I don’t think it’s a stretch nor a knock on Paul to acknowledge that he is “old school”, didn’t care for the theatrics. He very much was the embodiment of “it is what it is”. And at least outwardly he stated for 10+ years that GT recruiting “is what it is” and no matter who the coach the recruiting was always the same. He separated himself from recruiting outcomes by making those blanket statements often; he extended it to uga that it doesn’t matter who coaches at uga they always have a top ten class. Maybe he was right but everyone hopes he is wrong. His blanket statements are a lot like what Pastner is doing with the hoops program. If you sell your narrative often enough then maybe some people will believe it as true on the surface and not dig - Pastners claim that we’re still in the middle of a huge rebuild even though his only success so far has been with freaking Gregory’s players.
Back to the original point, wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit that Paul turned down helicopters.