The academic toll that nobody talks about

PowderSpringsJacket88

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I agree with DCS on his main points. It is definitely harder at GT than at Factory schools which can make it easier to focus on sports. However, there are pro's and con's to this situation. Tough academics will promote self discipline which will translate onto the field.

Think about this example from CPJ when asked about Kevin Cone. He said that after the season he did nothing but focus on training. He said Kevin was so busy with school that he told CPJ that he didn't have enough time to focus on football like he was now. I just searched for the interview but I am pretty sure it was audio. Some athletes at GT can get focused probably too much on academics when there is potential for their PRO career as well. It is a balancing act and for most 18-23 year olds it can be hard to do so.

I think this stuff would get sorted out a little more if we added more basic majors which will give SA's more options to choose from that are not so difficult. Nothing wrong with sports management or Education majors.
 

jeagt

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Is Klaus Wrecks and Effect? I really can't stand to read anything written by WnE, and his delivery and statements ring eerily familiar feelings of nausea.

Haha, I doubt this. Don't think Wrexie would pick the name from a character on a young adult vampire show on the CW. I think we'll all know when he shows up. I think he'd want people to know it was him, even if he isn't obvious about it. He thrives on the attention to much.
 

TheSilasSonRising

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So, none of our ACC opponents or SEC schools have any S/As we did not give offers to? Would love to see some names & numbers.
Yes, GT academics will be tougher, but not impossible.
Recruiting is the answer and using academics after a loss is no longer accecptable. Somewhat distant from the post of Dressed, but seems to go to the bottom line.
 

Minawreck

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I probably spent more time playing bridge and hearts in the student center than sa's spend in sport, and I did fine.
Because the physical toll of playing Bridge and Hearts are comparable to the physical toll of playing and preparing for football at the collegiate level let alone top half of a BCS conference. :p

I think that's all he's trying to say. This has nothing to do with recruiting but rather the on field effect a toy academic school can have on players. It is truly a grind and one that gets old very quickly. Hence why coaches try to make them red shirt, take summer classes, etc. to stretch a moderate 4-year degree into a more manageable 5-year one plus summers.
 

Lexjacket

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Cheese, I think you make a good point, although I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happens at other schools because I simply don't know. Judging by some of the majors I see coming across the screen on game days combined with rumors I hear, I suspect there is some truth to it. All I can tell you about my life at GT as an ME major was something like this. Get up, eat breakfast at the AA, go to my classes (all of which were morning classes starting at 8), go back to AA for lunch, head to the locker room to get changed for practice, go to the field and practice for about 3 hours, go back to the AA and shower up before eating dinner, eat dinner, go back to the fraternity house and screw off until about 8pm, study until about 11:30 or so and then sleep whether I was done with work or not. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was a grind, but a very rewarding one.

We are all talking about the toll that academics takes on sports, which is fine, but you know, it goes the other way too. I can't tell you how difficult it was at times, after a disappointing loss or an exhilarating win, to put the emotions out of your mind and immediately return to studying when you needed to. It was very tough to concentrate some times. The one thing I rarely sacrificed was sleep. My grades took a bit of a hit because I simply couldn't get all my work done with the time I had available in the waking hours. I chose to sleep though, because I knew I wouldn't be worth a crap on the field the next day if I didn't.

I wonder how many athletes travel with their books to away contests? I can't tell you the number of times I was studying on the plane or bus while the MGT majors were all screwing off. That used to chap my rear a little.


This is anecdotal, but my Brother-In-Law got his Phd from 'Ole Miss'. While he was doing it he taught some Accounting 101 classes and had a number of football players. He said it was very 'rare' they attended class and when they did it was nap time. One of the players turned in a test (his graduate assistant administered and graded) with none of the questions answered, a $100 bill clipped to the top and a note that read.."A hundred dollars for a hundred points". She returned the test with a $50 attached and a note that read.."A grade of 50 points for $50 and a smiley face :).
 

AE 87

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Because the physical toll of playing Bridge and Hearts are comparable to the physical toll of playing and preparing for football at the collegiate level let alone top half of a BCS conference. :p

I think that's all he's trying to say. This has nothing to do with recruiting but rather the on field effect a toy academic school can have on players. It is truly a grind and one that gets old very quickly. Hence why coaches try to make them red shirt, take summer classes, etc. to stretch a moderate 4-year degree into a more manageable 5-year one plus summers.

More to my point! Physical activity is actually good for brain function. The should do better.

