Stansbury

[Towaliga]

I would prefer Stansbury not make more dumb decisions with regards to money.

I know it would be a dumb thing to do with the money, but hey, we’re Georgia Tech! We can (and do) do things like that! It would be fun to put TStan on the spot like this just to see if he truly believes what he wrote in his letter to the season ticket holders or if he’s just blowing smoke until next year when the buyout is less.

 

[acedarney]

Have you ever heard about those places called Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Villanova, Arizona, UConn, Mississippi State, UCLA, and Virginia? Incredible they're about to win and compete for national titles in other sports while having mediocre to terrible football teams.

I have but your point is irrelevant.

The average college football team makes more money than the next 35 college sports combined

College sports means big-time money for many of the top schools. The chart below shows how...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[LibertyTurns]

He should negotiate the next HC contract where you start with 4 years & a 6-6 record. Each win under 6, you lose 20% of your salary and you shave a year off the contract. Each win above 6 you gain 20% of your salary and you add a year to the contract length. Year 2 you start at 7, year 3 you start at 8 and it stays there the remainder of the contract. It gets recalculated every year after the season is over & you add/subtract from whatever you started the year at.

 

[forensicbuzz]

Here is a suggestion for TStan. If he truly believes things are improving and next year we will see an uptick in the number of wins, he should make the following offer to keep season ticket holders from bailing. Give us the number of wins he expects upfront prior to the time for season-ticket renewals. Also, make the offer that if that number is not reached, season-ticket holder’s will get a 50% refund at the end of the year. By doing so, he is letting us know what HE deems to be a realistic win total from the coaching staff he has faith in, but he’s also putting his (GT’s) money where his mouth is. This shows he’s going all-in with his belief in CGC.

Herein lies the problem. GT fans are cheap. You're looking for a guarantee that the product will be better or you get your money back. How about we all buy our season tickets, support the men on the field, and contribute generously to the A-T Fund. That's the best way to make a positive contribution to the program. Holding your season tickets as hostage because you don't like the product is not helping to make the product better.

 

[JacketOff]

I chuckle reading all this. Everyone thinks Stansbury had a plan to rebuild the roster, then start building up the coaching staff, all while doing a great job in the non-revenue sports. I'm sure he did have a plan, and he gambled it all with the 7-year contract. A few comments:

• This idea of a historic rebuild is a lie...it's gaslighting so you will lower your expectations. This was a 7 or 8 win team with a consistent top-30 or so offense. It's been followed by three years of historically bad teams, not because they needed to, but because they chose to. They chose to not play winning football so they could play "pro-style" football. These three teams are probably the worst Tech teams in 25 years.
• Unless the school starts bringing in an order of magnitude more money, the improvements, fundraising, etc. are just treading water. Stop acting like Stansbury has done some great job as an AD. He's been average outside of football.
• The seven-year contract...for a coach without previous success...based on his ability to market himself. He gambled 5 years of Tech football on a snake oil salesman. In college sports, football is king, not the non-revenue sports. You can't, as an AD, ruin a decent football team for half a decade and expect to keep your job. Period. It doesn't matter if women's volleyball could win the Olympics, if football is unwatchable, that athletics department will not survive.

Have you ever heard about those places called Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Villanova, Arizona, UConn, Mississippi State, UCLA, and Virginia? Incredible theyre about to win and compete for national titles in other sports while having mediocre to terrible football teams. P

I have but your point is irrelevant.

The average college football team makes more money than the next 35 college sports combined

College sports means big-time money for many of the top schools. The chart below shows how...

finance.yahoo.com

you said without a decent football team the athletic program wouldn’t survive, yet there are multiple schools who prove that theory wrong, and have for decades

 

[stech81]

Herein lies the problem. GT fans are cheap. You're looking for a guarantee that the product will be better or you get your money back. How about we all buy our season tickets, support the men on the field, and contribute generously to the A-T Fund. That's the best way to make a positive contribution to the program. Holding your season tickets as hostage because you don't like the product is not helping to make the product better.

Here is a better just buying tickets is fine but you have to show up. If you can't show up don't buy tickets send that money to the A-T Fund unless you know the who you pass them to are Tech Fans.

 

[wvGT11]

Another blistering article from Ken on Tstan this time

After Todd Stansbury sends letter to Georgia Tech fans, reaction unfavorable

With fan frustration peaking following the football team’s 3-9 season, Georgia Tech athletic director Todd Stansbury sent a letter to Yellow Jackets fans Monday acknowledging those feelings and committing to success in the future.

www.ajc.com

 

[croberts]

I can’t help repeating myself but two things are clear to me:
1. TStan had little choice but to voice support and stall for time.
2. Five games into next year if we are still not playing competitive ball I believe we will have a new coach by game 7.

No chance on #2. If we didn’t end our relationship this year, we sure aren’t taking a huge financial hit by terminating him mid stream next year.

