Tech Getting Some Late Kick Love

wesgt123

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I emailed the guy Friday morning about doing another segment on Georgia Tech. He was among the first to say he thinks we could turn this program around. He hadn't done a segment on us since we beat FSU opening weekend.

He replied to my email that same day and said he would do Georgia Tech last night, and he delivered. Yall email him and tell him there is a fanbase wanting more coverage! More exposure the better!

 

wesgt123

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Ask this guy to make a substantial wager on our win total this year. Then you will see how much of a believer he is. We may get somewhere with Collins, we may not, this guy doesn't care either way.
Win total this year doesnt necessarily amount to how successful he thinks he may be. I get your point though.

Truth is none of us know anything. So let's sit back and watch.
 

GTLorenzo

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Ask this guy to make a substantial wager on our win total this year. Then you will see how much of a believer he is. We may get somewhere with Collins, we may not, this guy doesn't care either way.

I think a lot of people outside the program see the marketing/branding, the selling of Atlanta, and the social media stuff and think it is very inventive and that these are things GT has never really done before. Most would think that selling Atlanta is a great way to go, but they likely don't truly know about how academics has held up back in the past. I think that is less of an issue these days, as along as we show we can keep kids in school, the Hill will let us bring in some recruits and transfers that we may not have been able to in the past. That's all good from an outsider.

What they likely don't see if the lack of clock or game management, the press conferences and thoughts behind some of the things that have been done since Collins got here (running up tempo against Clemson and giving up 73 points, trying to play a wide open offense last year without the personnel to do it, losing to The Citadel, historic loses, "the greatest transformation in the history of college football" stuff over and over again, the not taking responsibility for things, but just continuing with slogans, etc.). I was fully on board when he got here and recruiting was good last year. It took a step back this year and I don't really count transfers in that as it's really a crap shoot as to who will actually contribute.

I cut a lot of slack at the beginning of his first year, but I've seen too many instances of someone who appears to be in over his head as a head coach in the ACC. I'm still buying season tickets and hope he wins every game, but I'm getting much more of a used car salesman vibe seeing him every day than someone who drops in and out on occasion like a regional or national media figure. I hope I'm wrong, because clearly he wants to be here, but that's the vibe I get.

As an aside, I've got a close friend who is in the coach/AD executive search business and attended one of our rival schools. He laughs and says that he hopes we never fire him based on the whippings we've taken the last two years, including to his school. Take it for what it's worth. He does like Pastner and hopes that he can make the tourney this year.
 

MidtownJacket

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I don't think my take on this is revolutionary or even uncommon on this board, but I will add my voice to the discussion because it is the offseason and we don't play roundball again for greater than 24 hours. I would submit all winning programs focus on varying degrees of: scheme, recruiting and coaching excellence. I don't particularly care what combination we use to get back to being a winning program, as long as we don't abandon our mission to educate and build more than just the athletic abilities of our student athletes. Most importantly, I support GT and cheer for the athletes we field.

While Johnson was here, he opted to over-index on Scheme and Coaching Excellence while ceding the recruiting battle. I felt good about this, as most of the unseemly things in College Athletics happen around getting kids into the school or keeping them “eligible” despite not learning. His approach let us avoid the increasingly difficult war of escalation that comes from chasing recruiting rankings. It is increasingly difficult to walk the fine line of staying legit while chasing a limited pool of players. It allowed us to walk away from operating off a plan that required us go against larger, better funded programs for a critical few, key recruits. To beat them at their game, we would have had to make up ground on both the allowable pieces (recruiting staff sizes, campus upgrades, program spending, tutoring) as well as combat the unallowable financial investment and morally ambiguous academic standards (bag men, fake classes, watered down majors, et all) some of our competitors operated under. After struggling under CCG, CPJ brought a new option pun intended that allowed us to go after the type of athletes who fit our scheme and bypass that issue.

He had a good run, we competed at the top of the conference and I really enjoyed learning the ins and outs of a scheme that was uncommon and allowed us to be uncommonly good despite the lack of 5 star players up and down the roster. Most importantly, it allowed us to operate a clean program. Our guys were studs, and we had some dudes roll through who were pound for pound better than most of the 4/5 star recruits we beat.

