Pyperkub
1586
I’ll be flying down for the UCLA - UW game this Friday as UCLA goes into the meat grinder portion of the schedule - UW/Utah /@ Oregon (with a bye after Utah).
The offense is still elite (esp if DTR and Charbonnet are healthy) , but we really don’t know if the defense will be good enough to contend in the Pac-12. 4-0, but 3 name the score blowouts against bottom feeders and one tight game against what could be a good South Alabama squad, a let down game, or evidence our defense still has major issues.
Penix and Co at the Rose Bowl will be a great contender/pretender game, for both unbeaten squads.
That’s awesome. Let us know which section you’re sitting in. We’ll see you because you’ll be the only one in it!
The flexbone option sends its regards.
When I was in college, at Georgia, a lot of my friends (the smart ones) when to Georgia Tech, which is a great engineering school. At the time, though, it was, like a lot of academically rigorous schools, not so good in football. Which, honestly, was fine with most folks there.
Except I guess some wealthy alumni or maybe people who saw $$$ from TV or something. They began to push for a competitive program, and for a while actually did put out some good teams. At the cost, though, of seriously undermining their academic requirements it seemed. No clue where they are on that spectrum today.
Same sort of thing happened at Virginia when I went there for grad school. When I got there the team was dreadful, and everyone was fine with that, as games were pretty much just party time. Soon enough, though, they got the bug and tried to field competitive teams, too.
Scuzz
1591
Georgia Tech basically followed the pattern of the military academies, they went with a full on option running attack which requires less talent and size in certain positions.
Trouble is there is no defensive equivalent.
Worth noting that Collins and the AD (in)famously abandoned the Paul Johnson flexbone option offense for a more pro-style one, essentially forcing Johnson out after a 7-5 season. With the caveat that it is difficult to move on from the option—though maybe don’t look at what Clay Helton’s doing at Georgia Southern right now if you want to use that excuse—Collins has yet to win more than three games in his time there (this is his fourth year).
I’m an option fan (any non-typical offense really) and enjoyed Johnson scowling on the sidelines when I’d see a Tech game, but in fairness it should be noted that Johnson was reportedly checked out in his last few seasons, as the recruiting rankings suggest. Seeing Georgia having so much success down the road in Athens and considering the talent on hand in the Atlanta area is enough to make anyone greedy, so I can understand why they’d want to try for something more than what Johnson was giving them.
Coastal Carolina runs a spread option, which could make for a nice midway point between gimmicky offense that works okay with lesser talent and one that is appealing to recruits. Not sure if Tech is much of an upgrade though, so CC’s coach might be wise to bide his time for something better.
Radical idea: Mybe try not adding more and more commercial breaks?
Tortilla
1594
The commercial breaks are the point. The football between the commercial breaks is the product the NCAA is trying to polish up.
That’s the problem though. Georgia Tech is an engineering school, and a good one. Georgia is, well, Georiga, a big-ass state university where your education can be excellent but it depends entirely on your own willingness to make it happen. Getting into Tech is hard, getting in to Georgia is not. Yes, athletes go through a somewhat, ahem, different process but the baseline affects things. It’s simply easier for UGA to finagle its admissions standards to make sure they get the players they want, than it is for a school like Tech.
Not to mention that, let’s face it, the experience of being a student at Tech is a bit different than being one at UGA. Downtown Atlanta is certainly hopping, but not always in the way one might want, and you don’t really get as much of the traditional college look and feel. In Athens, though, you have the classic university experience and culture, without the competition of urban craziness.
Toss in the types of alumni the two schools have, the sizes of the student bodies, all that, and there’s just no way Tech is going to out recruit UGA. Or even really compete.
lostcawz
1597
One of my sons plays in the band for an FCS school. I was at one of the games and didn’t realize it was on ESPN 14++Southwest-Breaker 1-9 (I think the cameras were random fan’s phone cameras). I finally figured it out when I noticed insanely long breaks for no apparent reason. With all the incompletions and whatnot the game lasted over 3.5 hours. It was a beating and a half. And I like football.
Scuzz
1598
I noticed this years ago when it seemed like some breaks at Fresno State home games were taking forever. Many schools have all or their away games televised now in their local market. Fresno State used to but now the conference deal has wiped out much of that.
Rationally, that might be true—and I’d even argue that there are peculiarities to Georgia Tech being so STEM-focused that make it more difficult to recruit there than at Duke/Stanford/Northwestern/etc.—but rationality is not a common trait among athletic directors and university presidents, at least not in this instance, which is compounded by rival Georgia’s recent success.
Scuzz
1600
You think maybe Georgia Tech fans would have just been happy with respectable .500 team? The coach they dumped was like 10-24, or something like that. The team was bad, period.
Oh, no argument there. Rationality is in short supply all over the region when it comes to sports.
Um, well, and a lot of other things too.
They weren’t happy with Johnson’s teams, which were usually over .500 and even won an Orange Bowl within the last decade. Here’s what the university president says he wants:
“Do anything he can” sounds kinda ominous for that program, but the fans seem onboard with it. Again, I can see why they’d want that, but should they want/expect that is another matter.
Best in athletics, best in academics…those things do not add up in this day and age, really. Unless you scope it right. You can be best among schools that actually insist their players learn to read, for instance.
Pyperkub
1604
Of the top 3 schools in NCAA Championships, two (Stanford #1, UCLA #3) are also at the top of the academic tier.
If Stanford were a nation, it would rank 10th in total Olympic medals.