Seriously, I was just making a stupid attempt at humor.
 

dressedcheeseside

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Because the physical toll of playing Bridge and Hearts are comparable to the physical toll of playing and preparing for football at the collegiate level let alone top half of a BCS conference. :p

I think that's all he's trying to say. This has nothing to do with recruiting but rather the on field effect a toy academic school can have on players. It is truly a grind and one that gets old very quickly. Hence why coaches try to make them red shirt, take summer classes, etc. to stretch a moderate 4-year degree into a more manageable 5-year one plus summers.
Exactly. And it's a comparison between factory schools and us, not GT SA's and the rest of the GT student body like some of the posters are doing.

My original assertion has yet to be successfully refuted: our SA's, in general, have a much more difficult path through school than factory SA's and that "rigor differential" has an impact on athletic performance (especially around key times like midterms, finals and project due dates.) The fact that some may major in the same thing has no bearing, imo. Do you think a Chemistry class taught at Podunk Community College compares to the same class, in name only, at GT?
 

Rodney Kent

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Let's look at this from another view. What if it is your son that is entering a college. First, we know that few graduates enter the NFL and make the long term route. This means most of the student-athletes have to earn a living. Which College would you personally want your son to attend? Would you want him to attend a factory where he still cannot read or write once he graduates? I suspect most parents would want him to attend where he gets the best education to be equipped for a successful future in the job market.

Let's also say that the State Board of Education is biased against Tech because they do not want us to recruit the kids that might be candidates for UGA. We protest loudly and finally they change the equation and give us many dumb down courses. We then recruit the more athletic kids and tend to leave out those who would love to attend Tech for the more valuable education. In the long run, who suffers? We might want to be a little careful in the things we desire. In the long run, we might hurt those who need the better education.

I had rather have a broader base of recruiting and bring in the athletes we need from the higher class candidates. With the right coaching which matches the type of players we get with the offensive and defensive systems to match those talents, we should still do fine. Bobby Dodd attracted enough of those kinds of kids and did well with them. So did Heisman and Alexander before him. There are so many skilled athletes just in the State of Georgia and Florida, that many would come to Tech for the educaton and to show off their talents. Also, an exciting style of winning football would draw more fans. Many of the students from Tech come from all parts of the world and the United States. They are not good candidates to return to the games. As in the days of Dodd, many, many fans were of the non-student variety (now called sidewalk fans). We were more fanatic than the students and made up a goodly portion of the fan base. It was hard many times to get tickets to the Tech games as most were sellouts. Why? The brand of football was exciting and the coach was loved by all the fan base.
 

Animal02

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The academic rigor is much more prevalent in the engineering school. Architecture also. Almost no players on the team major in those. I have only seen players that major in management and science/tech/culture. I am sure management at tech is harder than other schools, but most business majors in any college complain that accounting are the hardest classes. I was a EE and took accounting as an elective and barely had to study. If accounting is one of the harder management classes and most players major in that then the academic rigor most tech students go through is unknown to the football team at large.

I majored in Archtecture and got my second degree from the University of Detroit (Jesuit school about half the size of Tech) There was no comparison between the two. At UD, I studied a third of what I did at Tech had a 40hr /wk job and had something like a .85 high GPA. It was almost a joke. (Though 3 semesters cost me as much as 3 years at Tech).... Test the next day.....couple of pitchers in the campus bar the night before and skim through in material in the morning. I am far prouder of my undesignated Tech degree than my professional one.
 

steebu

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Lack of sleep alert - if I'm more incoherent and snarkier than normal I apologize.

There are so many skilled athletes just in the State of Georgia and Florida, that many would come to Tech for the educaton and to show off their talents.

Not entirely sure how you're trying to paint this picture, but I don't think this is true in the least bit.

Kid: "I want to be an engineer! Education is important!"
Buzz Preston: "GT's your place. We ARE engineering! We can do that!"
Kid: "Just came back from Auburn on my official visit. They have an engineering department, too!"
BP: "Really? You're gonna put that in my face? We are the Alabama of Engineering. Auburn is the Louisiana Monroe of Engineering."
Kid: "You're right. Thanks for pointing that out! Education is so important!"

Kid signs with Alabama on signing day.

Also, an exciting style of winning football would draw more fans.

