I apologize ahead of time for the military analogy, but I really think it's the most apropos.
I think we as fans sometimes confuse strategy and tactics. In terms of program building, performance on the field falls mostly under tactics. The reality is that we need a change in strategy if we wish to ever actually compete yearly for championships. Schools build programs by investing heavily in the programs. If you look at all the recent championship contenders, you will see programs who have continuously reinvested in their programs. They constantly build/improve facilities, hire top end coaches, pay big time money to assistants, and maximize recruiting staffs. They stamp their logo on anything that sells, and don't really care if it's the wrong color, much less the wrong shade of the right color. As long as fans are buying it, they don't really care. They pour into the fan experience, and build lifetime fans through their efforts. They ensure their schools have majors for athletes, that athletes actually want to major in.
In CPJ, we have a tactician. Through his coaching and offensive scheme, we can win individual battles along the way, but we are still losing the overall war. Beating an FSU in 2015, winning the occasional uga game, downing Clemson here and there, will not change the course of either our program or theirs.
In order to change our program, we need to understand that several things, but not necessarily all of them listed below, need to happen, and it needs to happen soon, before the college landscape leaves us too far behind to ever make up real ground.
1. We need money injected into our program. Stanford built their program with the help of a $270,000,000.00 endowment solely denoted for athletics programs.
2. We need to hire the absolute best assistants and coordinators money can buy, and pay them so well that they don't get poached easily.
3. We need to hire at least 8 more recruiting staff, and preferably 12 more.
4. We need to add a few majors, and get rid of the calculus requirement for majors that really don't need it.
5. We need to pour into our facilities, and cater to the whims of 18 year olds, no matter how "silly" it seems to us old fogies...
6. We need to generate buzz for the program by building an identity for ourselves that is appealing to the masses. Oregon did it through uniforms, GT needs to find a new identity soon.
7. We need to commit to filling the stadium every game. I don't care if this means cutting the price of tickets in half. This needs to be a priority. You can't build a fan base with empty seats in the stadium.
I am sure there are other strategies we need to look at, but I think I have made my point. If we want to see change, we need to understand the true cost, and agree that there can be no sacred cows. Everything must be on the table. We also need to understand the difference between tactics and strategy. We can hire a new HC, or DC, but unless we commit the money for top end, as per point 2, we are just changing tactics, not strategy. We can build/renovate a new locker room, but unless we immediately say, what next, we are not changing our strategy.
Now, before I hear all the rebuttal, I understand the reticence to change certain aspects of our program/Institution. I am not necessarily in favor of massive change just to be competitive at that level on a yearly basis. I, like many of you here, love GT precisely because of who we are, not who I wish we were. I also know that all of these items might not be easily achievable. I just see the writing on the wall, and I think we are just being willfully ignorant if we expect to continue doing what we are doing and get different results.
In addition, there is one other thing that can help us, but is out of our direct control: The ACC needs to become as "relevant" as the SEC/B1G. (We can argue ad nauseum about W/L records and head to head results, but the recruits preferences paint a different picture) We need not only Clemson, but FSU, Miami, VT, and a couple of other schools to become consistent winners. We also really need ND to join the ACC. The TV exposure that would ensue would help tremendously. Players want to play in the spotlight, and adding NDs TV deal (I'd let them keep it, with the caveat that they play 4 of their 12 games on the ACC network, as they use the money generated solely for academic uses) to the current ACC deal only helps us.
Anyways, this may be TL DR for some, but given the state of malaise that a certain portion of our posters are in, I felt the need to give my $0.02 worth. I will be in my seats for the VT and uga games regardless, and I hope that you guys will be there too.
