Smoke Screen On Statistics

[forensicbuzz]

AE 87: Yes, we have had some bad coaches over the past 25 years, that is obvious, but Tech and winning goes back much further than that. I want the kind of winning we had with the first three coaches. It is also obvious, the article left off the records of the first three coaches. Personally, I don't want Tech to be judged by the past 25 years, I want it to return to the era when we won consistently.

Two of those first 3 coaches have significant trophies named in their honor.

Those are pretty big shoes to fill for anyone. To have a 70% winning percentage today, we'd need to average 8-9 wins/season, which would be an impressive feat at any school. Given the landscape of today's game and the academic rigor at Tech, can we consistently bring in and coach up enough talent to average 8-9 wins/season? I would hope we could, but history isn't on our side.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

Two of those first 3 coaches have significant trophies named in their honor.

Those are pretty big shoes to fill for anyone. To have a 70% winning percentage today, we'd need to average 8-9 wins/season, which would be an impressive feat at any school. Given the landscape of today's game and the academic rigor at Tech, can we consistently bring in and coach up enough talent to average 8-9 wins/season? I would hope we could, but history isn't on our side.

To piggyback on your comments, we all want "the kind of winning we had with the first three coaches." What RK fails to consider, and you so aptly point out, is that the LANDSCAPE of college football has changed dramatically since Heisman's, Alexander's or Dodd's day. It's not even close. The schools at the top of the academic polls were also at the top of the football polls in those days and it was no coincidence. Back then, academic excellence was the main reason anybody attended college including the SA's. That's definitely not the case today.

 

[Squints]

Squints: Paul Johnson is responsible for the defense. The buck stops with him on every phase of the game.

Not much of an argument here but that's not what you said in your original post. You just blamed the offense and flat out said "you can't blame the defense."

Quite frankly I think the whole point of the article went over your head. You're reading into things that just aren't there.

 

[GTRX7]

ACC Games Only:

2013 31.1
2012 40.0
2011 28.0
2010 23.6
2009 32.6
2008 22.5

...and scoring against UGA:
2013 34
2012 10
2011 17
2010 34
2009 24
2008 45

There are absolutely no clear trends to indicate that folks have "figured out" this offense after the first two years. Season scoring per game has generally increased, ACC scoring has generally increased, and scoring against UGA shows no clear trend.

As others have said, it is a team game. At times it has been both our offense and our defense that has let us down (and our special teams). Obviously, to take the next step back up, we need to increase our talent and maybe get some pieces that are just a bit better fits. I am optimistic that we are moving in the correct direction, but we will see. I don't think there are any (or at least not many) folks that are satisfied with the last three seasons. Some of us just have some optimism that it will get better. And, as the article points out, it is not like it has really been that bad, just not good enough.

 

[GTRX7]

AE 87: Yes, we have had some bad coaches over the past 25 years, that is obvious, but Tech and winning goes back much further than that. I want the kind of winning we had with the first three coaches. It is also obvious, the article left off the records of the first three coaches. Personally, I don't want Tech to be judged by the past 25 years, I want it to return to the era when we won consistently.

Again, those first three coaches you are talking about coached before black players were even allowed to play. How can you possibly compare their records to the state of current football? It is not really even the same sport anymore.

 

[Rodney Kent]

squints: My point on the article was to stress the other side of the coin, and that was that the writer was trying to say that Paul Johnson's record was fine and in line with Tech traditon, which it is not. However, I will rephrase my stance on the whole subject. Paul Johnson has not fared well since his first two years. It makes no difference if the problem is the offense, defense, special teams, recruiting, internal problems, etal, the bottom line is that his past few years have not lived up to Tech's standards of its total history. He has not done well in his past few years. Regardless of any excuses, the buck stops with Paul Johnson and it is his fault regardless of the excuses. Most likely, his record this year will determine if he stays or goes. If he falters, regardless of excuses, it is still his fault. If he wins big, it is to his credit and he will get the accolades for a good season and rightly so. Any Team is a mirror image of its coach. It is his team, and the records belong to him, and he will be judged on his record, not excuses.

