Cupboard full

71, yes, we will probably have a trend established for the season rather early. The only point I was making, "last year's offensive failings can not be attributed to BOB or Gailey until we see a trend for this year.

I do not disagree with your statement. By the time we finish with BYU, Auburn, FSU, and Clemson, we should have a pretty good picture of Gailey's effectiveness at Tech.

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Here again Ahso I disagree! We will not have a feeling for CG until possibly a few years from now. Do you not remember B. Dodd's record after he took over in the 40's? Based on todays rational he (Dodd) should have been fired after his 2nd year. With the cupboard being pretty bare and without much athletism(sp) on the team except for a few spots he may have actually done a good job with what he had. NO I'm not defending CG only stating the obvious. If you remember I was pretty hard on him myself when I rated his job performance. I hope for better performances out of this (03) team. If we lose with a good performance then maybe we were just out matched. Even my idol Dodd when he was out matched could pull off a few miracles (ie Bama 7-6) but day in day out he could not produce the miracle we wanted. So my statement still stands our cupboard was in fact pretty empty.
 
Originally posted by Big Buck:
We cannot depreciate the importance of coaching. Bear Bryant was famous for his saying "I can take our'n and beat your'n and I can take Your'n and beat our'n and I'm convinced he was right. I remember when Vince Dooley came to UGA and took a bunch of losers recruited by Johnny Griffith and
immediately started winning including beating Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan. The only coaching experience Dooley had before taking the UGA job was Freshman coach at Auburn and not even the great Dodd was ever able to beat him. Those are facts. It wasn't a matter of rebuilding for a few years but he won as soon as he got there.
That is what exceptional coaches do.
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<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif">Thank you Buck! I had forgotton about that Bear Bryant quote. You can't break it down into percentages on which is more important coaches or players. There is no such thing as a 50-50 or 70-30 breakdown. But one thing is for sure...a team with average talent plus superior coaching can blast away a team with superior talent and little else going for them. Hell when the "little else" is involved in the formula sometimes the superior talent is not even noticed at all.
 
Originally posted by ahsoisee:
I am awaiting the outcome of this year before I pass judgement on his ability to win at Tech. I believe with last years team and this years team, I can make a pretty good estimate of his chances at Tech.
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<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif">ahso,
I realize that some folks want to be surprised by the ending of this modern day horror flick.

If you get impatient, let me know. I can fill you in on how the nightmare is going to turn out.

I just wish it was fiction.
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I'm just curious about something. How many of you old guys/gals like myself would have thought that Bobby Dodd would have become (in my opinion) the greatest coach in the modern day of football based on his record from the first 2 or 3 years as HC at Tech?
 
Coach Dodd had been an assistant football coach at Tech for 14 years before he took over as head coach. He was a known quantity and was hired from within. He had been highly sought after by other programs. There was no doubt that he would be successful. He went 9-2 and 10-1 in his second and third years. And even though Dodd's first team went 4-6, at no time did it look like he didn't know what he was doing.

He was not a "resume in a poke".
 
A lot of coaching is leadership;superior leadership can take average or above average but not quite superior athletes and make a winning team out of them, IFF(remember if w/an extra f from basic economics?) he has superior team leadership also. I now feel that we never had the consistency in field leadership that we needed; this is part of the QB's job along w/ the requisite physical and mental skills needed at QB. If we don't satisfy this need at this position it's going to be a long, ugly fall!
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Sometimes, there is a big difference between situations.

Chan Gailey has been an assistant at many different places. He has also been the head coach at two previous colleges, and two professional teams.

Bobby Dodd was an assistant under Alexander and was promoted to head coach from an assistants position. He had to learn the ropes from the beginning like any new head coach. I feel sure that is one reason it took him a few years to become savy from a head coaches position.

Gailey came into a well stocked program as an experienced coach. Bobby Dodd stepped into a program as an inexperienced head coach. Yes, it should have taken Dodd a few years to learn all the ropes. However, once Dodd learned the ropes he won consistently with talent below the teams he played against.

Dodd also won more games with his on-the-field coaching than he did with superior talent.

At the beginning of the fifties, Dodd realized he would have to fire his present coaches and hire a new group of coaches if he was to be successful at Tech. It grieved him dearly, because the present coaches were good friends as well as his assistants.

He fired all but Ray Graves and added Frank Broyles, Whitey Urban, and Lewis Woodruff to his staff. He turned the jobs over to these assistants and began the "chairman of the board" coaching staff.

Immediately, Tech went on a winning spree to win 31 games without a loss. So, it was not the talent as much as a new coaching staff that made the big difference in the winning streak.

