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

[awbuzz]

The worst part is this loss is 100% on mismanagement of critical situations by the coaching staff. All of the player faults are cured by scoring on the drive we used 2 TOs on the goal line

... And got 0 points...

 

[stech81]

It’s all coaching. A good coach doesn’t allow a punt returner to decide anything. A good coach tells a punt returner who is clearly making stupid decisions to just fair catch it. A good coach doesn’t waste 2 timeouts on a drive in the 3rd quarter. A good coach doesn’t have 14 players on the field when the other team lines up to run a play. A good coach doesn’t have his entire defense looking at the sideline when the other team is about to snap the ball. A good coach doesn’t have his players running out of bounds when we are trying to run clock. A good coach doesn’t have his players stay in bounds when we need clock. We are clueless and Choice and Key need to give out code red to the other coaches. Patenaude and Thacker are dead men walking.

The only noticeable improvement was the very first play of the game. We kicked the ball thru the end zone instead of giving up a return to the 35 like we did all last year. That‘s it. Sims was worse. The running game was worse. The passing game was non-existent minus a few. During the telecast I did not hear the name of one of our defensive linemen for 3 hours. Gibbs was having to juke just to get back to the line of scrimmage. We will win about 4 games because as bad as we are there are several ACC teams worse.

If CGC has lost you he needs to be gone you have be the one who stood up for him the last 2 years.

 

[bobongo]

I've said this before.

The problem with Collins is that he doesn't take winning seriously. I don't mean by that that he doesn't want to win or that he isn't trying to win. It's that his demeanor and that of his assistants during games and (I assume) in practice is that winning isn't the main reason the team is out there. It's one of the reasons; others include pleasing the fans, having a good time, keeping up team spirit, ect. I came up under coaches in high school and college who wouldn't countenance anything in practice or at the games that didn't show a complete concentration on winning. Looking pleased with your play or laughing on the sidelines - not to mention some the antics we now have to put up with - would have gotten you on the bench or - in the case of my college coach - thrown out of practice or games until you got your mind on your business.

Some of that is superannuated today; nobody thinks twice about players congratulating each other after a good play nowadays. But enthusiasm in a head coach and his assistants is best saved for after the game and then only when you win. Being ill-prepared, mentioned often above, is a symptom of lack of concentration on winning by both the coaches and the players.

So, yes, we have changed the culture of Tech football, just as was promised. Problem = the change isn't toward a culture that makes winning paramount. The results are self-evident.

What this team needs is a drill sergeant.

 

[CubeE]

I was hoping we would go after Fritz. He nearly beat OU yesterday.

What about Will Healy? He just beat Duke and he grew up a GT fan

 

[Techster]

One point that many forget. If you run the same scheme as the big boys, you have to out coach them. And that’s almost impossible in this day and age.

I'm pretty confident 90% of football fans couldn't tell you difference between what 'Bama is running and what Ohio State is running. Yes it may "look" the same, but it most certainly is not the same.

If you watched the the Army vs GA State game yesterday, the announcers discussed how Monken talked about how Army used the same concepts and schemes that most other teams did, but they just "looked" different because of how the alignment started. CPJ pointed this out many times...and even Urban Meyer professed to it with his offense. Meyer, and other coaches, were just savvy to "re package" those schemes and concepts to make them recruiting friendly.

The irony is that many of CPJ's spread option passing concepts (RnS) are the roots that sprung all the Air Raid concepts that have made coaches like Lincoln Riley so popular today. I've said for years CPJ's one mistake was not emphasizing more RnS and sprinkling in his option concepts for a ground attack when he came to GT. It's what he did with his years in Hawaii with Garret Gabriel (whose son is now the QB for UCF...and VERY good QB at that.).

There are plenty of coaches at non P5 schools who have great schemes that would do well at GT. It's not just coaches from the CPJ/Mike Leach/Urban Meyer trees.

