Need An Understanding On QB Play

[Heisman's Ghost]

I was there during the Pepper era. Pepper's problem was that for all the David Sims, Eddie Lees, Drew Hill, Kent Hill, etc., the player next to him was not D1 caliber.

That sums it up as well as anything. Seems to have become an ongoing problem down through the years and continues on today as well.

 

[Skeptic]

That is one way of putting it. A friend of mine's father played on that 1952 national championship team with Pepper who was not the quarterback. Anyway, this man married a girl he met at Tech and it turned out was from Brown High School where Pepper was the quarterback. He was constantly after her for dates and was not happy when she spurned him and married my friend's father. The reason for her doing so was because Pepper just had a, shall we say, inflated opinion of himself which she did not share.

But let's be charitable. Pepper took on the challenge of revitalizing a down in the dumps program in the mid 1970s and through an engaging personality, love for Georgia Tech, and a vision of what Tech football could be, he did about as well as could be expected. Even Bobby Dodd said as much. Incidentally, on that 1952 national championship team that was loaded with talent as witnessed by no fewer than 6 All Americans of one kind or another, according to my friend's father the undisputed toughest guy on the team was an unheralded center and linebacker named Lum Snyder. I hope I got that name right. When Tech played a number 6 ranked Duke in Durham later in the season (yep, Duke used to be very good in football) he was said to have started a fight with a Duke lineman that escalated into an all out brawl after Tech had pretty much blown the Devils out.

I did hear this story regarding the 1951 Orange Bowl when GT beat Baylor 17-14 on a Rodgers' FG. I think he was a freshman that year. Supposedly in practice Pepper could not hit the ocean from a rowboat in practice all week. When finally an exasperated Bobby Dodd ripped him pretty good, he was reported to have said that Dodd should stop fretting: "Put 50,000 people in here and I'll never miss."

I hope the story is true because it is too good to be made up.