We saw that experiment come into sharp relief when CPJ stepped down, and the administration did a full 180 degree turn. Running full sprint the other way towards having scheme serve recruiting. This stark shift in strategy has left many of us (myself included) worried about becoming unmoored. Our scheme the last two seasons, on both Offense and Defense, has been charitably "Multiple" but detractors may call it muddled. The competitive edge we focused on under CPJ (scheme enabling talent not talent enabling scheme) has been abandoned.

When uncertainty shows up, people often run to their biggest fears. For most of us, that is either straight up failure or something worse: winning in a way that offends our sensibilities. Many of the posters on this board, and in our fanbase, seem to think there are only two choices. A binary decision to either give in to “dirty crooting” or suffer in mediocrity because we won’t.

Collins is building a third approach. He is trying to use marketing and hype to over index on recruiting to build success and then banking that if he builds a winning program we can sell what we have to kids looking at Stanford/Notre Dame/Northwesten/Texas to keep it going. There are academic powerhouses who have regularly been able to pull in dudes who want to make the League but also gain a great education. At this point in my personal version of A tale of two Cities (GT Edition), you might be asking why this would be different from what CCG tried or even guys like Pepper back in the day. The answer is the NIL and the Transfer Portal. GT is betting that Collins can market us into having the kind of place we can pluck enough talent in the near term (either winning critical battles in High School Recruiting or jump starting that by bringing in kids disillusioned with their role at “better” programs) to build us into a destination for the kids looking to get a great education AND play high level football.

What I hope, and anticipate seeing, is that this will work. I think we have got better coaches than people have given us credit for and looking at the roster overhaul the last few years think we finally have the mix we needed of guys who can compete in traditional schemes. We have some solid returning players who have made the shift back from the confusion of D Schemes we had under CPJ and the monumental shift on O we have made to go from the 3Option to the spread, speed, “ProStyle” we run under CDP.

All this to say, for the fans out there worried that we will have to ultimately chose between cheating or losing under this direction, have faith. If the marketing works, and NIL goes as some of us are expecting, we can be a desirable place again for biGTime student athletes without giving up our scruples or the mission that SHOULD be at the center of any NCAA Sport endeavor, education and improving the lives of our players. CGC knows he has a window to get us back to winning before people give up on the experiment. I do think we see improvement this year, and believe we have to get to .500 to stay on track.

Once we start winning, things get easier and easier (no one wanted to be at Clemson, till Clemson was Clemson). We do have to put up this season though. No more excuses (legitimate as they may be with the rebuild, then pandemic). It is time to start winning again.
 
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JacketOff

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What they likely don't see if the lack of clock or game management, the press conferences and thoughts behind some of the things that have been done since Collins got here (running up tempo against Clemson and giving up 73 points, trying to play a wide open offense last year without the personnel to do it, losing to The Citadel, historic loses, "the greatest transformation in the history of college football" stuff over and over again, the not taking responsibility for things, but just continuing with slogans, etc.)
Exactly. Nobody sees that sort of stuff, so why are there a select group of posters on this board and fans in general that believe this sort of stuff is a problem? Obviously clock management is something that affects on field results, and is something CGC definitely needs to get better at. Other than that, nothing you mentioned is relevant to how anybody outside of the fanbase views the program. The losses will just become footnotes in history. Yeah, losing to an FCS school sucks, but Florida, Kansas, Oregon State, Iowa, Ole Miss, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and many other have done it in recent years as well, and nobody cares about those losses at all. The only FCS loss that truly still matters is Michigan to App State, and that’s only because Michigan was a preseason top 5 team in the country and a favorite to win it all that year. Literally nobody will care about the Clemson loss, or The Citadel loss, or the VT shutout, etc. if Tech starts to win games. Hell, Miami lost to FIU 2 years ago and nobody talks about that when discussing their future. Everybody on this board seems to think Miami is about to get back to levels of success they haven’t seen since the 80s and 90s. If CGC doesn’t eventually start to win then yeah, everybody will look at those outcomes and point and laugh at what a loser he was, but in no way will those games alter the perception of GT football if GT football wins games.

