How would each of you fare as a leader through the following?
- Inherit roster requiring rebuild and retraining for a contemporary scheme.
- First time to travel with the team is not to a game, but to a funeral for a beloved leader among the players.
- Top-ranked recruit Bryce Gowdy commits suicide.
- Coronavirus shuts down team activities.
- George Floyd's death. The impact is national, but in all these protests and debate on race, our city is in the spotlight due to MLK's legacy.
I couldn't handle all that while trying to mentor 100 young men 21 and under. If you've been tracking the news regarding the team through all this, I think we can all agree that CGC has a gift.
As all of you should know, I fully support Coach, and I agree he has had a lot on his plate.
But so have other GT coaches. Pick a coach. CPJ also had a scheme rebuild and had challenges on defense and unfair treatment by the NCAA generally and the ACC scheduling process. CCG got hosed by the athletic department on an issue that he was instructed to stay out of that cost him big eligibility and ships, plus a pack of other misfortune not at his feet and never had a losing season. One year Bill Curry lost like ten starters from his spring practice starting offense. He had a losing season but he kept the team together. George O'Leary had to pick up the pieces of a train wreck he inherited from B*** L****. Boss Ross was in the depth of despair and was a hair's breath from walking away defeated, when it turned around with a click.
Any Georgia Tech fan knows that nothing about GT football is easy. We get busted for a football player getting a birthday gift from a relative, and busted for a coach wanting to know what is going on with that. We get told by the courts that a player with a hundred pounds pounds of weed in his car has to play for us, whether we like it or not. We get busted because, which other schools don't even demand students be students, we have players that improperly substitute courses like biology and physics during a transition from the quarter system to the semester. We have to share a national title with a team that was given a fifth down. And I am stopping now, but not because I have run out of examples.
Bless Coach, and I am all in with him, but I don't shed any tears for him. Everyone here has comparable troubles. And I bet cash money he does not want me to shed those tears, either. He would say, "Go Jackets," and wink, and then go get something positive done for the team.