 

[Towaliga]

Herein lies the problem. GT fans are cheap. You're looking for a guarantee that the product will be better or you get your money back. How about we all buy our season tickets, support the men on the field, and contribute generously to the A-T Fund. That's the best way to make a positive contribution to the program. Holding your season tickets as hostage because you don't like the product is not helping to make the product better.

I agree 100%. I made my post about a guarantee and a refund tongue-in-cheek. It would be interesting to ask TStan that hypothetically to see if if he really buys into what his letter says.

I also agree with Stech81 that we should support the team with more than money, we should also show up. Being at BDS last Saturday was embarrassing. The people that voluntarily didn’t go or, even worse, sold their tickets to dwag fans were only hurting GT. Imagine what a recruit or even a current player thought when they saw the sea of red.

Now, back to TStan….

 

[orientalnc]

Another blistering article from Ken on Tstan this time

After Todd Stansbury sends letter to Georgia Tech fans, reaction unfavorable

With fan frustration peaking following the football team’s 3-9 season, Georgia Tech athletic director Todd Stansbury sent a letter to Yellow Jackets fans Monday acknowledging those feelings and committing to success in the future.

www.ajc.com

I asked this question earlier. Is there anything in that article that is not correct?

 

[wesgt123]

I asked this question earlier. Is there anything in that article that is not correct?

All spot on except I wish he had published more vicious tweets. Those were “softball” tweets IMO

 

[acedarney]

Have you ever heard about those places called Kansas, Duke, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Villanova, Arizona, UConn, Mississippi State, UCLA, and Virginia? Incredible theyre about to win and compete for national titles in other sports while having mediocre to terrible football teams. P

you said without a decent football team the athletic program wouldn’t survive, yet there are multiple schools who prove that theory wrong, and have for decades

I don't have the energy to thoroughly argue this point with you. I said unwatchable not decent, and I don't mean survive as in exist/not exist. The examples you gave are mostly not applicable. All except UConn and Villanova have had recent success in P5 football conferences. Villanova is FCS football, but they went 9-2, so not exactly unwatchable. UConn might be the most relevant example. Do you want to become UConn? I certainly don't and I'm sure the school doesn't. I don't have time to compare our revenues but I guarantee GT is doing better.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Stansbury has enraged the fan base. People I know who work full time in development would have worded that letter much more carefully. You have to inform people of your decision but you better bend over backwards to explain that you hear the frustration, know this decision will upset some people but you are taking responsibility for the outcome. You don’t insult people’s intelligence in the explanation.

This is why I believe if Collins does not improve in the first five games next season there will be an “explosion.”

 

[slugboy]

All spot on except I wish he had published more vicious tweets. Those were “softball” tweets IMO

Nice touch ending the article with “I think I’m gonna hurl”. (I’m serious with that, actually—I think it sums up negative reactions pretty well)

==========

Even before the Collins hire, fans here complained that Stansbury is a poor communicator. Our 40+ year history of ADs is

(1980) Homer Rice -> Dave Braine -> Dan Radokovich -> Mike Bobinski -> Todd Stansbury (Now)

Rice might be the best communicator out of that group, and that’s not saying much—that was pre-social-media and 24-hour news and for a fair stretch pre-ESPN. Communications amounted to “press releases” and letters and the having reporters come by. He did express a clear vision of what GT athletics should be and worked in that direction, but I wouldn’t call him a master of PR.

From what I can tell, Braine did not communicate much, and is better known for his gaffes than anything else. Bobinski was AWOL. I remember some talks from DRad, and he seemed to have communication skills, but I don’t know that he USED them much with the fans.

Stansbury inherited an AA weak in communications and customer service. He’s evidently not a naturally gifted communicator. He is trying to communicate. He is not a master of spin, and doesn’t know when to use a pinch of spin vs a teaspoon vs a pint. He put about a gallon of spin into that letter when it needed far less (I might have liked “none”). Spin is like salt—it shouldn’t be all that you taste.

If he’d said “we see signs of what we can build on in the team” instead of “progress” he’d have caught less heat. He’d have still caught plenty, but it would have been less tone deaf.

This is why companies hire crisis management PR firms.

I’m not saying that 3 3-win seasons in a row compares to poisoned Tylenol or the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but this is a precarious spot, and it’s the worst possible time to “step in it”, and Collins and Stansbury keep saying the wrong things. The letter was a “non-apology” apology. It was a “you don’t understand—it’s not so bad, we didn’t mess up as much as you think” instead of “we are committed to fixing this”.

I know the AA has communications people. I just don’t know why they haven’t been able to salvage our AA’s communications.

 

[4shotB]

If he’d said “we see signs of what we can build on in the team” instead of “progress” he’d have caught less heat. He’d have still caught plenty, but it would have been less tone deaf.

I can't imagine a task so dreary or dreadful as to trying to pick and choose exactly the right word or phrase over the entire length of a one page letter or email while trying to gauge another person's (or group of people) reaction to it. Dabbling in semantics is exhausting and I believe is why I gravitated to STEM type courses as a younger person.

