That's one of the reasons I liked the TO. Tech is the Milwaukee Brewers of college football. We don't have the $100M budgets, the huge fanbases, the swag sales. We're a small, niche school and we need a Moneyball approach to playing the game. The Brewers don't pay big salaries, they can't. They have developed an approach that works for them and they are disciplined enough to manage it.
We talk about winning the ACC or being Top 20. Go check out all of the other programs that are saying that and see how we stack up. It isn't pretty. Without an advantage, it will be very, very difficult to be relevant.
In today's world, I'm fine with being competitive in basketball, baseball and golf and at least have fun in football. The gap however, is growing by leaps every year.
There are many systems that would work at GT and that would give us an advantage. However, you need coaches that can develop and implement their schemes. As good as schemes are, coaches also need to be willing to adjust. Look at Monken and Bohannon. Both are CPJ disciples, but both understood that modern defenses and defensive players have evolved...and they tweaked their offenses to adjust to them. Many of CPJ's schemes are being used today, being repackaged to be recruiting friendly (Read the Sports Illustrated article about that).
Friedgen ran a system that was ahead of its time that used option reads and dual threat QBs. I promise you if he came back to coach our offense, we'd average 30+ points a game against today's defenses. If you listen to his philosophy on attacking defenses, those principles still stand today. Good coaching is good coaching.
Mike Leach, Godfather of the Air Raid, had early success, and he's still successful to a degree. His disciples have had tremendous success because they understood that the "pure" form of Air Raid that Leach likes to run was being schemed with modern defenders.
Lane Kiffen's offense would have worked here. His passing attack gets a lot of the headlines, but his rushing attack is equally as devastating. His offense averages over 300 yards passing and over 200 yards rushing a game. He's not "out athleting" many teams in the SEC, he just has a good understanding of running and passing offenses, and his schemes work. Nick Saban will be the first in line to tell you Kiffen is a MUCH better play caller and offensive coach than he gets credit for. Against Alabama, who has the apex of defensive players, Kiffen put up 48 points, 365 yards passing, and 268 yards rushing. That's over 600 HUNDRED yards against Saban's vaunted defense. You dont' think that offense would work here?
Point is, there's isn't just one answer in terms of offense or defense that will work at GT. I agree that GT needs a "system", and a coach that's an expert at it. It doesn't necessarily need to be a CPJ spread option variant.
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