Definitely not true. I worked for the Technique when Boss Ross was coach, and he once made an offhand comment to us that was repeated at an alumni function that I heard about - and he was VERY upset about the stands. We just went undefeated, won the UPI national title, and we didn't even sell out our allotment of season tickets. The stadium held 43,000 people and we didn't sell out every home game. If we can't even sell out season tickets after winning the national title, what makes you think we can attract fans now?

It's a vexing problem to be sure; just as vexing as my derailing dcs's original thread. Sorry!

As for the original point - the APR is a killer for schools that play by the rules and an absolute joke for schools that do not. Our problem is two-fold: getting the kids into GT isn't even the big fight - it's graduating them. And that's where it's easier for the factory schools because of their varied programs ("Hey mom, my parks n' rec class is killing my sleep schedule!") and support staff for the "student"-athletes ("Mary, write my term paper for me!"). The percentage of SA's at GT who are studying for a final exam on the bus trip down to Tampa for the ACCCG is far higher than the percentage of SA's doing the same thing somewhere else.

"Hey, we had Myron Rolle, a Rhodes scholar!" Congratulations, one out of your 85 schollie kids actually went to class! That's a whopping .012 % of your team that took education seriously.

I'm really interested in seeing how the factories skirt the system to get by any APR standards.
 

AE 87

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@steebu there're a couple of more facts that support your conclusion.

1) I've come into regular contact with literally hundreds of undergraduate students over the last several years. Admittedly it's a small data set in the grand scheme of thing, but I suspect it's not statistically insignificant that 90% seem to equate education with a degree. That is to say, they don't actually care as much about gaining knowledge or critical thinking skills as the degree they'll need for getting a job. In this way of thinking, the easiest route to a degree is the easiest route to an education.

2) UNC did what it did for a while without getting caught. I suspect others have as well.
 

GT Man

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This may sound crazy or insensitive (not my goal at all), but how about limiting the amount of foreign students at GT? Sure, they're great for the school's academic reputation, but they don't seem to enrich the legacy or tradition of the school at all. They mostly get their degrees and leave. What was the school's demographic in the 1950s? Apologies to my asian and indian friends, but it would be nice to see more American kids walking around there and going to games and being loud!
 

Rodney Kent

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A College or University should not be in existence for sports, it should exist for education with sports being a by-product. Georgia Tech and Massachussets Institute of Technology are two of the best institutions set up for degrees in Engineering and specialized fields. It is far more important to society to educate students than to make football players out of them. Now, I am an avid College football fan, but the priority is education. However, since it is in the United States, I agree that the local people should get priority for entrance over foreign students.
 

steebu

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This may sound crazy or insensitive (not my goal at all), but how about limiting the amount of foreign students at GT? Sure, they're great for the school's academic reputation, but they don't seem to enrich the legacy or tradition of the school at all. They mostly get their degrees and leave. What was the school's demographic in the 1950s? Apologies to my asian and indian friends, but it would be nice to see more American kids walking around there and going to games and being loud!

Well, technically, Indians are Asians.

Have you been to a UCLA or USC (or heck, Washington) game?
 

Techster

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This may sound crazy or insensitive (not my goal at all), but how about limiting the amount of foreign students at GT? Sure, they're great for the school's academic reputation, but they don't seem to enrich the legacy or tradition of the school at all. They mostly get their degrees and leave. What was the school's demographic in the 1950s? Apologies to my asian and indian friends, but it would be nice to see more American kids walking around there and going to games and being loud!

You have to look at it as an opportunity. China has 1.3 billion people, India has 1.2 billion people. If we can turn the Asian (both Chinese and Indian) students into fans, they can go home and turn other friends and families into fans. Think of all the potential untapped GT fans are over in the East?!
 

jacketup

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GT signed 3 of Rivals top 8 players in Georgia for what is now the sophomore class in basketball. 2 more of those 8 were offered scholarships. So 5 of 8 were academically qualified.

If I look at 247sports top 100 football players in Georgia, we don't have a commitment in the top 60, I believe.

I just don't buy the academics argument to the extreme that so many people want to advance it. Yes, academics are a factor, but academics doesn't explain 0 for 60. Then, there are something like 5 commits from 60-75 in that list. To suggest that academics are the reason that GT is 0 fer in the top 60, but then from 60-75, kids are suddenly qualified and interested, is completely illogical.

GT and Atlanta have a LOT to sell. It's a matter of finding "customers" who are interested. A poor job of marketing the program to those "customers" has existed. Some people like Chevys, some like Fords, others like Toyotas. Find the market and sell to it. Much of the customer base will be outside of Georgia. Look at the 1990 2-deep.

