Toughest ACC non-conference schedule: GT of course

[AUFC]

The 300s aren’t even open for Louisville. It’s puzzling why we are scheduling home games in a venue we don’t own for 45k capacity. Aflac better be paying us a lot of money for this.

 

[Vespidae]

The 300s aren’t even open for Louisville. It’s puzzling why we are scheduling home games in a venue we don’t own for 45k capacity. Aflac better be paying us a lot of money for this.

As I recall, Tech gets to sell more luxury suites and keeps the money.

 

[AUFC]

As I recall, Tech gets to sell more luxury suites and keeps the money.

The 110C and 128C are MSRP $500. But they have a ton for resale for much lower that I think are listed by the team. Huge blocks available in all the clubs.

 

[Root4GT]

Certainly our attendance has been it's lowest the last few years due to record setting poor coaching and results, but if you look at a 10 or 20 year measure, Tech attendance is much better. If Key can win at even a halfway decent rate it will go back up.


I mean I don't think the ACC head office is sitting there going "how can we screw Georgia Tech today", that's not their endgame, but in situations where someone is going to get dealt a bad hand they have absolutely no problem giving that hand to Tech. During CPJ's tenure, someone looked at how many times each ACC team played another conference team who got a bye week before, and Tech and FSU overhwelmingly got the shaft on that, the rest of the teams weren't even close. I can't quite recall the specifics, but Tech was playing like 2-3 opponents with a bye week advantage every year, while UNC played maybe 1 every two years. They finally made a rule in 2017 or 2018 to limit it to max 1 a season. Consider we also got the crap end of the stick on our pod, getting stuck with Louisville and Wake which we almost never played prior.

True on bye games before GT. Until CJP and TS raised it seriously with the ACC Comishioner teams could request one off week per season. Coaches are smart and many requested the off week before GT. The last several years of CJP’s time the ACC changed the rule and GT’s opponents off weeks prior to playing GT normalized to the league average. I see that as simply smart by opposing coaches. Generally not something for the ACC scheduler to be concerned with until it was raised as an issue. But it did happen.

It’s been a while since GT had good attendance sans UGA and Clemson games. Fan attendance and interest was clearly declining the last few CJP years. It was a National trend as well but worse than average at GT.

We really have an old and small core fan base. Winning should help. Just need to win.

 

[Jim Prather]

Somewhere, in one of the old posts here, someone did an analysis of GT wins after an opponent had a normal week vs having extra time and the result came out to be that all the extra practice time opponents were getting translated to one extra loss per season for GT on average. When people started looking at it that way it became a big deal

 

[cpf2001]

Weren’t Thursday night games quite a bit more premium twenty years ago before everyone started doing it and the NFL got in on the night too? More exposure than normal from those games, not less.

I remember a fair amount of those being big deal games that we loved as students too back then.

 

[Root4GT]

Weren’t Thursday night games quite a bit more premium twenty years ago before everyone started doing it and the NFL got in on the night too? More exposure than normal from those games, not less.

I remember a fair amount of those being big deal games that we loved as students too back then.

They did get decent exposure as compared to an early Saturday game. Likely the teams would not have gotten the 3:30 or evening Saturday games.

The teams that played in huge stadiums didn’t host Thursday games because those games were too hard to get the 90K plus fans to on a weekday night.

 

[cpf2001]

They did get decent exposure as compared to an early Saturday game. Likely the teams would not have gotten the 3:30 or evening Saturday games.

The teams that played in huge stadiums didn’t host Thursday games because those games were too hard to get the 90K plus fans to on a weekday night.

Yeah but GT could sell out a Thursday night game just as easily as a Saturday 3:30 one and I’d take the exclusive national Thursday “only football on Tv” spot back then over a 3:30 game that nobody gets outside of the Southeast unless they go online to ESPN3(60).

I think that 2008 Miami game worked as a much better coming out party for Johnson’s offense than it would’ve on a Saturday afternoon.

 

[iceeater1969]

MS State is about on par with Tech over a 20 span. The last 10 years or so has been a wpt of 0.59, so respectable. Missouri is not a team I follow much, but they were explosive a few years ago. They can (at times) but up quite a fight.

My point is, we have very strong opponents (UGA, Clemson, FSU) and some very weak ones within the conference. You are going to have to play someone respectable enough to make a difference ... you can't just play Rice or Alcorn State every time.

Spot on! Never schedule 2 teams that could be dogs.

In 15 after orange bowl we played a lousy Alcorn state and terrible coached Tulane. On 2 gt tds Tulane had 9 men on the field. I met one our coaches at hotel before the next game at ND. He said "those games hurt us and we are about to step on to the field w grown *** men who are going to punch us in the mouth. We will find out who wants to play real man football."

I hate that we are stuck w UGA on schedule. If thats not changing, we have no business scheduling Alabama.

 

[LT 1967]

Spot on! Never schedule 2 teams that could be dogs.

In 15 after orange bowl we played a lousy Alcorn state and terrible coached Tulane. On 2 gt tds Tulane had 9 men on the field. I met one our coaches at hotel before the next game at ND. He said "those games hurt us and we are about to step on to the field w grown *** men who are going to punch us in the mouth. We will find out who wants to play real man football."

I hate that we are stuck w UGA on schedule. If thats not changing, we have no business scheduling Alabam

The Alabama game might be canceled due to SEC and possible ACC expansion?

