Northwestern South ??

[bobongo]

The Calculus argument is thin.
1) There are great HS student-athletes who are more than capable of passing calculus.
2) Not all majors at Tech require calculus.

• Analytical abilities are a fundamental strength of all Georgia Tech students. To help them develop those skills, Tech students are required to take differential calculus, integral calculus, and linear algebra. However, most liberal arts students have an alternative math option more closely aligned with their majors. With the help of their advisors, Ivan Allen students select one of these sequences. About half of IAC undergraduates take each path.

The solution here isn't to just add majors that don't have calculus. That's like saying, hey, let's just print money to solve the lack of money issues. As noted, it cannot be easily done. The added programs need to be vetted and approved and this takes years. We have to demonstrate a need for this sort of degree program, and the answer can't be, "We need a major, distinct from the current offerings, that we can park GT football SAs in so that we can compete on the field." That's not why a great school would add a major. Adding a major with this as your main motivation would disqualify you from being a great school. Someone posted that we should quit trying to be an Ivy League school. I hope that was in jest. Offering calculus in a majority of our degree programs as a requirement is not our attempt to be an Ivy League school. It's part of Tech's attempt to ensure that Tech graduates are technically equipped to design, engineer, build, and lead.

The GTPres must be a GT alum to be favorable to GT Football argument is even more thin.
1) We have only had one GT alum as GT President. He was a great president of the Institute. We have had other great presidents, of course. The football team has been great at various times over the years, regardless.
2) It is true that a school president unfriendly to the AD and athletic programs can be a huge issue, but I don't know of any proof that this is the case currently.

We are doing things that need to be done: facilities, increased coaching money, high level of student athlete academic help, etc.

Tech is a place where we need a certain amount (more than programs that are fully stocked) of luck/good fortune in games and in avoiding injuries in order for us to be in front of a good opportunity to upset better teams, play competitively with similar level teams, and not stumble in front of lesser teams. This is because we don't have a 100 stars on the sidelines at home games like Bama, Clemson, etc. do. It doesn't mean we can't also be great consistently. It means we have to be more efficient in recruiting the right SAs, keep them healthy, and not lose them to academics.

In my opinion, the biggest issues around getting the right Tech men/women here as student athletes is related to competing on recruiting. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is the unethical recruiting approaches of many top 25 football programs. Greyshirting, and for that matter, straight up lying to recruits is a giant issue, both of which affect other schools attempting to recruit the same players. Also an issue is outreach to the individuals most likely to want to play for Tech and earn a Tech degree; it isn't CPJ's sole responsibility. It's having a recruiting budget that allows us to really reach for these diamonds in the rough. Georgia Tech should be able to analytically find and appeal to these SAs.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

All this makes some sense, but I imagine that the chances of the Board of Regents adding courses or changing the curriculum for the sake of the football program are somewhere around zero. If changes come to the curriculum, they will come with complete disregard of the football program.

Why not instead concentrate on doing something now to recruit good players nationwide who want to matriculate from a top notch school offering what we have to offer RIGHT NOW?

I agree with both you and GT 05 that much more could be done recruiting nationwide for linemen in particular. We can find all the running backs, receivers, quarterbacks, and other skill positions right in our own backyard but something has to be done to facilitate raising the bar on getting better, much better offensive and defensive linemen. I disagree with both of you that the curriculum restrictions do not matter. They do and they were put in place by the BOR with the assent of the Hill to hamstring our football program. It matters a lot and will not be overcome by improvement of recruiting resources alone. Until recruiting is addressed football will become an afterthought as Georgia Tech continues to slide ever so slowly down the pecking order in getting talent compared to our ACC brethren. Currently, we are probably somewhere near the bottom already. The death spiral of a football program happens fairly quickly once recruiting slides but recovery is much harder and takes a minimum of 5 years. Do we really want to revisit the early 1980s?

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

My question is this. What are the major differences between us and Virginia Tech? Do they offer more variety of degrees than we do???

Why do you think they changed the name to Virginia Institute of Technology and State University? It wasn't to enhance the curriculum or the academic prestige of the university. It was done to enable the athletic department to find majors to hide budding scholars like Michael Vick. At one time both Virginia Tech (known for many years as VPI or Virginia Polytechnic Institute) and Auburn (known back in my father's time as Alabama Polytechnic Institute) were geared to engineering, agriculture, veterinary and sciences. They saw the error of their ways and became universities which conveniently enabled both of them to recruit just about anyone who could spell their name unassisted.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

To play Devil's Advocate here....how did it hurt Uga to lower its standards? How did it hurt UNC to lower its standards? How did it hurt ANY university to lower its standards for its athletics programs?

I understand *you* may not like it, but I fail to see how it has tangibly hurt ANY university involved. In every single case I am aware of, the overwhelming majority of quality students/courses/and professors was just fine and dandy and unaffected by any implied reputational harm.

UGA had standards back in the day? Who knew? What's the world coming to anyway that the "Dwags" would have any standard other than getting any football player they needed into school and keeping him there including near illiterates.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

Thank you! Plus, it's the BOR that requires Calculus for any degree at GT.