 

[Tech First]

AE 87: Yes, we have had some bad coaches over the past 25 years, that is obvious, but Tech and winning goes back much further than that. I want the kind of winning we had with the first three coaches. It is also obvious, the article left off the records of the first three coaches. Personally, I don't want Tech to be judged by the past 25 years, I want it to return to the era when we won consistently.

priffle2: You left out the winning percentages of our good coaches. Also, George O'Leary was 18-20 without Ralph Friegden. He was 0-4 against UGA without Friegden, and he never won a bowl game without Friegden.

If you want to compare PJ with the losers and say he is doing fine, be my guest. If you want to compare him with the winners, you are not faring very well. By the way, I do not hate Paul Johnson, I actually like him as a person. From the little I have heard of his personal life, he appears to be an honest and decent man. The only thing I don't like about Paul Johnson, is his record and seeming inability to hire good assistants. Who knows, matybe he could become a good coach in D1, if he used all of his time on the details of the team as a whole and hired an offensive coordinator.

Squints: Paul Johnson is responsible for the defense. The buck stops with him on every phase of the game.

At any rate, this year may well determine his future at Tech.

Great post.

 

[Rodney Kent]

GTRX7: The statement of black players is a moot point and not important in the issue. Even though most of the games were white against white, the playing field was equal on that point, so it still reverted to the best coaches winning the games according to history. If you research all teams by history, you will find that (regardless of their school curriculum) some coaches were poor coaches, some mediocre, some above par, and some great. The history of each team shows the the truth of the matter. The poor coaches and winning coaches had basically the same school circumstances. The only difference was the expertise of each coach. The records of each team by groups of years depends on the particular coach during those years.

I have already shown a partial history under another category on his board. It is only the tip of the iceberg, there are many more examples than those I gave. I will reiterate one instance closer to our time in history. Tech, George O'Leary, and Ralph Friegden.

O'Leary was 18-20 at Tech without Friegden. He never won a game against UGA (0-4) without Friegden. He never won a bowl game (0-1) without Friegden (2-1 wirh Freigden). Tech had a very good team in Friegden's last year with O'Leary, but took the Maryland job after the UGA game and did not coach in the bowl game against LSU. Tech was favored, but lost to LSU without Friegden (O'Leary's only bowl without Friegden 0-1). Tech and O'Leary's record with Friegden was 33-14 with 3-1 record against UGA and 2-1 in bowl games. It is obvious that all things were equal at Tech with and without Friegden, but the expertise of Friegden helped O'Leary overcome his extremely poor defenses.

Yes, you can give O'Leary credit for hiring Friegden, but we can easily and truthfully see the reason for winning was the new coach on the block. To give credit where credit is due, O'Leary did an outstanding job at Central Florida last year. It is obvious that the present state of football at Tech lies solely on Paul Johnson, no excuses.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

GTRX7: The statement of black players is a moot point and not important in the issue. Even though most of the games were white against white, the playing field was equal on that point, so it still reverted to the best coaches winning the games according to history.

Most of us agree the playing field was equal in recruiting back in Tech's hay day. What you fail to see is that it is far from equal today and the admission of black players has a lot to do with it. Really it's the admission of sub-college-level-students as athletes that's caused the shift in the landscape.

 

[TheSilasSonRising]

Want a good laugh?

Give CPJ the schedule Carson, Dodd, Ross, curry had to play.

 

[collegeballfan]

Most of us agree the playing field was equal in recruiting back in Tech's hay day. What you fail to see is that it is far from equal today and the admission of black players has a lot to do with it. Really it's the admission of sub-college-level-students as athletes that's caused the shift in the landscape.

From 1904 (Heisman) through 2013 (Johnson) GT has won 59% of it's football games. Since 1970 GT has won 53% of it's games. That is not much of a drop off. But it is a drop off. Heisman won at 78% and Dodd at 71%. O'Leary, Gailey and Johnson have won at a combined 59%. Their 6 predecessors won at a combined 46%. O, G & J have made a huge improvement.

Recruiting must improved for this record to improve. Starting this past recruiting season GT upgraded recruiting with more people and probably more money. That needs to continue. To date the Johnson recruiting classes have averaged 53rd in the nation per Rivals. That must improve.