 

[jgtengineer]

Second thought:

I want to engage those whose default disposition is to dive into the 'Fire CGC' conversation with CPJ lineage solutions who also have a history of engaging in a level-headed way (@AlabamaBuzz, @jgtengineer, among others). I'm not going to engage with anyone who wants to flame/snark on either end of the spectrum. Please understand I'm coming at this with an interest in understanding and not trying to disparage your preferences.

What about yesterday's result justifies going back to Monken, Bohannan, etc. today? We have better talent than NIU. Agree? We've improved recruiting under CGC. Agree?

With respect to losses to The Citadel, NIU, Syracuse, etc., I'd expect better results with any well-coached and executed scheme. Even more true as top 30 recruiting classes (and top 5 ACC) start to mature in the program. We should beat NIU, even when those recruits are still Frosh and a handful of Sophs.

My personal reaction to your posts is that you are "showing your true colors". I don't mean that negatively other than to call out my perception of biases misapplied to the situation. I think posts with 'Monken' and 'Bohannan' yesterday and today, post-NIU loss, ruin the argument's credibility by coming to the conversation with narrowly focused scheme-related suggestions. I've always remained open to at least thinking about those names, but because I'm seeing those posts today, those very posts are pushing me more toward believing folks have an infatuation with the offense and less so because of its fit at GT. For that reason I will likely carry that new bias forward when I see the same claims in the future.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the reason for those types of posts in this thread and I would appreciate your POV.

I am not as tied to scheme as you are thinking more coaching style. Monken Bohannon and those int the cpj tree are results driven no nonsense coaches. That's what I think we need here. The clownu players coach thing just doesnt work at GT. Id say rodgers onlybhad the success he had because he was running the wishbone. Curry tried this ra ra approach and we all know what happened with him. I do not default to we need cpj disciple. I default to we need discipline and a smart xs and os coach. I dont this k we are going to win without being creative. But hell how about hiring an oc from the friedgin school of thought?

But you got right ahead and think that. You can think that while we lose to ksu.
Edit to add its more about who I think we can get here thats proven. Monken would take the job.

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

If CPJ had some of the new resources the current staff enjoys, he would have had much greater chance of success. Not to mention having Ted Roof forced on him by the same money guys who got us into this garbage.

Lots of fans do not understand the disadvantages he was under.

 

[AlabamaBuzz]

Second thought:

I want to engage those whose default disposition is to dive into the 'Fire CGC' conversation with CPJ lineage solutions who also have a history of engaging in a level-headed way (@AlabamaBuzz, @jgtengineer, among others). I'm not going to engage with anyone who wants to flame/snark on either end of the spectrum. Please understand I'm coming at this with an interest in understanding and not trying to disparage your preferences.

What about yesterday's result justifies going back to Monken, Bohannan, etc. today? We have better talent than NIU. Agree? We've improved recruiting under CGC. Agree?

With respect to losses to The Citadel, NIU, Syracuse, etc., I'd expect better results with any well-coached and executed scheme. Even more true as top 30 recruiting classes (and top 5 ACC) start to mature in the program. We should beat NIU, even when those recruits are still Frosh and a handful of Sophs.

My personal reaction to your posts is that you are "showing your true colors". I don't mean that negatively other than to call out my perception of biases misapplied to the situation. I think posts with 'Monken' and 'Bohannan' yesterday and today, post-NIU loss, ruin the argument's credibility by coming to the conversation with narrowly focused scheme-related suggestions. I've always remained open to at least thinking about those names, but because I'm seeing those posts today, those very posts are pushing me more toward believing folks have an infatuation with the offense and less so because of its fit at GT. For that reason I will likely carry that new bias forward when I see the same claims in the future.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the reason for those types of posts in this thread and I would appreciate your POV.

Hey Cuse. I so appreciate your communication style. I will try to do this with brevity, because I thought I had been clear.

First of all, I was a fan of the triple O for GT, as I think it gave us a niche that would allow for some special seasons and victories - I am not one that believes we can do that every year with or without a niche.

BUT, and this is an important "but", I am o.k. with another direction as long as people understand that we MUST have a special HC at GT to make a difference in the CF landscape. We can recruit better, as CGC has proven, but we are not going to be recruiting in the top 10, in my opinion, and the difference between top 10 and top 40 has never been larger. Heck, the difference between top 5 and top 15 has never been larger.