 

[slugboy]

I can't imagine a task so dreary or dreadful as to trying to pick and choose exactly the right word or phrase over the entire length of a one page letter or email while trying to gauge another person's (or group of people) reaction to it. Dabbling in semantics is exhausting and I believe is why I gravitated to STEM type courses as a younger person.

There were entire paragraphs in that letter that went the wrong way. But yes, it’s more work that people think, and mass communications is much picker than 1:1 chats.

 

[jojatk]

I can't imagine a task so dreary or dreadful as to trying to pick and choose exactly the right word or phrase over the entire length of a one page letter or email while trying to gauge another person's (or group of people) reaction to it. Dabbling in semantics is exhausting and I believe is why I gravitated to STEM type courses as a younger person.

Most organizations have at least a few people who are good at exactly that sort of thing. The fact of the matter is that no matter what he said he was going to get a fair amount of negative reaction. But with a little effort they could have minimized it.

• When you haven’t produced clearly visible positive results and the latest results are horrifically bad then own it. Don’t try to mitigate the terrible as if it wasn’t important
• Don’t treat the fans like they don’t hurt with the team. We may not have as much blood, sweat, and tears invested in what happens on the field but we care deeply and if you marginalize that pain as if it’s not important then shame on you.
• If you aren’t smart enough to know that what the coach is saying is pissing off the fans and you parrot back some of it then, again, shame on you.

None of this is rocket science. I got an Aerospace Engineering degree from GT so I’m qualified to know what IS rocket science and this ain’t it (that’s a joke people, it doesn’t take a GT degree to figure this stuff out). It isn’t easy but it’s also not super hard if you put some real, honest to goodness thought behind it and run it by people who you should have on your staff who are good at this. Seriously, though, how the hell did someone not look at that letter and say “hey boss, that sounds an awful lot like the stuff that Coach Collins says in his press conferences that we know the fans don’t like.”

 

[wvGT11]

The thing with the lettrt, is that it comes off as tone deaf especially since it was likely written before the Gibbs announcement.
Like I said before, there must be something between Tstan and Collins for him to have this much faith in him.

At this point the media and the fans really have no faith in Tstan or Collins, so I wonder how that perception is going to affect recruiting

 

[wesgt123]

Nice touch ending the article with “I think I’m gonna hurl”. (I’m serious with that, actually—I think it sums up negative reactions pretty well)

==========

Even before the Collins hire, fans here complained that Stansbury is a poor communicator. Our 40+ year history of ADs is

(1980) Homer Rice -> Dave Braine -> Dan Radokovich -> Mike Bobinski -> Todd Stansbury (Now)

Rice might be the best communicator out of that group, and that’s not saying much—that was pre-social-media and 24-hour news and for a fair stretch pre-ESPN. Communications amounted to “press releases” and letters and the having reporters come by. He did express a clear vision of what GT athletics should be and worked in that direction, but I wouldn’t call him a master of PR.

From what I can tell, Braine did not communicate much, and is better known for his gaffes than anything else. Bobinski was AWOL. I remember some talks from DRad, and he seemed to have communication skills, but I don’t know that he USED them much with the fans.

Stansbury inherited an AA weak in communications and customer service. He’s evidently not a naturally gifted communicator. He is trying to communicate. He is not a master of spin, and doesn’t know when to use a pinch of spin vs a teaspoon vs a pint. He put about a gallon of spin into that letter when it needed far less (I might have liked “none”). Spin is like salt—it shouldn’t be all that you taste.

If he’d said “we see signs of what we can build on in the team” instead of “progress” he’d have caught less heat. He’d have still caught plenty, but it would have been less tone deaf.

This is why companies hire crisis management PR firms.

I’m not saying that 3 3-win seasons in a row compares to poisoned Tylenol or the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but this is a precarious spot, and it’s the worst possible time to “step in it”, and Collins and Stansbury keep saying the wrong things. The letter was a “non-apology” apology. It was a “you don’t understand—it’s not so bad, we didn’t mess up as much as you think” instead of “we are committed to fixing this”.

I know the AA has communications people. I just don’t know why they haven’t been able to salvage our AA’s communications.

He is a poor communicator indeed. He answers his questions like Collins, in that he dodges or doesn’t give you a real answer at all.

They definitely are married to each other. Two peas in a pod.

I’m a young(er) tech fan as I’m only 29 but I can tell this dude is a poor AD.

 

[orientalnc]

The thing with the article, is that it comes off as tone deaf especially since it was likely written before the Gibbs announcement.
Like I said before, there must be something between Tstan and Collins for him to have this much faith in him.

At this point the media and the fans really have no faith in Tstan or Collins, so I wonder how that perception is going to affect recruiting

It isn't Ken's AJC article that's the problem. It's the wording of TStan's letter.

We cannot expect the AJC or Ken to be cheerleaders for Georgia Tech. The facts here are not very attractive and the Ken's piece seems accurate to me. Todd seems to be exercising a shovel while knee deep in a hole. GT is not looking good right now.