Lastly, GTRX7 has a telling point re opponents "catching up" to Johnson's offense by looking at average ACC and UGA points scored.http://gtswarm.com/community/members/gtrx7.1045/

 

[alaguy]

The article in the AJC stating that PJ's teams are in line with Tech's history of football is completely misleading. It stated that Tech has never had a consistent record of double-digit winning seasons. This may be so, but it is also true of most teams in the NCAA.

In the past, there were only ten games. If your record was 9-1, it was not double-digit, but it was a 90% winning record. Only a fraction of the teams in the nation held consistent double-digit seasons, and most of the time, these teams could go 9-1 and then win a bowl game to get into the double-digit rating. This was extremely hard to do in the past.

Tech would go 7-3 in a season and get left out of the bowl games because there were so few bowl games. There were other good teams with the same problem.

Coaches should never be graded on the their double-digit seasons or their number of bowl games. Almost any team can now go to a bowl game with a 6-6 record. In fact, a few have gone to bowl games with a 6-7 record.

All coaches should be rated on their percentage of wins and never on their total number of wins per year. A Tech team that had a record of 7-3 was more deserving than a Tech team with a 7-6 record. PJ's record by percentage has not been very good in the recent past. In fact, the truth of the matter is that he had his best two years before the defenses caught up with his offenses. We cannot blame any of it on the defenses, because none of his teams have had a good defensive team, not even last year's team. However, most people do not like the truth.

I would not have made this post if the article had not appeared in the AJC showing a one-sided affair. This post was made to show the fallacy of the assumptions made in the AJC article.

If you want to go a step further, what was our record correlated vs the overall winning % of the opposition that yr or maybe the final nat ranking avg of opponents.
Some yrs you win because ,THEY are just worse than you.

 

[GTRX7]

GTRX7: The statement of black players is a moot point and not important in the issue. Even though most of the games were white against white, the playing field was equal on that point, so it still reverted to the best coaches winning the games according to history. If you research all teams by history, you will find that (regardless of their school curriculum) some coaches were poor coaches, some mediocre, some above par, and some great. The history of each team shows the the truth of the matter. The poor coaches and winning coaches had basically the same school circumstances. The only difference was the expertise of each coach. The records of each team by groups of years depends on the particular coach during those years.

I agree with you that there were good coaches and bad coaches before segregation, and that has not changed. But if you cannot see the way the landscape of the player pool has changed since then (due in large part to de-segregation), then I am afraid that we are simply at an impasse. Back in the 50's and before, Tech was very competitive, if not near the top end, with respect to player talent. That has not been true for the last 50 years, regardless of coach. We have had some great players, but never anywhere near the depth of the top teams. We did catch lightening in a bottle in 1990, but weren't particularly anything special in the two years before or after.

At Georgia Southern, where CPJ was getting top tier talent, he went 62-10 and played in the title game 3 out of 5 years. At Navy, with far inferior talent, he went 45-29 (for a winning percentage of 61%), at a school that had a 32% winning percentage over the 20 years before he got there. At Tech, he has had middle of the road talent and is winning at about the same rate (even in the last four years) as the prior coaches over the last 50 years. In his first two seasons with Tech he won at a fairly historic rate at Tech.

I am just not sure why you want to look at historical GT football from 1900-1950 to judge the standard at Tech, but then ignore everything CPJ has done in his career before the last four years to conclude he is a bad coach.

Again, we all agree that the last four years have not been great and are not good enough. Nobody is arguing that (though it is generally still in line with some of the better coaches at Tech over the last 50 years). The question is, is there good reason to believe he can get it turned around. Based on his 13 year coaching record prior to those four years, I think there is. We will see. If he doesn't, I can guarantee you that you will get your wish.

 

[CSJacket]

Want a good laugh?

Give CPJ the schedule Carson, Dodd, Ross, curry had to play.

Sure, and let's give Johnson the ability to pull in some of the best football players in the country. The landscape of college football (and college football players) has changed drastically since then.

 

[Squints]

squints: My point on the article was to stress the other side of the coin, and that was that the writer was trying to say that Paul Johnson's record was fine and in line with Tech traditon, which it is not.

Well this is what I'm talking about. I don't think the article was trying to say that at all. It's something you decided he was trying to say and then went off.