Dodd was very innovative. It was well known, he won most of his games against superior talent most every year. If we use Dodd's years at Tech as a marker, it proves that coaching is more important than talent.

Having the right assistants is also very important. Dodd's most productive era of both offensive and defensive football was during the time Ray Graves was the defensive coordinator and Frank Broyles was the offensive coordinator.

Graves left Tech to become head coach at Florida, and Broyles went to Arkansas as head coach. Both Florida and Arkansas improved immediately and Tech began to began to lose some of its edge.

Dodd was a great coach, but his success was enhanced by having some good assistants at times. Dodd also did well at Tech when Bud Carson was his defensive coordinator.

The same happened at UGA when their defensive coordinator went to Georgia Southern as head coach. Dooley's teams lost some of their edge.

There is another reason coaches do not win immediately at a new school, and many times it has nothing to do with the talent.

A coach has to win over the existing players and get them to buy into his methods. Sometimes it goes very well and sometimes it does not. It is also agreed that in some cases a coach can win only with his type of players, which also may take a few years to recruit his type.

Yes, it is not beyond reasoning to give a coach four or five years to produce. However, it is really pushing a point to say we did not have ample personnel to win the majority of games the past two years.

Did we have the personnel to beat most of the ACC teams the past two years? I think most reasonable football fans can answer that question with a resounding "yes".

Did we have the personnel to beat Wake Forest? Absolutely! Did we have the personnel to beat Fresno State with seven of their players suspended for the bowl game? There can be no doubt about that fact.

Is the cupboard bare?
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I spent a year at home with my mother when she needed in-home care a while back. I got hooked on "The Young and the Restless", which she liked. After a while, I realized that it was ALL recycled plot. The same people married, got divorced, and married again. Everything just happened over and over like deja vu.

That's exactly what this thread is like. The only person to say anything even vaguely new is oldfoggy.

Have fun watching coaches next year, guys. You clearly believe that's what college ball is about.
 
Talk about deja vu, that is the theme of your post. You believe it is all talent and no coaching, so when OldFoggy says Dodd was without talent you jump on the bandwagon. Do you need to tag along on someone's coat tails?

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Ahso I never said Dodd was without talent! Back in Dodd's day 40 yes 40 were recruited each year so even if Dodd had been just a little luckey he would have had some real aces in there. Secondly how many D1 teams were there about a 100 maybe less. So yes, Dodd had some real good players Lothridge, Teas, Hardman(sp) Pepper, Flowers, Larry Morris and I could keep on going for about the next hour or so but the point I was trying to make with the original post was our players coming back were not the players to make the NFL. When I read the 170+ who are projected to the NFL we did not have one. Uga, had I believe 4, Md and FSU had several. So it doesn't take but a few players to turn a mediocre team into a very good team.

I do however believe a coach who knew the team and the players their attributes their abilities would have won more games, how many is very subjective at best.
 
OldFoggy, we will just have to disagree. As I have stated previously, Gailey and GOL had as much talent, and maybe more than the three previous years with RF as coordinator. We won then with the same caliber of players that GOL and Gailey stumbled with.

I am not defending Gailey nor bashing him at this time. The last teo years were disappointing seasons with the amount of talent we had.

I am awaiting the outcome of this year before I pass judgement on his ability to win at Tech. I believe with last years team and this years team, I can make a pretty good estimate of his chances at Tech.

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lets see, some believe coaches are the prime ingredient for college football, and others believe that the players are prime. Are there any who say that both are essential? It is easy to say that one coach can take a team and beat the other and then vice versa. Fridge stepped into a very good situation and injuries did not deplete his squad. This one anecdotal situation certainly does not prove that the coach is prime. However, I do believe that the Fridge is a football genius. He wins no matter where he is and what coaching position he holds. I believe that the coach is an essential, but I believe that the players are too. What is so wrong with that?

Every coach whose team was as depleted with injuries and skilled QBs as ours was last year, would be fortunate to go to a bowl.

IMHO the jury is still out on ccg. But to claim that the coach is more important than the players, or vice versa is just opinion.
 
Originally posted by mustard:
lets see, some believe coaches are the prime ingredient for college football, and others believe that the players are prime. Are there any who say that both are essential? It is easy to say that one coach can take a team and beat the other and then vice versa. Fridge stepped into a very good situation and injuries did not deplete his squad. This one anecdotal situation certainly does not prove that the coach is prime. However, I do believe that the Fridge is a football genius. He wins no matter where he is and what coaching position he holds. I believe that the coach is an essential, but I believe that the players are too. What is so wrong with that?

Every coach whose team was as depleted with injuries and skilled QBs as ours was last year, would be fortunate to go to a bowl.