2021 is so much different than 1990 was - But, having a coach (and staff) that runs a tight ship and is smarter than most of their competition is KEY at GT, in my opinion. I will be happy with any offensive system that gives GT a chance at some very good years.

I would still like a "niche" to give us an advantage. I don't pretend that niche can only be the flexbone. I am sure there are other niches that would provide a similar advantage. We must have creative, out of the box thinking coaches.

But, right now, we are embarassing from a game prep and game time decision standpoint. So, the rest of the conversation is kind of moot at this point. I don't have an answer to how we get out of this anytime soon. I will still be rooting for wins, no matter who coaches.

 

[takethepoints]

Second thought:

I want to engage those whose default disposition is to dive into the 'Fire CGC' conversation with CPJ lineage solutions who also have a history of engaging in a level-headed way (@AlabamaBuzz, @jgtengineer, among others). I'm not going to engage with anyone who wants to flame/snark on either end of the spectrum. Please understand I'm coming at this with an interest in understanding and not trying to disparage your preferences.

What about yesterday's result justifies going back to Monken, Bohannan, etc. today? We have better talent than NIU. Agree? We've improved recruiting under CGC. Agree?

With respect to losses to The Citadel, NIU, Syracuse, etc., I'd expect better results with any well-coached and executed scheme. Even more true as top 30 recruiting classes (and top 5 ACC) start to mature in the program. We should beat NIU, even when those recruits are still Frosh and a handful of Sophs.

My personal reaction to your posts is that you are "showing your true colors". I don't mean that negatively other than to call out my perception of biases misapplied to the situation. I think posts with 'Monken' and 'Bohannan' yesterday and today, post-NIU loss, ruin the argument's credibility by coming to the conversation with narrowly focused scheme-related suggestions. I've always remained open to at least thinking about those names, but because I'm seeing those posts today, those very posts are pushing me more toward believing folks have an infatuation with the offense and less so because of its fit at GT. For that reason I will likely carry that new bias forward when I see the same claims in the future.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the reason for those types of posts in this thread and I would appreciate your POV.

I've said this before too.

Tech has a problem and its a big one. We will never be able to recruit the players needed to make the typical college spread offense work well enough to be a top 25 team consistently. I repeat, never. The school is already an anomaly; the only other STEM institution that wins consistently at a P5 level is Purdue and they haven't won as consistently as Tech. The admission standards get higher every year, rendering the exceptions granted for football players more and more difficult to fit to the players we need to get into school and stay.

There are two solutions to this. One is to go the UNC route; i.e. don't even begin to think of your major sports athletes as students, shunt them into fake majors, ignore the occasional scandals, and keep the standards for the rest of the school as stringent as they are. This works. UNC's rep as an academic institution hasn't suffered appreciatively and their teams win. The problem with this solution for Tech is that the nature of the institution doesn't give the athletic programs the majors needed to hide the athletes. It's an engineering school; it doesn't even have the few liberal arts majors that Purdue depends on. Further, neither the administration, the faculty, or the alums would like the cheapening of the degrees that could result. Not to mention the General Assembly, of course.

The second is the on Tech has usually take: play Moneyball. Successful Tech football programs are usually based on schemes - usually on offense - that allow Tech to attract good players who meet our requirements and who fit the scheme, even if they aren't highly recruited. This is what Dodd did with the dazzle-dazzle wing-T, what Ross/O'Leary/Fridgen did with their bewildering multiple offenses, and what Paul did with the spread option. As many have pointed out here before, under all of these coaches - and only Paul had to contend with Tech's higher academic requirements - we scored. A lot. Often with players that weren't highly recruited by other programs. As long as we got the players who "get on base" and a couple of others to sweeten the pot, we could put together winning seasons. This route can actually work, without having to corrupt the institution's academic standards to do it.

You pays your money …

 

[SteamWhistle]

To do what?

