CPJ has one year Wanted UT job

Diseqc said:
So now I’m confused. Is it meaningless or is it worth something? If only 3 teams have it that suggests it’s rare. And that Johnson ööööed up something of ours that is rare.

FoJers need to pick a consistent argument.
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Can't speak for others, but I found our bowl streak to be worth something. I'm sad it ended. CPJ bears the bulk of responsibility for it but seeing that it WAS something rare, I don't believe it comes close to a fireable offense. (I realize that's not the only ammo in the "Fire CPJ" magazine.)
 
gtleviathan said:
Can't speak for others, but I found our bowl streak to be worth something. I'm sad it ended. CPJ bears the bulk of responsibility for it but seeing that it WAS something rare, I don't believe it comes close to a fireable offense. (I realize that's not the only ammo in the "Fire CPJ" magazine.)
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I agree that it was worth something, and was a pretty remarkable achievement when you compare us to other schools with long bowl streaks. But, we also have to look at the quality of the bowls. O' Leary, who is pretty universally loved, topped out at two Gators and a Peach. The Gator Bowl was the best Chan could do. Otherwise, we were slumming it in places like Boise playing poorly attended daytime bowl games. CPJ has gotten us to 2 Orange Bowls in addition to the bowls formerly known as Gator and Peach. The others have been mostly mid-tier, as well (Sun, Music City). In an ideal scenario, a bad season would be a trip to Shreveport or Detroit rather than 3-9 or 5-6, of course, but I still like the upside when CPJ has everything clicking with his offense and at least a passable defense. So, the bowl streak was worth something, but even in financial terms, 2 orange bowls probably paid out as much as we got from all of the lower tier bowls we went to put together.
 
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gtleviathan said:
I realize that's not the only ammo in the "Fire CPJ" magazine.
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I recently found my old BB gun I had as a kid; a replica of the Winchester lever action rifle used by Lucas McCain in the old Rifleman series. I used to terrorize birds, squirrels and rodents with that thing. I bought BBs from Walmart, loaded it and went out to shoot something. Aimed at a tree about 25 feet away, pulled the trigger and....the BB went about 10 feet before weakly plopping to the ground*. That's about the quality of the "Fire CPJ" ammo.

*decades of storage apparently weakened the spring and created corrosion in the barrel, will be cleaning it this weekend.
 
FWIW, Stansbury extended CPJ for 2 more years (2022). It's not public yet what part of the contract is guaranteed.
 
CPJ isn't the best we can do. I don't think that he's much better than average as a complete coach, honestly, from a short term standpoint. He's tactically brilliant, and it gives him a higher ceiling than we could expect from the vast majority of coaches, but we have seen repeated failures in player development and personnel decisions under his leadership that seem like they should have been avoidable. He's not doing a great job improving the floor of the program in terms of near future wins, at all, which is why we have the split in opinion we do as a fan base, in my opinion. Half of us are looking at the ceiling, the other half at the floor.

There are other strategies for success that will work at Tech, and work better, than this one. Much better player development seems to me to be a prerequisite to reaching the heights of excellence we all really want to see. Football is ultimately a game of olayers, and other smaller schools have made runs at greatness despite starting with poor recruiting and small budgets precisely by creating star players. Paul Johnson all but said it himself: he's never going to out-scheme Alabama enough to realistically win a game, if the guys can't win their battles on the field. Nowadays that means Clemson too, really. Georgia is probably dumb enough to keep falling for it every once in a while, though.

The trick is getting a guy who can bring that development without trading in too much tactical ability. Then his price, and his other options. Who's that guy? I don't know, but there are a whole hell of a lot of guys out there. They can't all be bad at it.

And recruiting is another issue. I don't think I understand it all that well, honestly, but it isn't outside the realm of possibility that a new guy could recruit better than Johnson as well, even with our disadvantages there.

The one area that makes me hesitate when considering parting ways with Johnson is his momentum in improving things. Whether he's the guy who is responsible or not, we have our AA working with our HC and getting things related to recruiting done with at least the tacit approval of the school. That's such a tenuous situation at Tech, that nobody posting here remotely understands the Dynamics of, it'd seem to be a huge risk to yank out a fundamental part of that and replace it before we get everything out of it that we can. There's no guarantee the next guy plays any nicer with the school or the donors than CPJ. He's had a decade to get used to them and the next guy will undoubtedly suffer some culture shock when he arrives. Our school and principle donors are not necessarily the same kinds of people that are in those positions at other institutions, but coaches pretty much come in one broad cultural flavor.

Personally, I still see CPJ as a good coach for us and wouldn't change him because of the high ceiling he has and his remaining currency in program building. He's still giving us really exciting and competitive games, for the most part, and at any time we are basically a lucky bounce away from magic. I think a good defense, if we ever get that, will dramatically improve our odds and at the very least an aggressive defense will be fun to watch.

But I won't be sad if he gets replaced or anything. As long as the next guy meets our long term program building needs. Replacing him without the long term in mind would be foolish, though. Tech is not in a place to rapidly build success in any sustainable way. Yet.
 
