Bruce Heppler has done a helluva job with golf and raises a ton of money. My recollection is that he has the nicest suite at Bobby Dodd. Even better than the AD suite.
I *think* that is where we are headed. Use the ACC payouts to reinvest across all athletics and try to get to the point where we are marginally competitive again at football. Supposedly TStan was "laser focused" on fixing football, so we can put a question mark there.
Bruce Heppler has the most dominant program in GT sports in the last 2 decades plus. It's not a "revenue" sport like basketball and football, but our men's golf program is easily the most consistent and most dominant program in the last 2 decades plus. No other program has won as much and as consistently as our golf program.
Danny Hall, for all the grief he gets for not having more post season success, his program is the second most dominant program at GT.
Kenny Thorn, our tennis coach, is probably right there with Hall in terms of success at GT.
I'm not familiar with our other "non revenue" sports to make a statement about it, so others can chime in. My point in all of this our most dominant programs have been dominant well before TStan came here, and if TStan were to leave tommorrow, those programs would continue to do well because of coaches TStan was lucky to inherit.
Our Men's basketball team making the tournament wasn't due to some genius manuever by TStan like helping Pastner hire an outstanding recruiter or a top notch assistant. Reveno, one of the best assistants in any sports at GT, was already here. All the players that led our run to the ACCT championship and NCAAT appearance were already here when TStan was hired.
TStan did well with women's basketball convincing Nell Fortner to leave the ESPN booth and return to coaching. She has been a fantastic hire in terms of leadership and coaching acumen...and she can recruit like I wish Pastner could. TStan deserves a lot of credit for hitting home run here.
If CGC turns out to be a dud of a hire (unfortunately, it's trending in that direction), none of that will matter because this will be TStan's biggest albatross unless he finds a coach that will make us all forget CGC. TStan will get to make the next football HC hire because he's earned enough capital with donors and most fans, but if that one turns out to be a dud as well, TStan's days may be numbered. When you're a P5 AD, getting your football program in the right direction is maybe at the top of your responsibilities because the revenue from football funnels down to every other program. Football is the rising tide that lifts all boats in college athletics at the P5 level.
www.sportsbusinessjournal.com
. CGC will probably get his 10th win on 9/10/22. Please let me be wrong. I’m driving to South Bend this weekend and I would like to see a decent game…maybe even an upset.
