Gailey was a good man and he averaged 7 wins per year, same as Paul. Just couldn't beat Georgia. The way people talk about Chan here is pretty funny. Would I want him back? No.
People are just butthurt because he didn't beat Georgia. "Years of forgettable football is an ignorant statement".
There are lots I'd like to have happened differently but I don't and won't ever forget:
2003 he beat Auburn
2004 he beat Clemson in Death Valley
2005 he beat Auburn at Jordan Hare
2005 he beat #3 Miami @ Miami
2006 he led us to a conference championship game. We laid an egg that day, but if you guys can thump your chest about Paul finishing second in the acc coastal a few times as if that's some sort of feat then why can't you give credit to Chan for leading you to a championship game.
2007 he beat Notre Dame in SB
There were good times.
There is plenty I'll choose not to forget about Gailey.
This isn't directed completely at you, just partially towards you. People act like Paul came in and saved some bottom feeder program and was tasked with a rebuild of epic proportions and had to run his scheme to keep us competitive. That is just absurd. We just needed someone to get us over the hump, that's all. We were already very decent and not even close to being a dumpster fire. Paul was the perfect man for the job to come in and get us over that hump with the 09 Championship.
They both won us 7 per year and are both well respected. That being said, give me Paul over Chan.
In closing, to the people that always complain about losing the 06 title game to Wake and they say it like this: "He couldn't beat Wake frickin Forest for crying out loud, what a BUM he is. He had Calvin friggin Johnson". You sound just as ignorant as the yahoos now that complain when Paul is getting beat 4 out of 5 to Duke cause they say it the same way "He's owned by friggin Duke...friggin Duke. Duke football owns us, that's how bad Paul sucks". Both of those crowds are equally uninformed because they don't realize that "friggin Duke" is no longer "Friggin Duke", they're now a very decent football team.
And that Wake Forest team that beat us was a damn good football team. They were 11-2 beating Florida State to get there. Their only 2 losses were to Clemson and Virginia Tech. This wasn't the Wake Forest some of you like to pretend it was in order to smear Gailey.
Sorry for the rant. None of this matters anymore but it just annoys me when the people who have no idea about cfb moan about things that make no sense.
This is a really thoughtful take that I think a lot of folks on the message boards need to consider. In terms of avg wins per year, there wasn’t a big difference among Johnson, O’Leary, and Gailey. The former two best uga more than once, the latter never did.
(1) Gailey’s programs did a lot of things really well: I think they were better talent evaluators and talent developers. The avg overall stars for each class wasn’t that different between Gailey and Johnson. But I actually think Gailey and his staff were better at finding underrated 3 star prospects and developing them into good players. Daryl Richard, Vance Walker, Michael Johnson, and Andrew Gardner were all mid level 3 star (or lower) prospects that developed into NFL players - that’s just from one senior class. You have other guys such as PJ Daniels who went from being a preferred walk on to top 10 in school rushing yards. There aren’t as many examples of those kind of stories under PJ. I’ve been critical of the strength and conditioning program under PJ - a lot of our players just don’t look that much more physically developed as you would expect for a 5-year S&C program.
(2) With that said, the acc is significantly more competitive than it was under Gailey. Many after-thought programs (e.g. Duke and UVA) have made big investments to improve by hiring proven coaches and improving facilities. The argument could be made that Gailey achieved the same level of success (on avg) in a significantly easier competitive environment.
(3) The final thing to analyze is to consider whether the triple option uniquely enabled players that otherwise wouldn’t have succeeded. This is obviously really hard to forecast because many of these players never operated another collegiate offense aside from the TO. But my instincts say that Dwyer, D. Thomas, A. Allen, D. Smelter, O. Smith, J. Nesbitt, etc would’ve been successful in any collegiate spread offense. The only person who I believe was uniquely enabled was Justin Thomas. He wouldnt have achieved the same level of success (orange bowl, beating uga x2) as a QB in another offesnse. It’s probably true that Marshall and Tevin never would’ve won 7 games in other offenses either...but that goes back to my main point: the TO is only valuable if it drives incremental success (over our 7 win avg). And I’m not sure if the offense is as much of an “equalizer” if we’re only exceeding the 7 win threshold when we have special players who would achieve similar levels of success in any other spread offense.
(4) Assistant coaching is the biggest factor that will drive our success no matter who is the next HC. Johnson spoke multiple times about not having the funds to hire the assistants he wanted. I think Johnson’s mastery of his offense veiled some of the issues with player development that falls on position coaches. I think Gailey fell victim to inept offensive assistant coaching to the likes of Pat Nix. A HC is ultimately responsible for the player development and team success, but there’s no way they can manage a program and be that hands-on with day-to-day play development activities.