GEETEELEE said:
I recently found my old BB gun I had as a kid; a replica of the Winchester lever action rifle used by Lucas McCain in the old Rifleman series. I used to terrorize birds, squirrels and rodents with that thing. I bought BBs from Walmart, loaded it and went out to shoot something. Aimed at a tree about 25 feet away, pulled the trigger and....the BB went about 10 feet before weakly plopping to the ground*. That's about the quality of the "Fire CPJ" ammo.

*decades of storage apparently weakened the spring and created corrosion in the barrel, will be cleaning it this weekend.
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I had one of those. It was still around my Dad's garage up until a few years ago. May still be there somewhere. Same thing happened to mine.
 
ThisIsAtlanta said:
CPJ isn't the best we can do. I don't think that he's much better than average as a complete coach, honestly, from a short term standpoint. He's tactically brilliant, and it gives him a higher ceiling than we could expect from the vast majority of coaches, but we have seen repeated failures in player development and personnel decisions under his leadership that seem like they should have been avoidable. He's not doing a great job improving the floor of the program in terms of near future wins, at all, which is why we have the split in opinion we do as a fan base, in my opinion. Half of us are looking at the ceiling, the other half at the floor.

There are other strategies for success that will work at Tech, and work better, than this one. Much better player development seems to me to be a prerequisite to reaching the heights of excellence we all really want to see. Football is ultimately a game of olayers, and other smaller schools have made runs at greatness despite starting with poor recruiting and small budgets precisely by creating star players. Paul Johnson all but said it himself: he's never going to out-scheme Alabama enough to realistically win a game, if the guys can't win their battles on the field. Nowadays that means Clemson too, really. Georgia is probably dumb enough to keep falling for it every once in a while, though.

The trick is getting a guy who can bring that development without trading in too much tactical ability. Then his price, and his other options. Who's that guy? I don't know, but there are a whole hell of a lot of guys out there. They can't all be bad at it.

And recruiting is another issue. I don't think I understand it all that well, honestly, but it isn't outside the realm of possibility that a new guy could recruit better than Johnson as well, even with our disadvantages there.

The one area that makes me hesitate when considering parting ways with Johnson is his momentum in improving things. Whether he's the guy who is responsible or not, we have our AA working with our HC and getting things related to recruiting done with at least the tacit approval of the school. That's such a tenuous situation at Tech, that nobody posting here remotely understands the Dynamics of, it'd seem to be a huge risk to yank out a fundamental part of that and replace it before we get everything out of it that we can. There's no guarantee the next guy plays any nicer with the school or the donors than CPJ. He's had a decade to get used to them and the next guy will undoubtedly suffer some culture shock when he arrives. Our school and principle donors are not necessarily the same kinds of people that are in those positions at other institutions, but coaches pretty much come in one broad cultural flavor.

Personally, I still see CPJ as a good coach for us and wouldn't change him because of the high ceiling he has and his remaining currency in program building. He's still giving us really exciting and competitive games, for the most part, and at any time we are basically a lucky bounce away from magic. I think a good defense, if we ever get that, will dramatically improve our odds and at the very least an aggressive defense will be fun to watch.

But I won't be sad if he gets replaced or anything. As long as the next guy meets our long term program building needs. Replacing him without the long term in mind would be foolish, though. Tech is not in a place to rapidly build success in any sustainable way. Yet.
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Pretty well said!
 
GEETEELEE said:
I recently found my old BB gun I had as a kid; a replica of the Winchester lever action rifle used by Lucas McCain in the old Rifleman series. I used to terrorize birds, squirrels and rodents with that thing. I bought BBs from Walmart, loaded it and went out to shoot something. Aimed at a tree about 25 feet away, pulled the trigger and....the BB went about 10 feet before weakly plopping to the ground*. That's about the quality of the "Fire CPJ" ammo.

*decades of storage apparently weakened the spring and created corrosion in the barrel, will be cleaning it this weekend.
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You must like all the losing to Duke, 3 wins a season, near dead last in ACC recruiting finishes, panicked playcalling in the 4th quarter, 3 DCs fired but the 4th is the real deal, blind dedication to BFFs, and unwillingness to catch up to modern offensive philosophies.
 
Diseqc said:
You must like all the losing to Duke, 3 wins a season, near dead last in ACC recruiting finishes, panicked playcalling in the 4th quarter, 3 DCs fired but the 4th is the real deal, blind dedication to BFFs, and unwillingness to catch up to modern offensive philosophies.
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And what do you like? 'Hope'?
 
Diseqc said:
You must like all the losing to Duke, 3 wins a season, near dead last in ACC recruiting finishes, panicked playcalling in the 4th quarter, 3 DCs fired but the 4th is the real deal, blind dedication to BFFs, and unwillingness to catch up to modern offensive philosophies.
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I like the 11 win season and the 9 win seasons just fine. CPJ is the best coach GT has had since Dodd. What makes you think we could do better?
 
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