Without earning any tangible equity in return.
Pat Dye resigned.
They get box seats at games. They get to job knob with University officials who would otherwise have nothing to do with them. The amazing thing to me is that these rich donors have been able to keep their relative wealth.
Because most Tech fans are cheap AF.
Mega-rich donors who care about sports. Exhibit A:
Because we run off the blue collar money guys with our academic elitism. The common thing about these big businessmen who spend an asston of their money on college athletics is that they own businesses with blue collar/family roots. Yellawood, JB Hunt, Walmart, Pilot, etc. Those are all working class based companies and their owner families spend a lot on athletics. We don’t have that.
Not true. There are plenty of mid sized construction, services and retail companies owned by Tech grads.
Mid sized. Not behemoth corporations like JB Hunt, Yellawood, Walmart or Pilot/Flying J. Midsized construction, services, and retail companies aren’t the ones spending stupid amounts of money on sports hobbies.
We have those too. The difference is that our fundraising campaigns only started 30 years ago, and they were encouraged to donate to the school for infrastructure and non-sports endowments, which they've done in force. The academic side is very protective of them. This is where the president can make his biggest impact.
I'd take his schemes for sure. Maybe not his lack of interest in recruiting.
Honest question- given what you said, what are your expectations for GT football? If something more than mediocre, then how can we compete given what you said?
I expect GT football to compete for Division championships on a regular basis. Conference championships in waves with good recruiting classes and development. GT football should finish in the top half of the ACC. I expect GT to beat UGA 25% of the time. I expect us to once in a while compete for national titles by some combination of luck and recruiting lottery. I expect our teams to be well coached, disciplined, and never out worked. I expect the players to be role model sportsmen, students, and citizens.
Well said. The only expectation I would increase is the 25% victory rate over UGA. We have played UGA 111 times. We have won 39 times which is a little over 35%. I know we are going through a low period now and UGA is at an all time high. History does go in cycles so one day we should return at least to the 30% win rate. I know that right now that is optimistic, but if we are going to continue to field a football team this should at least be our expectation.
I think those goals are very reasonable. I think we have to play "the game," though, to have even that level of competitiveness. By "the game" I mean full support of the administration, healthy NIL deals for players, some recruiting gimmicks, and generous exceptions for admission standards for athletes. Those seem to be baseline requirements for P5 football these days for better or for worse.
You expect GT to beat UGA 1/4 years, when they couldn’t do that when GT was much closer competitively and talent wise before Smart elevated that program? Since 2017 UGA is 66-10. The only bad loss during that time is to South Carolina. Otherwise, they’ve lost to Alabama, LSU, UF and once to Auburn and Texas. That’s it.