Closet thing we can do to a Mack Brown UNC type hire

 

[ilovetheoption]

Second thought:

I want to engage those whose default disposition is to dive into the 'Fire CGC' conversation with CPJ lineage solutions who also have a history of engaging in a level-headed way (@AlabamaBuzz, @jgtengineer, among others). I'm not going to engage with anyone who wants to flame/snark on either end of the spectrum. Please understand I'm coming at this with an interest in understanding and not trying to disparage your preferences.

What about yesterday's result justifies going back to Monken, Bohannan, etc. today? We have better talent than NIU. Agree? We've improved recruiting under CGC. Agree?

With respect to losses to The Citadel, NIU, Syracuse, etc., I'd expect better results with any well-coached and executed scheme. Even more true as top 30 recruiting classes (and top 5 ACC) start to mature in the program. We should beat NIU, even when those recruits are still Frosh and a handful of Sophs.

My personal reaction to your posts is that you are "showing your true colors". I don't mean that negatively other than to call out my perception of biases misapplied to the situation. I think posts with 'Monken' and 'Bohannan' yesterday and today, post-NIU loss, ruin the argument's credibility by coming to the conversation with narrowly focused scheme-related suggestions. I've always remained open to at least thinking about those names, but because I'm seeing those posts today, those very posts are pushing me more toward believing folks have an infatuation with the offense and less so because of its fit at GT. For that reason I will likely carry that new bias forward when I see the same claims in the future.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the reason for those types of posts in this thread and I would appreciate your POV.

So...I clearly do not fit your desired demographic with this (as I'm transparently somebody with an infatuation with the offense, and not somebody interested in GT's best interest at heart, with the exception of the fact that i've grown fond of the fanbase over the years), but I'll jump in. If it's not welcome, please feel free to delete this post, as "fans of other teams showing up after years when we're at our lowest to offer their opinions" might not be what you're looking for at the moment.

That said: what does your fanbase think should be your "expected value" as a football program.

If you didn't care about GT at all, but were a fan of East California State, and with no passion looked across the country, and assessed GT, what would you think their fans should reasonably expect?

You're a small school, with a tough academic program, in a great recruiting area, with a crappy fanbase (remember, external eyes. You don't show up to games, you don't have a great giving base, etc), with "meh" facilities, in a good but not great conference, and you're perennially short funds. There are some plusses, there are some minuses.

From this outsider's point of view, it's silly to think you "deserve" any better than middle of the road in the ACC, some years better, some years worse. This is true for recruiting, this is true for results.

I see no reason to believe you'll ever be a recruiting powerhouse. Even with Collins, who has a reputation of a great recruiter, his classses are as follows, nationally:
2021: #48
2020: #27
2019: #50
For 2022, you currently sit at #31

(source: https://247sports.com/Season/2019-Football/CompositeTeamRankings

That's.....meh. Given that there are ~65 P5 teams, it seems that Collins is recruiting "average" to "below average" vis a vis his peers.

If you're going to run vanilla schemes, and recruit at an average level, then unlesss you're just EXCELLENT teachers, you're likely to achieve average results. (As far as I'm concerned, conference record is what you judge by. Those are your peers).

IF YOU ALLOW that the "recruit our way to victory" looks to be not happening (given that you're not currently out recruiting your peers, and given the results on the field, recruiting is likely to get harder, not easier, as vision gets harder and harder to sell), and you want success, then scheme is the other way to do it.

There are relatively few outlier schemes these days, and the one most familiar to your fans is the one you just ran, and....it worked.

Paul Johnson had exactly 1 losing season in conference in his 11 years at the helm.

In my opinion, he consistently outperformed your "fundamentals" as a program.

He was never likely to win a national title, but (and you probably don't want to hear this), you are never likely to win a national title. Those days are over for you guys, as long as you are not playing to win like the powerhouses are.

Honestly, those calling for a CPJ scheme are (in my opinion) being realistic and accepting the cold, hard, Braine truth. Your school/program/donors/fanbase/etc are not willing to do what it takes to really be a powerhouse, so they should stop pretending like they're going to be a powerhouse by following the example of the other powerhouses. It's not going to happen. So either freaking BECOME Georgia, and drastically reduce your academic standards, and spend millions and millions on facilities and TV and marketing, and etc, or stay Georgia Tech, and punch above your weight via scheme.

