Paul Johnson's job

[Frenchise]

Times have changed at Tech. Football success probably no longer has anything at all to do with getting better students. At my reunion party Friday night, Peterson said that Tech currently has around 1400 openings each year and 30,000 applicants (I don't remember the exact numbers, but something like that ratio). He also said the current average SAT scores for admitted students is 1400. Tech is going to get those students regardless of success on the football field or basketball arena. More football success will get us better STUDENT-athletes for sure, but not better STUDENTS. It is what it is.

We can always get better students. Don't kid yourself.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

We can always get better students. Don't kid yourself.

But we won't get better students as the result of football success or basketball success. We will get better students overall because of the increased awareness of the academic environment at Tech. I don't particularly like this, but I'm afraid it is true.

 

[Frenchise]

But we won't get better students as the result of football success or basketball success. We will get better students overall because of the increased awareness of the academic environment at Tech. I don't particularly like this, but I'm afraid it is true.

Believe it or not- but some smart, well rounded students place some weight on the football experience. The well rounded students end up as executives more often than the extremely strong in math but not social skills types.

Those could improve the academics and the alumni of the future.

You are literally saying football doesn't affect the choices of smart kids. That is just false.

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

Believe it or not- but some smart, well rounded students place some weight on the football experience. The well rounded students end up as executives more often than the extremely strong in math but not social skills types.

Those could improve the academics and the alumni of the future.

You are literally saying football doesn't affect the choices of smart kids. That is just false.

No. What I am saying is that there already far more smart kids wanting to get into Tech than Tech can even accept. If some of those who DO get into Tech like football, then GREAT!! Glad to have them. But I just don't think there are that many who will get accepted, regardless of their intelligence or appreciation of good athletics. The competition to get into Tech is just too high.

 

[Frenchise]

No. What I am saying is that there already far more smart kids wanting to get into Tech than Tech can even accept. If some of those who DO get into Tech like football, then GREAT!! Glad to have them. But I just don't think there are that many who will get accepted, regardless of their intelligence or appreciation of good athletics. The competition to get into Tech is just too high.

I don't want just smart kids. I want smart, well-rounded kids.

If more apply because of football, more will be accepted and tech should prefer the well rounded with the same SAT as those who aren't.

If you think there aren't many valedictorians or 1400 SAT score students at Bama or UGA, your just plain wrong.

 

[Frenchise]

No. What I am saying is that there already far more smart kids wanting to get into Tech than Tech can even accept. If some of those who DO get into Tech like football, then GREAT!! Glad to have them. But I just don't think there are that many who will get accepted, regardless of their intelligence or appreciation of good athletics. The competition to get into Tech is just too high.

You're*

Dupe

 

[Supersizethatorder-mutt]

I don't want just smart kids. I want smart, well-rounded kids.

If more apply because of football, more will be accepted and tech should prefer the well rounded with the same SAT as those who aren't.

If you think there aren't many valedictorians or 1400 SAT score students at Bama or UGA, your just plain wrong.

You nor I have any idea whether "well rounded" has that much bearing on admittance. I would hope that it does, at least to some extent, but, as I said in my original post, times are a helluva lot different than they used to be. My freshman class back in '62 seemed to be incredibly well rounded, and I would say that 95% of them attended the football games (and got there on time too). Look at the empty seats in the student section now, and tell me that the students care about the football games. I would LOVE to see more students supporting the football and basketball teams, but, and this is nothing to be proud or pleased with, I'm afraid it's not going to happen. Regarding 1400 SAT students at Bama or Georgia or any other school, I'm sure there are plenty, but they are mostly liberal arts majors, and they wouldn't want to come to Tech even if we were perennial national champions.

 

[Vespidae]

As a UAB grad, I will tell you this is BS. Alabama grads are doing OK in Birmingham, but it is absolutely absurd to say they are anything but trivial in Atlanta.

I'm interested to know how you think this is BS? Do you know my circle of friends? I expect not.

And read what I said. I didn't say they were setting the world on fire in terms of economic impact. I said their kids had decided to attend Alabama compared to the other options.

BTW ... the largest alumni concentration for Alabama outside of Alabama is ... Atlanta.

 

[Vespidae]

Football success probably no longer has anything at all to do with getting better students.

I'm referring to the Harvard study. Their conclusion was that football programs tend to draw both more, and higher quality, applicants.

Perhaps Tech is already there and needs less of both. Or ... maybe they need more in-state applicants. I continue to be depressed when I encounter students on campus who struggle with English.

