I don’t think culture is BS but wins are what transitions the “culture” to a “winning culture.” Elite 4 and 5 star recruits want to win and develop. It’s still week 1 of year 3 but development and performance need to be better. The only good news is I don’t think these guys like to lose but the rest of the season will matter. They have to make plays and play fundamental football. I agree they need to get back to basics of blocking and tackling.
The culture may be sincere but that does not necessarily mean it is a culture that translates to winning. I appreciate your optimism and level-headed approach to this whole situation (admittedly much more level headed than I am), but at what point does losing games we should win point towards building something better? Did we improve from the Citadel? Did we learn from Pitt or NC State at the end of last year? I know our players don't like losing. I don't fault the players one bit. They put their bodies on the line for our entertainment. Not only do they have the immense responsibility of being a student athelete at tech, they also have to dedicate atleast 40 hrs a week to making memes for the coaches and croots. I fault our coaches and admin for what is transpiring. The hill has not been the most supportive with atheltics in general and our coaches seem in over their heads.
We are worse off than Butch Jones at Tennessee. Collins does not yet have a win that announces the arrival of his vision of the program. Not only that, we have not even seen glimpses of it. Any notion that tonight was a step forward is just false. Our touted qb of the future is hurt. Our defense still got physically dominated. Any hope that we had in the Collins regime has been founded on the platitudes that we are fed in press releases, articles, and an increased (and much improved) social media presence.
I don't mean to exaggerate but as a program, we are staring into the abyss. NIL and the SEC getting Texas and Oklahoma are going to change the college football landscape dramatically. Why would a 5 star player ever come to tech to get sponsored by Tivo (which many of us didn't even know still existed) when you can get a million dollars at bama for not even taking a snap. The power five is soon going to be split into the haves (bama, clemson, oklahoma, ohio state, etc) and the have-nots (ga tech, duke, vandy, kansas, purdue) more than it ever has before. Gibbs was a miracle for Collins and largely due to Choice as a recruiter.
And before anyone lambasts me about comparing our program to the vandy's of the world, what is the difference between a Collins' led tech and any of these schools? Vandy just hired a vandy guy and lost to East Tennessee! We have won 3 games each of the last couple of years and not many of those wins felt like great ones. Our history as a football program is great and something to be proud of. Then again, Tulane and Sewanee can both point to glory days too.
We need to sober up and stop drinking the spiked kool-aid. Tech can be a great program, but it is going to take a special hire to make it so. A hire that did more than scavenge two 7-5 seasons with Matt Rhule's scraps at Temple. In realty, we have been a pretty stable team since the late 90's. Johnson, Gaily, and O'Leary all had a pretty steady go at tech where bad years could be written off as just an unfortunate season. Collins is starting to look like an outlier to those 3. The season is not over, but I am just fatigued by all of this. The gamble that T-Stan made was to get an energetic guy in to lead a transition through rough years created by the transition that he desired. T-Stan is on the hook for that.
That said, Collins was a breath of fresh air personality-wise from Johnson. Something that Tech maybe did need. Johnson also just seemed tired. Poor guy did 11 years at tech. I was tired enough after 4. The problem is that magnetism and eagerness is only going to go so far without results. We could have won this game handing the ball off to mason and gibbs all night.
