which let’s face it, won’t likely happen, so let’s not even consider that).

Meanwhile, If we fire him after next season - ostensibly to save a lot of money - the buyout goes down to 7.2M. But we have to pay him for another god-awful season (I.e., next season) of “coaching” at $3.3M. So really the cost of keeping him for another season, then letting him go is actually $10.5M.

Ergo, effectively, it’s not a $7M difference in cost - because retaining him next year will cost us $3.3M, and for that we’ll get another season of his ‘performance.’ That’s not exactly money well spent - if we’re spending that either way, will it be worth that much to NOT have him on the sidelines?.

IOW, it only costs us an extra $3.3M net on paper to fire him after this season. The rest, we’re paying either way.

We also have to consider other costs. What happens to season ticket sales next season?

And then there’s the team. Part of the strategy for hiring CGC was to maybe not have huge success, but to at least be mediocre and to leave the cupboard full for the next coach. Most of us can agree we failed on the mediocre part of that.
At this point, however, I find myself thinking: Tech recruits are smart. They’ll likely not buy the “we’re turning this around’ story for that much longer. And much like coordinators worth a salt, most smart recruits will think twice about wanting to play for a dead man walking.

And that’s not even considering current players. We now have a slew of talented players - and most talented players aren’t accustomed to losing. Most don’t like it. I wonder how long it will be before CGC loses control of the locker room? Will we start to lose talented players to the transfer portal?

All things considered, there’s a definite potential for a sunk cost fallacy here. The question being, is it worth saving $3.3M (the difference in cost after keeping him 1 more year) on paper, but suffering the fallout of another 3-win season? Or do we punt now, eat the extra $3.3M cost, and move on?

$3.3M is a lot of cash - but at this point, I see the potential damages of keeping him around for another season to be equal to or worse than that payout. Seems like a big gamble whether or not current recruits and players stay at this point, or whether season tickets remain the same in a non-COFH year. I personally wouldn’t want to keep throwing good money after bad - Will be interesting to see what Stansbury does.

(Apologies for the long post. If you’ve read this, you are a gentleman and a scholar for watching as I worked this all out on digital paper).

I actually find your logic compelling. Fans who will balk at this are those who think Collins is right on the verge of turning this ship around and you don’t want to fire him one year before all that has been sunk into this program pays off. But that’s a position with no hard evidence to back it up. Sunk loss fallacy indeed.

 

[gt02]

No one is coughing up $13 million. No one is coughing up $7 million. GT still paying coaches not to coach. It’s not happening.

Which old coaches are we still paying? I thought we were free of that by now.

 

[stech81]

Dear CGC if you really love Tech Please just go, we paid you the last 3 years don't keep killing the program and just go.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I spotted this guy for what he is on day 1. All the 3O/CPJ haters are now eating there just deserts. How does it taste?

 

[Gomez Adams]

I spotted this guy for what he is on day 1. All the 3O/CPJ haters are now eating there just deserts. How does it taste?

I never hated Paul Johnson.

I didn't like his hiring for one reason only: His offense was old, outdated and had no hope of lasting. There's a reason Oklahoma and Nebraska gave it up decades ago: it's a gimmick. It will fool people for a little while, but once they get used to seeing it, it's over.

That is exactly what happened: A few good years while people were fooled by an offense they hadn't seen in years, but then complete failure once they got used to seeing it.

It was fun while it lasted, but it never had any real hope of lasting.

 

[GTRambler]

Need GT President Angel Cabrera to excise this malignant football cancer out of the GTAA.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I never hated Paul Johnson.

I didn't like his hiring for one reason only: His offense was old, outdated and had no hope of lasting. There's a reason Oklahoma and Nebraska gave it up decades ago: it's a gimmick. It will fool people for a little while, but once they get used to seeing it, it's over.

That is exactly what happened: A few good years while people were fooled by an offense they hadn't seen in years, but then complete failure once they got used to seeing it.

It was fun while it lasted, but it never had any real hope of lasting.

2014 was far from “complete failure” and it was our 7th year doing it.

 

[Gomez Adams]

I'm still wondering how on earth you pay somebody an Urban Myer type contract that has never proven himself as a head coach even at the high school level.

 

[Gomez Adams]

2014 was far from “complete failure” and it was our 7th year doing it.

A one off fluke. Fact is, he started out 9-4, then 11-3, then it was mediocrity or losing every year after that with the exception of 2014. Let's review:

2010: 6-7
2012: 7-7
2013: 7-6
2015: 3-9
2017: 5-6
2018: 7-6

You can't maintain any sort of winning success with an offense most high schools don't even run anymore.

 

[LibertyTurns]

As recently as seven years ago, we were in the Orange Bowl. Not 20. Seven.

Yeah, we were ranked #8. Put Collins 0 behind it and you got where we are now, #80. Never thought I’d be dreaming of hovering just outside the Top 25. Seems unreachable now.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I would way rather have mostly mediocre, occasional greatness, occasional suck than continuous suck.

 

[burdell151]

Y’all want a new coach? Start here.