 

[orientalnc]

I'm interested to know how you think this is BS? Do you know my circle of friends? I expect not.

And read what I said. I didn't say they were setting the world on fire in terms of economic impact. I said their kids had decided to attend Alabama compared to the other options.

BTW ... the largest alumni concentration for Alabama outside of Alabama is ... Atlanta.

This is silly on a number of levels. Alabama grads, like Ole Miss grads and Florida grads and FSU grads and Clemson grads flock to Atlanta because that is where the jobs are. And, people who can afford the out of state tuition send their kids to Bama because they can get it. The high end SAT scores at Bama are below the low end scores at uGA. Let that soak in for a moment. The state of Alabama has terrible school systems that get are terribly underfunded. That is why Bama has such low standards. This can get political in a hurry, so I prefer to let it drop. But, getting into the school is never an issue for athletes at Bama.

 

[LawTalkin Jacket]

It sure as hell is.

Here's another factoid I like to point out:

Of the 10 truly STEM colleges in the US (one that graduates 75+% STEM degrees annually), only 1 plays division 1 football.

Guess who that is?

You got a link?

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

You got a link?

http://www.usnews.com/education/blo...universities-that-grant-the-most-stem-degrees

 

[TheSilasSonRising]

Believe it or not- but some smart, well rounded students place some weight on the football experience. The well rounded students end up as executives more often than the extremely strong in math but not social skills types.

Those could improve the academics and the alumni of the future.

You are literally saying football doesn't affect the choices of smart kids. That is just false.

And this is the truth.

 

[Techster]

It sure as hell is.

Here's another factoid I like to point out:

Of the 10 truly STEM colleges in the US (one that graduates 75+% STEM degrees annually), only 1 plays division 1 football.

Guess who that is?

Cheese, we've butted heads over this before, and while I think it's certainly an important distinction to have...your 75% cutoff is arbitrary considering the fact that 90% (being liberal here) of our scholarship SAs do not have a STEM major. If you look further along the list of schools with STEM grads you'll find Stanford (54%), NC State (48%), Purdue (44%), Rice (44%), Michigan (43%), VA Tech (40%) as well as others on the list.

Now if the percentage of our players was in the neighborhood of 50% majoring in STEM fields, I'd think your 75% cutoff would have reasonable value, but the reality is less than 10% of our scholarship football SAs fit the STEM criteria.

BTW, since we're discussing majors, is anyone aware that GT is #5 for starting salaries for LIBERAL ARTS grads? It's true:

http://www.iac.gatech.edu/news-even...s-starting-salaries-liberal-arts-grads/332171

 

[JacketFromUGA]

Cheese, we've butted heads over this before, and while I think it's certainly an important distinction to have...your 75% cutoff is arbitrary considering the fact that 90% (being liberal here) of our scholarship SAs do not have a STEM major. If you look further along the list of schools with STEM grads you'll find Stanford (54%), NC State (48%), Purdue (44%), Rice (44%), Michigan (43%), VA Tech (40%) as well as others on the list.

Now if the percentage of our players was in the neighborhood of 50% majoring in STEM fields, I'd think your 75% cutoff would have reasonable value, but the reality is less than 10% of our scholarship football SAs fit the STEM criteria.

BTW, since we're discussing majors, is anyone aware that GT is #5 for starting salaries for LIBERAL ARTS grads? It's true:

http://www.iac.gatech.edu/news-even...s-starting-salaries-liberal-arts-grads/332171

my wife is a IAC grad who had a ton of classes with SAs the reason IAC grads have high salaries coming out is greatly thanks to internships and such.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

Now if the percentage of our players was in the neighborhood of 50% majoring in STEM fields, I'd think your 75% cutoff would have reasonable value, but the reality is less than 10% of our scholarship football SAs fit the STEM criteria.

While you are correct, this also ignores the fact that 90% of SAs in other schools don't fit much lower criteria for their universities degree programs, so the gulf still exists.

For example, our SAs are typically Business Administration (formerly Management) majors. Our BA program is ranked 39th in the nation. uga makes a big deal about their Terry School of Business, and how prestigious it is. Yet few of their SAs are enrolled in it. Terry, BTW, is ranked 67th. Our SA's take our schools "easy" major, which happens to be a top 40 program nationally. So while you can argue against the STEM logic, you can't ignore the fact that GT simply doesn't offer an easy way out for SAs wishing to simply play sports and coast.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-best-undergrad-business-schools/

 

[Techster]

While you are correct, this also ignores the fact that 90% of SAs in other schools don't fit much lower criteria for their universities degree programs, so the gulf still exists.