 

[stech81]

I have an idea but before I call our AD I'm going to need $32 million and $14 for a 12 pack of Bud Light .

 

[Keck]

Unfortunately we are probably stuck with him at least 1 more year.

at least 2 or 3 more years

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

I think Clemson last year was. The had their punter playing quarterback and were moving the ball

Good point. A real embarrassing turn of affairs for sure.

 

[gtg936g]

Second thought:

I want to engage those whose default disposition is to dive into the 'Fire CGC' conversation with CPJ lineage solutions who also have a history of engaging in a level-headed way (@AlabamaBuzz, @jgtengineer, among others). I'm not going to engage with anyone who wants to flame/snark on either end of the spectrum. Please understand I'm coming at this with an interest in understanding and not trying to disparage your preferences.

What about yesterday's result justifies going back to Monken, Bohannan, etc. today? We have better talent than NIU. Agree? We've improved recruiting under CGC. Agree?

With respect to losses to The Citadel, NIU, Syracuse, etc., I'd expect better results with any well-coached and executed scheme. Even more true as top 30 recruiting classes (and top 5 ACC) start to mature in the program. We should beat NIU, even when those recruits are still Frosh and a handful of Sophs.

My personal reaction to your posts is that you are "showing your true colors". I don't mean that negatively other than to call out my perception of biases misapplied to the situation. I think posts with 'Monken' and 'Bohannan' yesterday and today, post-NIU loss, ruin the argument's credibility by coming to the conversation with narrowly focused scheme-related suggestions. I've always remained open to at least thinking about those names, but because I'm seeing those posts today, those very posts are pushing me more toward believing folks have an infatuation with the offense and less so because of its fit at GT. For that reason I will likely carry that new bias forward when I see the same claims in the future.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the reason for those types of posts in this thread and I would appreciate your POV.

I don’t automatically go to the CPJ tree but I could definitely get behind one of those hires. The reason I would be in favor of a hire like that (regardless of the system) is that they demonstrate a deep understanding and trust of the system they run. They can quickly see gaps in the system and know how to avoid or fix them. They run the system they run because they understand it, know it, and can fix it. They don’t pick the system because it is a NFL offense or is what successful teams are running at the time. Lincoln Riley, Mike Leach, Paul Johnson, Steve Spurrier all have that in common and that is why they were successful with the systems they run/ran.

I don’t buy the recruiting improvement. We just need what everyone else needs and the players that tend to fit that mold get rated higher. The 2014 team had better talent than Collins has recruited when you look at it from a player matching the system perspective.

 

[Keck]

Hey Cuse. I so appreciate your communication style. I will try to do this with brevity, because I thought I had been clear.

First of all, I was a fan of the triple O for GT, as I think it gave us a niche that would allow for some special seasons and victories - I am not one that believes we can do that every year with or without a niche.

BUT, and this is an important "but", I am o.k. with another direction as long as people understand that we MUST have a special HC at GT to make a difference in the CF landscape. We can recruit better, as CGC has proven, but we are not going to be recruiting in the top 10, in my opinion, and the difference between top 10 and top 40 has never been larger. Heck, the difference between top 5 and top 15 has never been larger.

2021 is so much different than 1990 was - But, having a coach (and staff) that runs a tight ship and is smarter than most of their competition is KEY at GT, in my opinion. I will be happy with any offensive system that gives GT a chance at some very good years.

I would still like a "niche" to give us an advantage. I don't pretend that niche can only be the flexbone. I am sure there are other niches that would provide a similar advantage. We must have creative, out of the box thinking coaches.

But, right now, we are embarassing from a game prep and game time decision standpoint. So, the rest of the conversation is kind of moot at this point. I don't have an answer to how we get out of this anytime soon. I will still be rooting for wins, no matter who coaches.

Most embarrassing is that the coach acts like a goof ball and we lose!

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

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.