The best OL in SC is going to UF to major in engineering. His father is an engineer. We offered him. Academics are not the reason that he isn't coming to GT.

Approximately 2500 kids will sign FBS scholarships this year. We can do a better job of identifying and selling the 20 or so that want what GT and Atlanta have to offer, and who will help us the most on the field.

This will stir up the jackets nest, but yes, the way the offense is presented is a negative to recruiting. Tom Osborne abandoned the TO because of recruiting. Minor changes to the offense, and calling the positions by NFL names (rather than A and B back) and making it clear that it is not the TO (because it is not) would help.
 

LibertyTurns

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The best OL in SC is going to UF to major in engineering. His father is an engineer. We offered him. Academics are not the reason that he isn't coming to GT.
Agree that we need to do better but quite frankly I'll never want another UF Engineer working for me if I can help it. Worse than VT Engineers and I'm not kidding.

Maybe we can start making some headway recruiting wise if we stop telling everyone how bad we suck? I mean, is that the way you guys run your businesses? It's damn sure not the way I run mine.
 

forensicbuzz

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This may sound crazy or insensitive (not my goal at all), but how about limiting the amount of foreign students at GT? Sure, they're great for the school's academic reputation, but they don't seem to enrich the legacy or tradition of the school at all. They mostly get their degrees and leave. What was the school's demographic in the 1950s? Apologies to my asian and indian friends, but it would be nice to see more American kids walking around there and going to games and being loud!
This already exists. To take it a step further, if you look at the make up on GT campus, the majority of students actually come from Georgia. Part of the problem is that the kids coming out of Georgia schools playing at the elite level of football are not prepared to handle the rigors of Tech. I'm not saying they can't do it; obviously, many do. However, the level of effort necessary to succeed at Tech in the least rigorous degree program is significantly higher than what is available at other schools. There are kids that go to factory schools and enter difficult programs, but most of these schools have programs that are not as demanding.

If we want a higher-aiming student-athlete coming out of Georgia high schools, the high schools have to improve. With five school-age kids, I'm familiar with both the public and private schools in Northeast Atlanta. I recently moved from Atlanta to the North Chicagoland suburbs, and I'll tell you there's no comparison in school systems. I came to Tech from Connecticut, and there's no comparison. Georgia needs to step up in education, and that starts with demanding more from the students and putting teachers in place that know how to educate. It also includes putting your money where your mouth is. In this area of Chicago, the school system spends approximately $15k/year/student, where Georgia is somewhere around $5k/year/student. The teachers are well paid, and the schools demand the best from the teachers. The taxes suck, but after providing shelter and sustenance to my family, my children's education is my most important job. Painting with broad strokes here, but I think you all get what I'm saying (even if you don't necessarily agree).

That being said, that will only solve half the problem. We also have an image issue. As pointed out earlier, we need to market our brand to the general public. When Dodd was coaching (pre-Falcons), GT was the game in town. We had as many, if not more, sidewalk fans as UGA. Our own arrogance (including Dodd's as an AD), went a long way to drive away many of those fans. Our lack of continued on-the-field success has also hampered that. We had momentum under Ross, and with the right hire when he left, we could have built on that success. Instead we made probably our biggest coaching mistake in school history with Bill Lewis (it's taken two decades to even be able to write his name in a post). We recovered with George and Ralph, but then hired super-conservative Chan Gailey, had Flunkgate and were perennially 7-5. Every time we start to make progress, we kill ourselves.

Floating around here because I'm tired, but if we can continue to win all the games we're supposed to and start winning some of the toss-ups, we'll gain momentum. Those kids that are currently high qualifiers that are going to good out-of-state schools (Stanford, ND, etc.) will stay. We need to be able to reproduce 2007 and then maintain that recruiting momentum. 2007 shows we can do it with the current restrictions from the Hill, so we have to find a way to sell our brand to these kids. I'm optimistic, because it's better than being pessimistic.

I know I didn't end where I was pointed at the beginning, so I apologize. But I who cares, it's Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all and Happy Holidays to those who don't celebrate Christmas.
 
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daBuzz

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You have to look at it as an opportunity. China has 1.3 billion people, India has 1.2 billion people. If we can turn the Asian (both Chinese and Indian) students into fans, they can go home and turn other friends and families into fans. Think of all the potential untapped GT fans are over in the East?!

It makes for one b***h of a commute for those guys trying to get to games from Asia though. :sneaky:
 
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