We have a saying in south Georgia: "The sun doesn't shine on the same hound dog every day" If the BOR requires calculus then there are shall we say "creative" ways around that requirement with a wink and nod plus of course the excellent academic assistance provided by the athletic department's in house nerds.

 

[augustabuzz]

We have the calculus requirement because we dared to beat UG 8 in a row. The BOR made it a requirement that all programs at Tech. require calculus. That was when opposing coaches began taking a calculus book on recruiting visits.

 

[ibeattetris]

For everyone who keeps bringing up Calculus, we offer a course called “Survey of Calculus” that non engineers can take. Much less rigorous. I honestly don’t think Calculus itself is an issue anymore. The lack of diverse majors is probably a bigger bottle neck from an academic stand point.

 

[augustabuzz]

For everyone who keeps bringing up Calculus, we offer a course called “Survey of Calculus” that non engineers can take. Much less rigorous. I honestly don’t think Calculus itself is an issue anymore. The lack of diverse majors is probably a bigger bottle neck from an academic stand point.

It still includes "The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" in the syllabus.

 

[ibeattetris]

It still includes "The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" in the syllabus.

And the course still requires you to learn basic calculus. The difference is the level of rigor. I am saying that this course plus the support student athletes get makes Calculus not a large factor. Forcing all athletes to basically choose between business management or engineering seems like a larger bottleneck to me.

Without actually hearing from recruits on why they don’t choose us, all we can do is conjecture. If I wasn’t interested in engineering, I’d have never considered Tech. I’d assume athletes will have similar lines of thinking.

 

[bobongo]

I agree with both you and GT 05 that much more could be done recruiting nationwide for linemen in particular. We can find all the running backs, receivers, quarterbacks, and other skill positions right in our own backyard but something has to be done to facilitate raising the bar on getting better, much better offensive and defensive linemen. I disagree with both of you that the curriculum restrictions do not matter. They do and they were put in place by the BOR with the assent of the Hill to hamstring our football program. It matters a lot and will not be overcome by improvement of recruiting resources alone. Until recruiting is addressed football will become an afterthought as Georgia Tech continues to slide ever so slowly down the pecking order in getting talent compared to our ACC brethren. Currently, we are probably somewhere near the bottom already. The death spiral of a football program happens fairly quickly once recruiting slides but recovery is much harder and takes a minimum of 5 years. Do we really want to revisit the early 1980s?

Curriculum restrictions certainly do matter, but what I'm emphasizing is that in all practicality we need to focus right now on nationwide recruiting. By the time the BOR gets around to doing something to broaden the curriculum, Stansbury will be in his rocking chair and I'll be in my wheelchair. What we need to do at present is get out there and find smart, good football players who want what we have to offer right now.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

I got you both beat, I will be with the good Lord. You are correct that the immediate focus should be on putting any and all resources into recruiting nationally especially positions that have become problematic for us in recent years such as defensive line.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

For everyone who keeps bringing up Calculus, we offer a course called “Survey of Calculus” that non engineers can take. Much less rigorous. I honestly don’t think Calculus itself is an issue anymore. The lack of diverse majors is probably a bigger bottle neck from an academic stand point.

I am sure you are correct in your assessment but its like that scene in Jaws: "You say barracuda and people go what? But when you say shark we have a panic on the Fourth of July" Calculus is the great white shark of academics for football players.

 

[MidtownJacket]

It’s gets back to the mission of the school, at least in my opinion.

We say we are creating the “tomorrow takers” as a school. That requires a baseline understanding of math and science. I know there is a knock on the Institute for being “elitist”, so I hope this doesn’t come off that way, but we are - by virtue of our charter and the alumni who have come before the current study body - committed to building the leaders of tomorrow.

I, along with many of our fellow graduates, believe in that mission. We believe that it requires educating young men and women beyond the minimum and preparing them for a lifetime of progress and service.

On top of that I hope for, and donate money to support, the notion of excellence in all areas we endeavor to compete in. I’m far more comfortable upping the ante of my support than I am entertaining a reduction in academic standards for the sake of competitiveness in sport. The mission of Georgia Tech is education, first and foremost.

As some of the posters above have said, if we decide on the grounds of academic achievement and advancement, to include additional majors then I support it full stop. If, however; we are chasing the ghost of recruiting players who won’t be able to handle the academic workload we expect today, then I would suggest we have lost our way. Our mission as a place of higher learning should not be tarnished by other school’s disregard for their own responsibilities. There is something painfully noble about Don Quixote’s commitment to tilting at windmills and it feels appropriate as a reference to our current situation.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[boger2337]

Why do you think they changed the name to Virginia Institute of Technology and State University? It wasn't to enhance the curriculum or the academic prestige of the university. It was done to enable the athletic department to find majors to hide budding scholars like Michael Vick. At one time both Virginia Tech (known for many years as VPI or Virginia Polytechnic Institute) and Auburn (known back in my father's time as Alabama Polytechnic Institute) were geared to engineering, agriculture, veterinary and sciences. They saw the error of their ways and became universities which conveniently enabled both of them to recruit just about anyone who could spell their name unassisted.