However, I will rephrase my stance on the whole subject. Paul Johnson has not fared well since his first two years. It makes no difference if the problem is the offense, defense, special teams, recruiting, internal problems, etal, the bottom line is that his past few years have not lived up to Tech's standards of its total history. He has not done well in his past few years. Regardless of any excuses, the buck stops with Paul Johnson and it is his fault regardless of the excuses. Most likely, his record this year will determine if he stays or goes. If he falters, regardless of excuses, it is still his fault. If he wins big, it is to his credit and he will get the accolades for a good season and rightly so. Any Team is a mirror image of its coach. It is his team, and the records belong to him, and he will be judged on his record, not excuses.

I don't have a large disagreement with you here. But I will say that some of you older guys need to check your expectations and stop holding on to the past. If you're going to compare every coach to Bobby Dodd and John Heisman it's no surprise you guys seem miserable all the time. College football then vs. college football now aren't even remotely similar (you know outside it being football and all that). Those days are gone and they aren't coming back. Get over it.

 

[Squints]

I am just not sure why you want to look at historical GT football from 1900-1950 to judge the standard at Tech, but then ignore everything CPJ has done in his career before the last four years to conclude he is a bad coach.

This seems to me to be a big problem with some of the fanbase. Some have a hard time grasping that the sport has changed and refuse to acknowledge context in their assertions and assessments.

 

[dressedcheeseside]

I am just not sure why you want to look at historical GT football from 1900-1950 to judge the standard at Tech, but then ignore everything CPJ has done in his career before the last four years to conclude he is a bad coach.

Exactly.

 

[AE 87]

Category A: We all want to win all of our games. We are all unsatisfied with 7-5 seasons.
Category B: Some think that CPJ has shown in the last 4 years that he won't bring in better than 7-5 seasons regularly (not improving recruiting sufficiently)
Category C: Others think that CPJ has shown that his offense will make us competitive for much better seasons and are hopeful that the right DC is in place.

For some reason, some in category B don't believe those in Category C are also in Category A.

 

[augustabuzz]

Want a good laugh?

Give CPJ the schedule Carson, Dodd, Ross, curry had to play.

Johnson has running backs bigger than their linemen and their linemen can't hold and Johnson's can.

 

[Rodney Kent]

For all those who think Tech cannot win big, you are fooling yourselves. Get the right coach that can use the material to his best advantage, and we will once again have consistant winning. There are excellent athletes with the credentials to get into Georgia Tech. We offer them every year, but they go elsewhere because they like the coach and his system better than our coach and his system.

Actually, Bobby Dodd was at a bigger disadvantage in recruiting when he coached at Tech than the recent past coaches up through today. There are limits to the number of players you can have at present (Yes, a few cheat) to stay in line with the 85 rule. In Dodd's day (SEC), they were signing way more each year than the alloted players you could have on a team, and then sending those on their way after Spring practice trials. Dodd would not do this, and promised each of his recruits a full scholarchip regardless of how they panned out at Tech. This is the reason he left the SEC. The reason Dodd did get some good recruits was strictly because of his charisma and the recruits loved him. Many recruits were attracted to Tech, not because of Tech, but because they wanted to play for Bobby Dodd. The same applied to Alabama at the time, many wanted to play for Bear Bryant. Now, many want to play for Saban, Miles, Richt, and other well known coaches with charisma who have proven they can win at the D1 level.

Many teams, such as Oregon, Boise State, etal, have drawn better players because of the coaches and thier winning systems. It is all in the coach. The right coach with the right system will win anywhere. The city of Atlanta, State of Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, and other surrounding beds of high school football are extremely available to Tech for recruiting. Tech even has the advantage of being well known historically in football across the nation and can draw well from other regions. There are enough excellent recruits available for Tech, but it is the coach who must get them here. Excuses are used by those who say they don't expect to win, they just want to blame their losing attitudes on someone or something else. The buck always starts and stops with the coach regardless of which school he is coaching. Atlanta and the surrounding area is a mecca for recruting. The recruiting and winning is a direct responsibility of the coach. If he cannot get the right recruits, then get someone who can.

Also, as in my last post, why did Friegden bring us out of the depths of losing to winning while all of the same recruiting obstacles were in place?