IMHO the jury is still out on ccg. But to claim that the coach is more important than the players, or vice versa is just opinion.
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<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif">Mustard,

Put me in the "both are critical" camp. I do believe (as Bobby Dodd did) that Tech's higher academic standards makes it very difficult to field a team equal in player talent to the Bamas, Georgias, Floridas. Dodd got out of coaching and Tech left the SEC for this reason.

So if you define success as winning the ACC we are competitive player wise. If you define success as SEC Championships and national Championships, player talent wise it just isn’t going to happen.

So, where do you turn to take the team up a notch? It's coaching. We must have a superior coaching staff. This in itself is not so easily done. It's takes more than money to draw and retain the best talent. We don't have the draw at 55,000seats, or the national exposure of schools such as Notre Dame or USC, Florida, and the visibility as well as residuals that brings to the coaching staff. We are only a stopping off place for the best and brightest coaching talent (i.e. Spurrier, Ross).
 
Mustard, your quote, "this one anecdotal situation does not prove the coach is prime", does not represent my argument.

I seldom use just one point, I usually make many points to justify my opinion.

This is an ongoing debate of opinions. If you would like to see my latest argument with more than one stastic, then go to the thread Pre Spring Practice look at QBs. It is presently found at 03/05/2003. The last post was at 9:35PM on that date.

One of my subposts in that discussion submits a lot reasons for my opinions. I have another post further back in time that is loaded with stastics supporting my opinion.

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I checked your post, Ahso. It is as you say.

However, I want to address the insipient idea that we cannot get the both the best coaches and also the best players.

We have had the best coaches, on average, over our history. GT has a glorious history and we can all be proud of it. So what, that a coach uses us as a stepping stone. We just need to recruit another coach who is of the GT mold. I think that CCG is of that mold.

Concerning the players. There are the muscle head athletes that care nothing about academics and there are the student-athletes. Both are good athletes, and the S-A's may be just as good, if not better, than the muscle heads. We have no draw for the muscle heads, but we should have a competitive edge for the S-A's because of our academic reputation. Also our sports history is very attractive also. The GT character and integrity has a lot of draw for us as well. Let the teams from florida recruit the criminals, let Ugag recruit the muscle head cheaters, Let them all do their best with the non-student athletes. But let GT use its smarts, academics, glorious history, traditions, spotless integrity and character, all the great things about GT to appeal to the real student-athletes. Lets provide the coach who is qualified by experience and integrity the opportunity to recruit, coach, and put on the field guys who are GT thru and thru, those who make GT proud of them and who are proud of GT.

IMHO, we have the right combination to be a consistent top 25 team. We will be top 10 sometimes and even playing for that number 1 spot. Coach Gailey has the makings, but will he put it together and actually make it happen? We have the players, but will they step up? and will we be blessed with some avoidance of injuries? Will the refs be fair and just?

I dunno the answers. But this one thing I do know. The ingredients are there, and I am praying for my beloved GT.
 
The first time Tech played Central Fla. I was sitting (really don't remember) in about the 8th or 10 row at the 40 yd line south endzone. A gentleman was sitting in my seat as I got there very early. He asked me if I wanted him to move and I replied no. We sat together for about 15 minutes. Turned out he was the head coach of Cent Fla, why he was sitting there I do not know and never will maybe he wanted to see his team from a little higher vantage point, we did not speak much but he did say something very interesting he looked at all the names of the bowls and the Nat Championships and said to me "this school has a lot of history and tradition". He then left to be with his team on the field. I think with our history and it's a very storied history we can and will compete with anyone. We need to emphasize our acedemics and tradition.
 
Old Foggy, I have to call you out as it pertains to Dodds record when he started. I have read several fonts over the last several months using Dodd's early record in defending CG but lets just look at what his record was in his early years and
it might surprise some.
1945- 4-6
1946- 8-2
1947- 9-1
1948- 7-3
1949- 7-3
1950- 5-6
1951-10-0-1
1952-11-0

Now the reason that Dodd had such a bad record his
first year 1945 was because many of his players were in the armed services.

Of course Dodd went on beyond 1952 to have some great teams but I wanted to list the records of his early years to establish that anyone that would ascribe Dodd's early years as anything but successful just were not attending those games and didn't remember just how successful young Dodd was almost from the getgo. I would certainly be happy to see Chan come up with a 61-21-1 record
in his first eight years.
 
Mustard, I can not argue against anything you said in your last post. I, too, think we have all the ingredients to be one of the best institutions in the nation in sports.

In the high tech era, GT offers to the SA one of the best educations of all the colleges. We are in a good position to recruit good athletes that want good educations. We have no excuses, except getting it done.

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