Then why are we so stubborn lol

 

[Vespidae]

Then why are we so stubborn lol

At the same time Auburn was changing its name, Tech was too. From the Georgia School of Technology to the Georgia Institute of Technology ... with a strong emphasis on "research" and not just "application". This was in 1948.

 

[Vespidae]

Curriculum restrictions certainly do matter, but what I'm emphasizing is that in all practicality we need to focus right now on nationwide recruiting. By the time the BOR gets around to doing something to broaden the curriculum, Stansbury will be in his rocking chair and I'll be in my wheelchair. What we need to do at present is get out there and find smart, good football players who want what we have to offer right now.

There are two sides to this.

First, historically, GT recruited the Atlanta metro heavily. In Dodd's day, he emphasized that to fill the stadium, you need kids within an hour of Atlanta so that on Saturdays ... friends and family would attend the games to see them play. Dominating high schools was the goal and you still see evidence of this with the naming of this school or that "Yellow Jackets". I know. Mine was one. Used the same logos and typeface as Tech. This has an added plus that Georgia/Alabama is the top recruiting ground in the nation. Both big plusses for recruiting heavily in Georgia. I wish we could dominate the state of Georgia in recruiting ....

But, we can't. While Georgia produces good athletes, the schools don't produce kids with the requisite math skills to attend Tech. This was true in the 1980's when I attended and it's still true today. Of the students I attended Tech with .... 80% of those who dropped out were from Georgia. Why? They couldn't handle the academics. I don't know the statistics today, but I'll bet the Hill knows. And that's useful for a recruiting strategy.

Moreover, we don't need a national recruiting strategy. We need a targeted recruiting strategy. The best players in the country come from a very small number of metro areas. We need to focus our attention not on Texas (too much to cover) but specifically, Dallas County. And fourteen more in cities like LA, Pittsburgh, (yes, Atlanta), etc. That does not require 40 recruiters and would be a novel approach compared to others. Data mining helps. I ran a data mining operation for a Fortune 50 company and staffed it with 100 analysts in India for a fraction of what it costs to do it here. Why Tech doesn't set up something similar is beyond me. The fact is Tech is suited to play Moneyball. We just don't. I wish we would.

These are problems most businesses have faced for decades. I think it's solvable. But you can't solve today's problems with yesterday's methods.

 

[rhino gold]

Look, as much as I admire Coach Dodd, you cannot equate what he did to today's college football game. Coach Dodd recruited mainly for single platoon football. If you could recruit 4-5 studs, you'd have a very good team. Now, you have to recruit 20 per year. Additionally, the Atlanta sports/entertainment market was vastly different in the 50's to mid 60's than it is today. Thus, Vespidae's final sentence "But you can't solve today's problems with yesterday's methods" is the absolute TRUTH!

 

[RiseUpATL]

It’s threads like these that make it so clear why our attendance is down, Recruiting is down and why we can’t seem to keep pace with the rest of CFB at the Divsion 1 FBS level and how difficult, if at all possible, it’s going to be to get better. Changes are perhaps beyond coaching. I still think we need a young firey presence leading the program.

 

[4shotB]

Moreover, we don't need a national recruiting strategy. We need a targeted recruiting strategy. The best players in the country come from a very small number of metro areas. We need to focus our attention not on Texas (too much to cover) but specifically, Dallas County. And fourteen more in cities like LA, Pittsburgh, (yes, Atlanta), etc. That does not require 40 recruiters and would be a novel approach compared to others. Data mining helps. I ran a data mining operation for a Fortune 50 company and staffed it with 100 analysts in India for a fraction of what it costs to do it here. Why Tech doesn't set up something similar is beyond me. The fact is Tech is suited to play Moneyball. We just don't. I wish we would.

These are problems most businesses have faced for decades. I think it's solvable. But you can't solve today's problems with yesterday's methods.

I think you are spot on. The issue you highlight is a symptom of the disease. When I reflect back to GT and the way it conducts its affairs (even beyond the GTAA to a certain extent) I am lead to the belief that the root cause is: A) Tech is not run/operated with its own graduates, meaning that the people staffing these spots are not trained problem solvers/critical thinkers. B) it is a sate run entity and is bogged down by the morass and inertia that affect all public and government organizations. C) the people in decision making situations have no business experience where you have to remain competitive or your risk losing your job/company/business. At Tech, if the FB team is not competitive, the school or the GTAA is not at risk. Just a handful of coaches have any real skin in the game. or D) some overlapping set of the first 3. Like you and most others who have experiences outside the confines of North Avenue, I remain perplexed, flabbergasted, mildly amused, irritated, consternated, etc.

 

[boger2337]

I suppose I dont want academics to keep us from getting the best kid available. I just don't. We can get them tutors and put them on the easiest graduation path