The thing about Butch was that he was not able to build upon that miracle win against UGA in the final seconds and a lot of his gimmickry became the butt of jokes from wisenheimers on the internet and talk shows. Tennessee, like Nebraska, has entered into an era of wandering in the wilderness but they still get great players and have far more resources (read money to buy players) than we do. IIWII

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

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.

We are uncomfortably close to entering that football netherworld inhabited by Vanderbilt, Rice, Tulane, and others that condemn programs to what seems an eternity of wandering about being slaughtered by powerhouses and enduring polite turning away of heads when losing to G-5 or worse programs. I would hope that our access to pretty good talent would save us from such a fate but I don't know. Ancient history, I know, but there was a time within living memory when all three of those programs were widely respected if not feared. IIWII

 

[SimpleGT]

So...I clearly do not fit your desired demographic with this (as I'm transparently somebody with an infatuation with the offense, and not somebody interested in GT's best interest at heart, with the exception of the fact that i've grown fond of the fanbase over the years), but I'll jump in. If it's not welcome, please feel free to delete this post, as "fans of other teams showing up after years when we're at our lowest to offer their opinions" might not be what you're looking for at the moment.

That said: what does your fanbase think should be your "expected value" as a football program.

If you didn't care about GT at all, but were a fan of East California State, and with no passion looked across the country, and assessed GT, what would you think their fans should reasonably expect?

You're a small school, with a tough academic program, in a great recruiting area, with a crappy fanbase (remember, external eyes. You don't show up to games, you don't have a great giving base, etc), with "meh" facilities, in a good but not great conference, and you're perennially short funds. There are some plusses, there are some minuses.

From this outsider's point of view, it's silly to think you "deserve" any better than middle of the road in the ACC, some years better, some years worse. This is true for recruiting, this is true for results.

I see no reason to believe you'll ever be a recruiting powerhouse. Even with Collins, who has a reputation of a great recruiter, his classses are as follows, nationally:
2021: #48
2020: #27
2019: #50
For 2022, you currently sit at #31

(source: https://247sports.com/Season/2019-Football/CompositeTeamRankings

That's.....meh. Given that there are ~65 P5 teams, it seems that Collins is recruiting "average" to "below average" vis a vis his peers.

If you're going to run vanilla schemes, and recruit at an average level, then unlesss you're just EXCELLENT teachers, you're likely to achieve average results. (As far as I'm concerned, conference record is what you judge by. Those are your peers).

IF YOU ALLOW that the "recruit our way to victory" looks to be not happening (given that you're not currently out recruiting your peers, and given the results on the field, recruiting is likely to get harder, not easier, as vision gets harder and harder to sell), and you want success, then scheme is the other way to do it.

There are relatively few outlier schemes these days, and the one most familiar to your fans is the one you just ran, and....it worked.

Paul Johnson had exactly 1 losing season in conference in his 11 years at the helm.

In my opinion, he consistently outperformed your "fundamentals" as a program.

He was never likely to win a national title, but (and you probably don't want to hear this), you are never likely to win a national title. Those days are over for you guys, as long as you are not playing to win like the powerhouses are.

Honestly, those calling for a CPJ scheme are (in my opinion) being realistic and accepting the cold, hard, Braine truth. Your school/program/donors/fanbase/etc are not willing to do what it takes to really be a powerhouse, so they should stop pretending like they're going to be a powerhouse by following the example of the other powerhouses. It's not going to happen. So either freaking BECOME Georgia, and drastically reduce your academic standards, and spend millions and millions on facilities and TV and marketing, and etc, or stay Georgia Tech, and punch above your weight via scheme.

Well reasoned. I think the biggest frustration of the PJ supporters ( and I am admittedly one ) is that the pain of the last 2 seasons plus one game seems to be all for nothing. The 3O niche wasn't fashionable and lead to many NFL players but I think most of the PJ crowd believe we would have won more that a lousy 6 games since the "greatest transition ever".

 

[AUFC]

I have been in shock and awe since about 9:30pm last night that Geoff Collins let a student section decide a 4th down for him. How completely spineless.