As far as press conferences and slogans and whatnot goes, once again, who cares? It literally doesn’t matter what gets said in press conferences. Like it or not, him repeating those catch phrases and lines about rebuilding are exactly what catches the attention of both recruits, and more national/regional media like Late Kick that make them aware of the change taking place at GT. If CGC were to be a strictly business guy in press conferences like PJ was, nobody would take notice to GT at all. There would be no buzz around the program. We’d just be a shoddy team with upside or promising future. But because CGC has dedicated so much time and effort to perception, he’s been able to change GTs perception in very little time, even without much success on the field. If he starts to win the perception will change even further.
 

GTLorenzo

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Exactly. Nobody sees that sort of stuff, so why are there a select group of posters on this board and fans in general that believe this sort of stuff is a problem? Obviously clock management is something that affects on field results, and is something CGC definitely needs to get better at. Other than that, nothing you mentioned is relevant to how anybody outside of the fanbase views the program. The losses will just become footnotes in history. Yeah, losing to an FCS school sucks, but Florida, Kansas, Oregon State, Iowa, Ole Miss, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and many other have done it in recent years as well, and nobody cares about those losses at all. The only FCS loss that truly still matters is Michigan to App State, and that’s only because Michigan was a preseason top 5 team in the country and a favorite to win it all that year. Literally nobody will care about the Clemson loss, or The Citadel loss, or the VT shutout, etc. if Tech starts to win games. Hell, Miami lost to FIU 2 years ago and nobody talks about that when discussing their future. Everybody on this board seems to think Miami is about to get back to levels of success they haven’t seen since the 80s and 90s. If CGC doesn’t eventually start to win then yeah, everybody will look at those outcomes and point and laugh at what a loser he was, but in no way will those games alter the perception of GT football if GT football wins games.

As far as press conferences and slogans and whatnot goes, once again, who cares? It literally doesn’t matter what gets said in press conferences. Like it or not, him repeating those catch phrases and lines about rebuilding are exactly what catches the attention of both recruits, and more national/regional media like Late Kick that make them aware of the change taking place at GT. If CGC were to be a strictly business guy in press conferences like PJ was, nobody would take notice to GT at all. There would be no buzz around the program. We’d just be a shoddy team with upside or promising future. But because CGC has dedicated so much time and effort to perception, he’s been able to change GTs perception in very little time, even without much success on the field. If he starts to win the perception will change even further.

Perhaps you are correct. No one cares about a loss to a I-AA team. Perhaps no one cares about giving up 73 to Clemson or getting shut out by Va. Tech or getting boat raced by UGa. Perhaps recruits love the "culture" and everything else Collins brings, the slogans, the hats, the tight pants and no socks. But put it all together and have another 3 or 4 win season or two and the recruits and alumni will be off the flavor of the month.

I hope he wins every game. He's not my cup of tea, but I'll be there to support the team. I just hope he and his coaches have done a lot of studying on clock management, game management and other things beyond slogans, waffles and hash browns. It was a big risk bringing in someone with such little head coaching experience. If he can figure it out, it'll be a home run because he seems to actually want to be here, which is always step one at GT.
 

smokey_wasp

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Perhaps you are correct. No one cares about a loss to a I-AA team. Perhaps no one cares about giving up 73 to Clemson or getting shut out by Va. Tech or getting boat raced by UGa. Perhaps recruits love the "culture" and everything else Collins brings, the slogans, the hats, the tight pants and no socks. But put it all together and have another 3 or 4 win season or two and the recruits and alumni will be off the flavor of the month.

I hope he wins every game. He's not my cup of tea, but I'll be there to support the team. I just hope he and his coaches have done a lot of studying on clock management, game management and other things beyond slogans, waffles and hash browns. It was a big risk bringing in someone with such little head coaching experience. If he can figure it out, it'll be a home run because he seems to actually want to be here, which is always step one at GT.

The reason no one cares about those things (yet!) is right there in the tweet. "True Rebuilds...". Everyone but our fans gets that this is what this is.
 
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