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Stream of consciousness took me down memory lane. Remember when uga’s schedule used to have Auburn, Florida and Ga Tech on three consecutive weekends to end their season?

UGA realized that it was too much pressure to try to win all three games and that it was keeping them from an SEC championship and a national title every year. They lobbied the SEC and Tech to break up the pattern, trying to push Auburn and Florida to other dates while getting a by-week or a weak out of conference game prior to Tech. They broke the pattern and this is just one examples of many in which both Ga and Alabama give major attention to how their schedule can make or break their season.

Oh, there is also a reason Georgia has played Kentucky and Vanderbilt more times than Alabama. This imbalance is especially true over the last 50 years.

 

[g0lftime]

Stream of consciousness took me down memory lane. Remember when uga’s schedule used to have Auburn, Florida and Ga Tech on three consecutive weekends to end their season?

UGA realized that it was too much pressure to try to win all three games and that it was keeping them from an SEC championship and a national title every year. They lobbied the SEC and Tech to break up the pattern, trying to push Auburn and Florida to other dates while getting a by-week or a weak out of conference game prior to Tech. They broke the pattern and this is just one examples of many in which both Ga and Alabama give major attention to how their schedule can make or break their season.

Oh, there is also a reason Georgia has played Kentucky and Vanderbilt more times than Alabama. This imbalance is especially true over the last 50 years.

They used to play Clemson every year too until Clemson kept beating them.

 

[Root4GT]

Stream of consciousness took me down memory lane. Remember when uga’s schedule used to have Auburn, Florida and Ga Tech on three consecutive weekends to end their season?

UGA realized that it was too much pressure to try to win all three games and that it was keeping them from an SEC championship and a national title every year. They lobbied the SEC and Tech to break up the pattern, trying to push Auburn and Florida to other dates while getting a by-week or a weak out of conference game prior to Tech. They broke the pattern and this is just one examples of many in which both Ga and Alabama give major attention to how their schedule can make or break their season.

Oh, there is also a reason Georgia has played Kentucky and Vanderbilt more times than Alabama. This imbalance is especially true over the last 50 years.

Do you think being in the same Division as Vanderbilt for 30 years might impact playing them more than playing Bama.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Do you think being in the same Division as Vanderbilt for 30 years might impact playing them more than playing Bama.

I would love to give up our historic rivalry with Clemson as easily as Georgia gave up their historic rivalry with Alabama. Georgia made that decision 20 years before divisional play doI don’t think divisions had much to do with it.

But, to be honest, I want us to play Clemson periodically even though they are not in our division. But it is not a smart move if you look at what the “big kids” in college do.

 

[Root4GT]

I would love to give up our historic rivalry with Clemson as easily as Georgia gave up their historic rivalry with Alabama. Georgia made that decision 20 years before divisional play doI don’t think divisions had much to do with it.

But, to be honest, I want us to play Clemson periodically even though they are not in our division. But it is not a smart move if you look at what the “big kids” in college do.

Well now you are going back to 1970. What happened 50 years ago isn’t particularly relevant in college football now. Heck neither school had any black players in 1970. What college football is 50 years from now likely will have very little resemblance to now.

Now I have no issue if we drop Georgia but I am clearly a minority on that idea. Not living in Georgia makes that line of thought much easier. They are just another very good team that I want to lose most of there games.

 

[forensicbuzz]

Do you think being in the same Division as Vanderbilt for 30 years might impact playing them more than playing Bama.

Kentucky too. I just wasn't going to go there.

 

[cpf2001]

I think a claim of “UGA has been better than GT at managing their football program for long term success and reputation for at least 50 years” sounds pretty accurate, frankly.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

Well now you are going back to 1970. What happened 50 years ago isn’t particularly relevant in college football now. Heck neither school had any black players in 1970. What college football is 50 years from now likely will have very little resemblance to now.

Now I have no issue if we drop Georgia but I am clearly a minority on that idea. Not living in Georgia makes that line of thought much easier. They are just another very good team that I want to lose most of there games.

I’m not following you. Tech had Black players in the 70s but that seems irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

I think a claim of “UGA has been better than GT at managing their football program for long term success and reputation for at least 50 years” sounds pretty accurate, frankly.

Alabama and Georgia decided in the mid 60s that it was in neither of their best interests to play each other every year. Any body who wants to argue that will have to carry on without me. So, yes, you are correct that uga has done a better job at managing their program.

SEC Division play was the perfect excuse for uga to keep doing what they were doing.

ACC Division play would have been the perfect excuse for Tech to change what they were doing but didn’t.

 

[bobongo]

Alabama and Georgia decided in the mid 60s that it was in neither of their best interests to play each other every year. Any body who wants to argue that will have to carry on without me. So, yes, you are correct that uga has done a better job at managing their program.

SEC Division play was the perfect excuse for uga to keep doing what they were doing.

ACC Division play would have been the perfect excuse for Tech to change what they were doing but didn’t.

No argument that Ugag and Alabama have done better jobs managing their programs overall, but what was good for Ugag and Alabama in the '60s isn't necessarily good for Tech now.

We need rivalries. Clemson is our biggest rival outside of Ugag, and is currently one of the very few games that fill the stadium (or very near to it) and we need that. It stokes fan interest and we need that. We only started talking about dropping Clemson after we started a losing streak against them. Start being competitive again, and the talk will pipe down. We don't need to water down the schedule. We just need to start being competitive again. It starts this year.