Biggest screwup in Tech history?

We were in Tampa last year for the ACC-C game. We will be there for this year (2009) before moving to Charlotte for 2010 and 2011.
 
Choosing Bill Curry over Steve Spurrier in 1980.
 
coldbeer said:
We were in Tampa last year for the ACC-C game. We will be there for this year (2009) before moving to Charlotte for 2010 and 2011.
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Tampa....you're right. Hopefully the move to Charlotte would help attendance. Ha, and Tampa is even worse geographically then J'ville
 
GeorgiaTechFan said:
The first thing the ACC should do....is get out of Jacksonville for a championship game. Get the game somewhere easier for most the conference to get to...(back to the North Carolina bandwagon) but Charlotte would probably be the best place for the game. Get out of this joke of nobody being at the game. This is one area that the SEC just has total domination.


*** I don't know when the contract with Jacksonville ends
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I believe the ACCCG is in Tampa this year
 
Beestorm said:
Choosing Bill Curry over Steve Spurrier in 1980.
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Maybe...but Spurrier would have left us high and dry for better ground too. I do like the idea of a "Tech" guy being the coach...obviously i'm happy with Johnson here...but he's in his 50's...how knows..after he leaves. At least with a Tech guy you like to think they won't bolt for a prettier girl (well...there's Curry).
 
coldbeer said:
Ole Miss, Miss State, and Georgia blocked GT when they reapplied to the SEC in the mid 70's. The Mississippi schools remember how Dodd treated them over the years and UGA didn't want the SEC competition in state.

The ACC gave us a shot when we had one of the worst athletics programs (and facilities) in Division 1. For that we should be grateful.

Remember that up until the last year when the SEC signed the mega ESPN deal, the ACC paid out the most $$ per conference member. NCAA money, football TV money, basketball TV money. The ACC paid out more then every other conference out there including the SEC and Big 10 due to all our combined revenues.

It's easy to look backward, but what's done is done. We aren't about to leave the ACC and probably couldn't afford to leave (if we wanted to look elsewhere).

Collectively we need to improve things on our campus, before we worry about any one else (or the conference). We need to be more passioniate about Georgia Tech, 365 days a year - then we are about our opponents.

We need to continue to build out our own fan base and get our season football ticket base up over 30K. If we ever got it to ~35K, we would be selling out BDS, game in and game out. (Talk about keeping the red and orange out!)

We need to rebuild out basketball season ticket sales too. A Georgia Tech basketball ticket used to be one of the toughest in town to get in the late 80's/early 90's. These days, we are forced to advertise GT hoops ticket sales on AJC.com.

It takes mega bucks to play big boy college sports. We need more fans that vote with "fannies in the seats each game" and donations. I hope everyone is trying their best to do their part.
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Good post. For me, the one thing I'd want to see happen to improve our ACC experience would be to somehow add FSU as a permanent opponent. If we were to play FSU, Clemson, Miami, and VT every year (along with UGAy o.o.c), then that would equal, in terms of excitement, anything we could have playing in the SEC, IMHO.
 
Leaving the SEC didn't prevent us from winning just as many national titles over the following years as UGA did.

The hiring of B___ L____ was much worse. He tanked us in the mid '90s when we should have been building on the 1990 title season.
 
CrackerJacket said:
Leaving the SEC didn't prevent us from winning just as many national titles over the following years as UGA did.

The hiring of B___ L____ was much worse. He tanked us in the mid '90s when we should have been building on the 1990 title season.
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Leaving the SEC probably hurt our recruiting and hurt us financially, preventing upkeep and improvements on the facilities. BL might have been a bad problem, but I think it's a mistake to say that leaving the SEC did not effect the quality of teams we had in the subsequent years.
 
GeorgiaTechFan said:
Maybe...but Spurrier would have left us high and dry for better ground too. I do like the idea of a "Tech" guy being the coach...obviously i'm happy with Johnson here...but he's in his 50's...how knows..after he leaves. At least with a Tech guy you like to think they won't bolt for a prettier girl (well...there's Curry).
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Washington Redskins was to Spurrier as Alabama was to Curry. It appeared to be an improvement for them, but in hindsight both should have stayed at home for their own career in coaching.
 
