Long before season, Georgia Tech president found football performance ‘worrisome’

1982Jacket said:
It is simply absolutely true.
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Was on the chairlift at Purgatory two weeks ago with people I did not know from Arizona and Arizona State. After learning I was from Georgia, they asked if I was a bulldawg. I told them they were forgiven, but I went to Tech. They both said WTTE, "that's a hard school to get into". That has always been the Tech conundrum; keep the reputation or loosen the standards. Would I rather the stranger be impressed with Tech academics or athletics?
 
Killick said:
Was on the chairlift at Purgatory two weeks ago with people I did not know from Arizona and Arizona State. After learning I was from Georgia, they asked if I was a bulldawg. I told them they were forgiven, but I went to Tech. They both said WTTE, "that's a hard school to get into". That has always been the Tech conundrum; keep the reputation or loosen the standards. Would I rather the stranger be impressed with Tech academics or athletics?
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As an alum, academics all day. That's something I personally can be proud of accomplishing. Athletic performance is great, but at the end of the day it's just entertainment, and the football team being good doesn't mean anything about me personally. Part of why it's funny to see gaggers beating their chest about winning nattys, when most of them couldn't run 50 yards without having a heart attack.
 
Killick said:
Was on the chairlift at Purgatory two weeks ago with people I did not know from Arizona and Arizona State. After learning I was from Georgia, they asked if I was a bulldawg. I told them they were forgiven, but I went to Tech. They both said WTTE, "that's a hard school to get into". That has always been the Tech conundrum; keep the reputation or loosen the standards. Would I rather the stranger be impressed with Tech academics or athletics?
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Have had similar experiences in NYC a surprising number of times.
 
Killick said:
Was on the chairlift at Purgatory two weeks ago with people I did not know from Arizona and Arizona State. After learning I was from Georgia, they asked if I was a bulldawg. I told them they were forgiven, but I went to Tech. They both said WTTE, "that's a hard school to get into". That has always been the Tech conundrum; keep the reputation or loosen the standards. Would I rather the stranger be impressed with Tech academics or athletics?
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I don't think that we necessarily worsen our reputation by lowering standards for athletes as people expect that athletes aren't hitting the same standards. The debate lies in how far we lower them - to the ncaa minimum of 400 SAT? Or do we go with a fixed deviation from the non-athletes?

Here's an older study from 2008:

  • Football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates. Men's basketball was 227 points lower.
  • University of Florida won the prize for biggest gap between football players and the student body, with players scoring 346 points lower than their peers.
  • Georgia Tech had the nation's best average SAT score for football players, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0. But because its student body is apparently very smart, Tech's football players still scored 315 SAT points lower than their classmates.
  • UCLA, which has won more NCAA championships in all sports than any other school, had the biggest gap between the average SAT scores of athletes in all sports and its overall student body, at 247 points.
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At Georgia, for instance, 73.5 percent of athletes were special admits compared with 6.6 percent of the student body as a whole.
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Killick said:
Was on the chairlift at Purgatory two weeks ago with people I did not know from Arizona and Arizona State. After learning I was from Georgia, they asked if I was a bulldawg. I told them they were forgiven, but I went to Tech. They both said WTTE, "that's a hard school to get into". That has always been the Tech conundrum; keep the reputation or loosen the standards. Would I rather the stranger be impressed with Tech academics or athletics?
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GOL said it best years ago while at GT. GT wants to be Harvard during the week and F$U on the weekends. Hard to do and something has to give. Sure you can have a balance but you're not going to be great in either. The only school that I think comes to close to this is ND (over the past 100 years).
 
QuadF said:
I don't think that we necessarily worsen our reputation by lowering standards for athletes as people expect that athletes aren't hitting the same standards. The debate lies in how far we lower them - to the ncaa minimum of 400 SAT? Or do we go with a fixed deviation from the non-athletes?

Here's an older study from 2008:





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The most interesting thing to me about that article is the fact that UCLA has won more championships in all sports all time than any other college. I would have guessed about 10 schools before I would have gotten around to them.
 
gt9589 said:
GOL said it best years ago while at GT. GT wants to be Harvard during the week and F$U on the weekends. Hard to do and something has to give. Sure you can have a balance but you're not going to be great in either. The only school that I think comes to close to this is ND (over the past 100 years).
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Stanford. This century better than Tech in both academics and athletics (WGAF about 100 years?). Over the past five years . . . Dook. I just threw up in my mouth a little.
 
Academics over athletics all day long and twice on Saturday. How is this even a debate? It's a SCHOOL, not a minor league football factory.
 
1982Jacket said:
Academics over athletics all day long and twice on Saturday. How is this even a debate? It's a SCHOOL, not a minor league football factory.
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I think 95% of us would agree with you. The big difference is that 50% of us think if athletics had the strong, steadfast, financial support of the school, we could do both, and the school would get a return on its investment.

Clown me all you want, but pretending that Georgia Tech doesn't have enough room to grow (to justify the investment) in the academic, reputation/ranking, brand name/prestige department is just a skewed way of looking at things. I'm not dumping on my alma mater by saying that, but the only people who think otherwise are seeing this only through gold colored glasses.
 
I'll be the first to admit GT wasn't my first choice for architecture. It was Miami and UF. I didn't get enough $$ out of state to go to either one so I ended up at GT. Our 1990 National Championship in FB and 1991 Final Four Run for BBall actually made me 'notice' GT when I was a Sr in HS. It affected me in that I could brag that I was going to a school that had success on the football field and on the court. I thought that was pretty cool. Before that I could have cared less about the GT/UGA rivalry and I grew up in GA but because I wanted to go out of state so bad, I was looking at places with sunshine, beach and spanish senoritas.
 
Yukonwreck said:
Cabrera gets it. Athletics success and growth of the institute are joined at the hip.
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1982 doesn't believe we can be successful competing with Alabama, UGA, Ohio State, Clemson, FSU, USC, Michigan......he wants to partner up with Duke, Wake, Vandy, Stanford in a league and play for moral "we so smart, look at our academics" wins.
 
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