Smartest and dumbest thing the athletic department has done

18in32 said:
Bill Fulcher, Pepper Rodgers, Bill Curry and... who's the fourth?

None of those hires are "among the worst mistakes ever made by the GTAA."
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Fourth relates to MBB and i believe hiring the wrong coaches for the wrong reasons can be considered Very Big mistakes.

Pepper was in no way a bad hire. He was the HC @ ucla. The man knew football. He took freaking KU to the Orange Bowl. The mistake i think we made with him was hiring him about 8 years too late.

The FB coaches i am thinking of are Carson (in the day some considered him a GT man coz he had coached here), Fulcher (although some things not under his control) and curry.

Instead of Carson we had Doug Dickey in our pocket - bad move. Instead of curry we could have had Spurrier. Spurrier - no explanation necessary.

The fourth, from MBB, Dwayne Morrison. Only reason hired was because he had worked for Whack. Not sure we even tried to interview anybody else.

And imo (just as you have yours ) these indeed were some very big mistakes.

Dickey or Carson (who actually had an entire team revolt on him before a bowl game)

Spurrier or curry. Cmon, really?

Fulcher or did we interview anybody else and people blatantly said we had to get a GT grad at that point.

About anyone over Morrison.

As i said - everyone has experienced different things and has their opinions.
 
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GtFan021 said:
Can’t believe no one has said it yet, but dumping Russell and picking up the Adidas contract has got to be up there as one of the best.
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If i understood things it may not have been that big a choice - did not Russell get out of the business?
 
texstinger said:
Instead of Carson we had Doug Dickey in our pocket - bad move.

Dickey or Carson (who actually had an entire team revolt on him before a bowl game)
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Carson was not a GTAA or even a Dodd hire. Dodd's choice was Dickey, had even offered & been accepted, and Pres Ed Harrison over-ruled Dodd...... Just another reason no one cried when Harrison handed the reins over to Art Hansen about 1969.
 
DeepSnap said:
Carson was not a GTAA or even a Dodd hire. Dodd's choice was Dickey, had even offered & been accepted, and Pres Ed Harrison over-ruled Dodd...... Just another reason no one cried when Harrison handed the reins over to Art Hansen about 1969.
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We have had several poor presidents who hired poor AD's who then hired poor coaches. Hopefully, our current president and AD have ended this trend. Why did Harrison want Carson enough to oppose Dodd?
 
GtFan021 said:
Can’t believe no one has said it yet, but dumping Russell and picking up the Adidas contract has got to be up there as one of the best.
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What problem do you have with thick wool uniforms?
 
This is clearly the dumbest...

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A home and home with Georgia State is a close second.
 
wgjacket said:
. I have been following Georgia Tech sports for almost 50 years. Since this is a lull in sports I was trying to think what been the best thing we did and the worse. I would be interested to hear other comments.

Best thing- Hiring Bobby Cremins. Our athletic department was at absolute low point. Some were thinking about dropping our football team to a lower division. Our basketball team was even worse. Bobby proved that Georgia Tech could still compete at the highest level. His teams were the most popular in Atlanta for 5-10 years. He rose the bar for all sports at Georgia Tech.

Worse thing- Scheduling Penn State after we won the National Championship in football. We scheduled a football kickoff classic with Penn State at the Meadowlands. This was basically a Penn State home game. We of course got beat. We lost all momentum from the previous season before we even had a home game. The Atlanta press was quick to get off our bandwagon and so was the city.
We ended up 8-5 lost Coach Ross and then the Bill Lewis years. Our National Championship teams were led by sophomores and we threw away their junior and senior years.
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Letting Bill Curry get away to Bama.
 
BrentwoodJacket said:
We have had several poor presidents who hired poor AD's who then hired poor coaches. Hopefully, our current president and AD have ended this trend. Why did Harrison want Carson enough to oppose Dodd?
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Because Harrison realized Dodd was more popular & carried more a lot more weight than he did. This was only 2 or 3 years after pulling out of the SEC. I suspect Harrison was already getting heat from the heavy ($$$$) hitters in the Alumni Association, not to mention the likes of Furman Bisher & Jesse Outlar, and he didn't like being accountable for something he didn't understand or control fully as an academic. Harrison liked the trips with the team to Los Angeles to play USC - he just didn't like the "Why" of going to L.A.

There was some thought it was because Alexander had worked for Heisman, Dodd had worked for Alexander, and Carson for Dodd, IOW promote from within. Much simpler times.

ADDED:

And then, in 20/20 hindsight, there was Joe Pettit picking Fulcher over Johnny Majors at Iowa State and a few years later installing Pepper's former assistant Doug Weaver as AD. Fulcher was a great guy, a popular choice among the players over what was heard about "old school" Majors - we had just had 5 years of Marine Corps boot camp under Carson & didn't want or need more of the same.
 
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Not the most impactful, but a shoutout to hiring Agnes Berenato and letting her get hired away. I'll let you figure out which is which.
 
Not sure about the smartest, but the dumbest has to be leaving the SEC or taking on massive debt to build the Upper North.

The Upper North renovation added massive long term debt and did not significantly increase revenue. Had we expanded to somewhere in the 45,000-47,000 range, we would probably see more purchasing of season tickets based on the threat of ticket scarcity. Instead, we have 10,000 seats of extra capacity that drives down the value of the tickets. Dumb Dumb Dumb.
 
Does being absolutely atrocious at marketing our programs before Collins came along count as a dumb thing the AA did?
 
Upper North expansion was a good idea up until about 2010-2011. Hard to predict we would have completely lost momentum with the Gailey mediocrity tour after O'Leary built the fan base up. In retrospect, sure... Would have been done completely differently and capped at about 50K with lots of premium suite seating to go with the Letterman's Club. Hindsight.

LOL at knowing in 93 that Cremins' best days were behind him. I call total bullshit on that.

Hard to disagree with Homer Rice to repair the decay under Dodd as AD.

Biggest mistake was definitely leaving the SEC. Hewitt's contract has to be up there too.
 
texstinger said:
If i understood things it may not have been that big a choice - did not Russell get out of the business?
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Yes. Russell stopped and we went with the only one that would take us - Adidas. There was no decision to make. Also people that make it seem like Russell was some huge big deal weighing down the AA are funny.
 
GT flunkout said:
Upper North expansion was a good idea up until about 2010-2011. Hard to predict we would have completely lost momentum with the Gailey mediocrity tour after O'Leary built the fan base up. In retrospect, sure... Would have been done completely differently and capped at about 50K with lots of premium suite seating to go with the Letterman's Club. Hindsight.
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giphy.gif


Average GT Attendance
2008: 47,489
2007: 50,280
2006: 50,617
2005: 51,607
 
Tampa Jacket said:
Yeah. That was a real bummer to have an awesome recruiting class and something to look forward to this February.
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yea real bummer to not look forward to any ACC titles or BCS game victories am I right?

clown
 
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