Leaving the SEC is right up there with the biggest blunders, but if we had stayed our future in the conference without a Dodd-caliber coach--and unfortunately with Dodd as AD would not have been spectacular. I lived thru the firing of Bud Carson and in the context of the times it was the only thing to do (Bisher's opinion). With the luxury of hindsight, I now feel that it was one of the biggest mistakes ever made in Tech athletic history. It started the program spinning off it's axis for decades. Only now do I get the sense that we are finally headed back towards stability and prominence. It is, of course, pure conjecture, but if Carson had been given two more years we might have become the pre-eminent program in the South for the 70's and into the 80's. Carson's SuperBowl rings might have been NCAA championships. His staff eventually became a who's who of college coaching.
Leaving the SEC tho made it more important for Tech to be successful in the late 1960's and Carson started slowly. Having Dodd as AD didn't help either. The West Stands mafia got restless and Carson was the polar opposite of Dodd and not at all a good ol' boy that all the elite southern programs of the time were built around.
 
GeorgiaTechFan said:
Maybe...but Spurrier would have left us high and dry for better ground too. I do like the idea of a "Tech" guy being the coach...obviously i'm happy with Johnson here...but he's in his 50's...how knows..after he leaves. At least with a Tech guy you like to think they won't bolt for a prettier girl (well...there's Curry).
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10 years of Spurrier would have been good. I doubt Spurrier would have left us for the USFL.. We were lucky we got Ross though so it worked out.

Would have been really great if we had Spurrier until 1990, Ross comes in, continues the winning, leaves the program in the hands of OLeary and Fridge in 1996.. :biggthumpup:
 
Yukonwreck said:
Leaving the SEC is right up there with the biggest blunders, but if we had stayed our future in the conference without a Dodd-caliber coach--and unfortunately with Dodd as AD would not have been spectacular. I lived thru the firing of Bud Carson and in the context of the times it was the only thing to do (Bisher's opinion). With the luxury of hindsight, I now feel that it was one of the biggest mistakes ever made in Tech athletic history. It started the program spinning off it's axis for decades. Only now do I get the sense that we are finally headed back towards stability and prominence. It is, of course, pure conjecture, but if Carson had been given two more years we might have become the pre-eminent program in the South for the 70's and into the 80's. Carson's SuperBowl rings might have been NCAA championships. His staff eventually became a who's who of college coaching.
Leaving the SEC tho made it more important for Tech to be successful in the late 1960's and Carson started slowly. Having Dodd as AD didn't help either. The West Stands mafia got restless and Carson was the polar opposite of Dodd and not at all a good ol' boy that all the elite southern programs of the time were built around.
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the players all hated carson
 
So who was the worst AD hire? I can't say on Dodd.....I guess Homer Rice hired BL, but he did alot of other things that were pretty good for the Institute. I hope I never have to go through another Dave Brain here again.
 
gtyellowjackets said:
the players all hated carson
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yes, I was a student at the time. wouldn't you if Dodd had recruited you and you ended up playing for Carson--and being 4-6 instead of 9-1? He was the anti-Dodd, that's for sure. Marine DI mentality,etc.
 
I think we would have ended up like Virginia Tech. In other words, our academics would have taken a side-seat to athletics. I think it's very possible that we could have gotten out of our big slump and stayed big.

But you know what? Leaving the SEC, whether it was a good decision or not, is a part of our history and we should embrace it. Heck, we have the chance every year to go up against one of that conference's most vaunted teams and beat them. Whether or not we start doing it is another issue. But we're in the ACC, and lets not try to be like SEC teams and dwell on "woulda-shoulda-coulda" and do like CPJ and face the facts:

We're in the ACC and one of the frontrunners in it.

To Hell with Georgia!
 
I say the biggest screwup was moving the Georgia game to the Georgia Dome on the first Saturday of the season.











:grin:
 
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