For example, our SAs are typically Business Administration (formerly Management) majors. Our BA program is ranked 39th in the nation. uga makes a big deal about their Terry School of Business, and how prestigious it is. Yet few of their SAs are enrolled in it. Terry, BTW, is ranked 67th. Our SA's take our schools "easy" major, which happens to be a top 40 program nationally. So while you can argue against the STEM logic, you can't ignore the fact that GT simply doesn't offer an easy way out for SAs wishing to simply play sports and coast.

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-best-undergrad-business-schools/

Where did I dismiss your point? I've said over and over that GT's academic environment precludes us from recruiting certain kinds of SAs. The fact that GT is a place where we can't hide SAs simply because GT across all majors is difficult isn't something new. No one disagrees with that. Of course, I can also make the argument that GT most certainly recruits a lot of the same kids that end up at schools like UGA and Clemson...we just can't convince them to come here.

That's a different discussion from a poster arbitrarily cutting off a qualification for STEM majors when GT's scholarship SAs rarely major in STEM fields. IMO, that's not a relevant statistic to explain some what's creating the difficulties for GT. GT having top schools across several disciplines (Business, Liberal Arts, Engineering, etc.) creating a difficult environment? Absolutely.

 

[Vespidae]

This is silly on a number of levels. Alabama grads, like Ole Miss grads and Florida grads and FSU grads and Clemson grads flock to Atlanta because that is where the jobs are. And, people who can afford the out of state tuition send their kids to Bama because they can get it. The high end SAT scores at Bama are below the low end scores at uGA. Let that soak in for a moment. The state of Alabama has terrible school systems that get are terribly underfunded. That is why Bama has such low standards. This can get political in a hurry, so I prefer to let it drop. But, getting into the school is never an issue for athletes at Bama.

Wow. Is this hitting a nerve or what?

I didn't mention SAT scores. I didn't mention ball players. And some of my friends' kids could barely add their allowance money. That's not what I was pointing out. Rather, this is the crux of my point ... with no further advocacy ...

A number of kids from the executives I know at the golf club, professionally, etc ... all sent their kids to Alabama. They attended GAC, Pace, Marist, etc ... so it's not like it's all one school sending their click to college. When I asked why and more importantly, why not go to UGA or Emory or wherever, I got a long face. They just wanted to go to Alabama. Did the parents attend Alabama? No. Does Alabama offer a unique education? No. They just wanted to go there.

My theory is that Alabama is popular because it's winning. Maybe I'm wrong about my theory. But I'm not wrong about kids wanting to go there. You can cite all the stats you want (and a lot of what you said is correct), but totally misses the point being made.

Oh yeah ... what was that point?

Harvard did a study of universities with football programs. They found that schools with winning football programs tend to get more applicants than those without, have a higher number of better students, and tend to get more alumni contributions than not. In short, they found a positive ROI on winning programs than universities that did not.

Alabama, in my view, is able to cast a wider net because of the infamy of its football program. So more kids want to go there. My friends kids being the example of how that is being realized.

Moving on ...

 

[GTRX7]

Where did I dismiss your point? I've said over and over that GT's academic environment precludes us from recruiting certain kinds of SAs. The fact that GT is a place where we can't hide SAs simply because GT across all majors is difficult isn't something new. No one disagrees with that. Of course, I can also make the argument that GT most certainly recruits a lot of the same kids that end up at schools like UGA and Clemson...we just can't convince them to come here.

That's a different discussion from a poster arbitrarily cutting off a qualification for STEM majors when GT's scholarship SAs rarely major in STEM fields. IMO, that's not a relevant statistic to explain some what's creating the difficulties for GT. GT having top schools across several disciplines (Business, Liberal Arts, Engineering, etc.) creating a difficult environment? Absolutely.

I would argue the % of STEM majors is relevant, as that necessarily defines the % of non-STEM options available. So, while it is true that most GT football players (not sure about athletes as a whole) take a non-STEM program, those non-STEM programs are very limited and, if you don't want to do business, now you are down to only about 3 obscure major options at Tech. Take away STEM and business from Stanford, and I am pretty sure incoming athletes still have a heck of a lot of options to chose from.

Plus, I think it is notable to compare Tech against its other comparable academic STEM schools and note the huge discrepancy in athletics. We can and should be proud of that.

 

[chewybaka]

It was a good call. And totally consistent with his philosophy.

Poor execution.

There comes a point when the probability of successful execution Trump's the clever play calling...if you consistenly are not executing a play calling adjustment should be a component of the play calling consideration....