"Tech Man"
(JacketDan and his rifle this afternoon)What do John Heisman, Bobby Dodd, Bobby Cremins, Homer Rice and Bobby Ross have in common? They all had nothing to do with Tech before coming to The Flats and being enormously successful. Actually, lets go through Tech history and find a "Tech Man" who did a great job later on ... I'll spot you Kim King, you list another one. No, Bill Curry doesn't count. That's it. There's nothing magical about getting a degree at Tech or playing football there that makes you suddenly so much more competant at running the Tech athletic department. It isn't that different from anywhere else. No, it's not Georgia. It's not Ball State or Cal Tech either - it's a BCS level athletics department with a few extra academic restraints (but not nearly as many as people would like you to believe - some folks are making it sound like a penal colony today or something).
The whole "Tech Man" concept is something the older generation has latched onto as some way of making themselves feel a sense of elitism ... "only someone who's been through GT can understand it". Bullcrap. What we need is someone not associated with the school who can come in and clean house of the pile of decrepit "Tech Men" we have who are doing a terrible job keeping anything organized. Tech has gotten lazy, self aggrandizing and needs a quick kick in the pants to force people to either get lost or join the modern age. There's a reason we all make fun of "The Hill" ... they're incompetant in many ways. So why on earth keep hiring people affiliated with that? Because we're too proud to admit someone else might be doing it better? Because we want to keep the status quo in place? Because we enjoy defining mediocrity in big time athletics? Seriously, this mancrush on Bill Curry (who I like a lot, don't mistake it- just not as an A.D) is moreso a symptom of a misplaced sense of importance of all things Tech in the world.
In short, memo to every Tech fan who is throwing a tantrum today - GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR BEHIND. THANK YOU.
posted by Nathan at 11:47 AM
Georgia Tech Sports
6 Comments:
This whole situation has gotten absolutely ridiculous. If Bill Curry had gone anywhere other than Tech nobody would have remotely mentioned his name as a candidate.
Hell he's a great guy and a great Ambassador for Tech, but the last think we needed was another opportunity for "lack of institutional control." Just because he walked across the same poorly designed campus the rest of us had to does not suddenly make him AD worthy.
This "Tech Man" think basically implies that any of us on the boards should have been picked ahead of Radakavich (sp?) because we once spent time on a college campus. A realm of thought so illogical that I would have thought it impossible if I didn't spend as much time on the Hive as I do.
It wouldn't bother me so much if these retards didn't spend all of their time tooting their damn horns about how smart they are and then say some of the stupidest crap I've ever heard.
I agree that the GT administration made a better choice with Radakovich than they would've made with Curry. Maybe this is Vince Dooley's fault, but now everybody seems to think that just because a guy was the football coach once, he'll make an awesome AD. Curry seems like a stand-up guy, but running an athletic department means a lot more than just managing the fortunes of the football team. And it's not even like Curry had more than one or two good seasons as coach at Tech -- it's not an accident that people now remember him more for getting bricks heaved through his window in Tuscaloosa than for anything he did on the Flats.
So anyway, I know the new AD is still something of an unkown commodity to Techers, but what's your initial off-the-cuff reaction -- does this make the water for Gailey, cooler, hotter, or not really change things?
My current reaction is excitement. Despite what all the old farts are saying we didn't really need that much of a fund-raising AD. We need a guy that says the right things, provides quality oversight, and gets the parts of our athletics departments that are off track (football) back on while keeping the on track parts (baseball, golf, basketball, women's sports) moving forward. So what we really needed was a guy with paper pusher experience.
As for Gailey, I honestly don't know. My gut reaction is that this doesn't bode well for him in the long run. Like I said before, nothing puts a stamp on a program like a big time coaching hire. Present season non-withstanding Hewitt is still on untouchable ground so that really only leaves Chan.
Gailey saves his job this year if he beats Georgia OR wins 9 games. I'm not sure he stays if he doesn't do one or other.
Unfortunately for him, GT coaches are measured by how often they can beat UGa (or at least not lose to them). Gailey, frankly, has the millstone of 52-7 around his neck that will probably sink him before it's all said and done.
The biggest thing that Tech has going for it in football should also the scariest point fot Tech fans...there are only 3 elite teams in the ACC now. VT, Miami and FSU.
There are also only 2 true rock bottom programs that will never get better in Duke and Wake.
Tech is in the "other" pack. Year in and year out, you can take Clemson, UVA, UNC, NCSU, Maryland, Boston College and Georgia Tech; and they will finish in any order imaginable in the conference.
If GT could just get it's act together on the academic support side WHILE finding a coach with some degree of competency as a recruiter (Gailey recruits at Wake's level), then could take a consistent place near the top of that list.
It's not that hard to beat out those similarly average programs to get to 8-9 win seasons.
If GT can't get it's act together on the recruiting and academic support side, they risk moving into the Duke / Wake tier as the ACC's shakes out it's power structure.
The Braine-Gailey-Ball combo was damn near the poison pill of GT football. It wouldn't shock me if all 3 are a distant memory in 10 months.
No way that a new AD is going to keep putting up with Gailey's mediocrity.
pwd
Good reading this postt
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