Well, this ends two items that had been sources of endless speculation. I think we can effectively eliminate Coach Key as a prospective new coach and the last flickering hopes of a bowl just died. If there was ever a team in need of a thorough roster turnover and the release of all members of a coaching staff it is this one. Georgia Tech is about to embark upon what could be a lengthy period in the football wilderness defined by years of futility, losses, and perhaps, several coaching changes. It will not be pretty.
All we had to do was gradually develop a passing offense on the back of a running offense that was one of the top in the nation & shore up a rickety defense. We'd be a scoring machine and with any improvement in the defense, it would have immediately yielded more wins. We were already a diciplined team, no changes required there. Start recruiting for the future, bring the players in for the new system & redshirt them to develop them physically, teach them the new schemes/techniques, etc while you're weaning off the old roster.
It was a fairly simple transition, 3-4 years to get ALL the pieces in place to go from a 7 win to a 8 win program then maybe up from there. With the ACC being so sorry, the wins were there for the taking. Momentum was there to be had as the program had gotten stale under Johnson and people were ready for new energy, but we decided to destroy the village in order to save it.
We did everything wrong- strategy, initial transition, culture, game prep, game management, recruiting, portal management, roster management, special teams, S&C, training, staffing, media, leveraging fanbase support. All show & no go, damn near every facet of our operation got worse, at best elements went sideways and we stood still or ignored threats to our program while the environment around us changed right before our very eyes. To make matters worse, we burned our nest egg, have increased operational costs significantly with either a flatlined or possible decrease in revenue.
The next guy has a helluva a rebuild on his hands. Literally needs to rebuild every damn thing from scratch & we're bleeding from every orifice. Not even sure Homer Rice had a bigger challenge than what Batt has on his hands.