Have you taken a glimpse at our strategic plans lately? Supposedly our leadership has and thinks GT can be a leader in many areas. When asked the question directly, Bud Peterson didn't duck by saying iiwii and saying our alumni/fanbase is full of cheap SOBs that wouldn't even fill the stadium even when we're winning. Maybe he's a liar? I'll give them credit, they took a Business School that was lightly regarded and has it solidly in the Top 25. Maybe we got there by telling ourselves it was impossible and just waited for it to happen?
All I'm saying is I'm personally tired of all the excuses. People will buy a product that they consider to be worth the money (time, etc) they're spending on it. If we can't get the fans in the seats by recruiting great teams first, then improve the game day experience so we can generate the revenue to afford the recruiting. You guys are so freaking linear sometimes it's amazing. Ever heard the saying not every problem's a nail and not every solution is a hammer? If we can't beat the elite Teams straight up we need to use our old noggins to figure it out. Isn't that what Engineers are supposed to be able to do? I refuse to believe we're too stupid to win. Too lazy, too many defeatist attitudes to deal with, other priorities we think are more important, ok but not too dumb. That's just crazy talk. GT should be a showcase, not a doorstop.
Of course Peterson isn't going shrug his shoulders and say iiwii. Look what happened to the last guy who said it was unrealistic to win 9-10 games a year here - fans didn't like them too much.
It's off base to compare the B school to our football team. For one, Tech has one of the largest endowments of any school at over a billion dollars. There are about 20-25 "major" (including Vandy, SMU) football schools ahead of us in endowment. Tech's original management program was so successful it became its own school - Georgia State. The whole point of Tech's management school was to fill an established need for management training in technology, which is why the industrial management degree was established in 1934 - that associated master's degree was the first professional management degree offered in the state of georgia.
That's not even getting into your false statement that the B school has ever been lightly regarded. Just looking at 1950s graduates alone, the school has churned out significant businessmen, executives at Amex, INVESCO, Delta, Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, Habersham & Cowan, ComSouth, Merrill Lynch, etc. I've lived in the city of Atlanta for over 20 years, and I've not once heard anyone credible "lightly regard" GTs business school.
It's also foolish to compare the B school to football because the economics are completely different. The market for a tech-focused management degree demanded a program like GTs, especially in the southeast. That's a natural fit. It's easy for a top engineering school to recruit brilliant minds and then offer them a science-related business learning opportunity should they decide that science isn't for them.
The same isn't true at all for football, and GT is not presented with any synergies in that regard. Those wonderful science students that support the b school? They are a negative weight on a football program since they don't bother to show up for the games.
In sum - it's not linear at all to recognize GTs shortcomings. No other major program has as few majors as we do, as few alumni as we do, and as few fans as we do. Those are facts, not excuses. When other programs are bringing in over $100 more in revenue than you are, and more than doubling your average attendance, those are also facts, not excuses.
Nobody has a defeatist attitude. Nobody is guilty of linear thinking. That's why we support CPJ. Of course GT is working on improving the fan experience - just as they have for the last decade.
But your use of cliches demonstrates that our problems are not easy to solve - if they are, in fact, solvable, which they may not be. We can't just snap our fingers and assume people will buy a product that they consider worth the money. It doesn't work that way. Ever wonder why the Braves stadium had tons of empty seats in the 90s, including in the playoffs? That wasn't because they put up a subpar team. What else can GT do to improve the fan experience? They've already done up the whole jacket walk, add a ton of pregame festivities on the north end of the stadium, added a premium tailgating area, added the fifth street bridge area for tailgaiting, added more premium seating in the stadium, added more and better food options, etc. etc. They've invested in massive marketing efforts (#togetherweswarm?). When recruiting was proving to be problematic, we hired more people to help.
At the end of the day though, just saying that "GT should be a showcase, not a doorstop" ignores every reality we face. Why shouldn't any other team we play be a showcase? What makes GT so much more special that we should automatically compete with teams that have more money and easier paths than we do. Being a GT fan to me has always been about trying to do more with less. It's great when we win, but pretending our football program isn't presented with innumerable hurdles is just ignoring reality. The opposite isn't "defeatist" - I promise I cheer louder than you and go to more games than you do. But expecting us to magically fix all of our shortcomings is a fools errand.
