Smartest and dumbest thing the athletic department has done

wgjacket

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. I have been following Georgia Tech sports for almost 50 years. Since this is a lull in sports I was trying to think what been the best thing we did and the worse. I would be interested to hear other comments.

Best thing- Hiring Bobby Cremins. Our athletic department was at absolute low point. Some were thinking about dropping our football team to a lower division. Our basketball team was even worse. Bobby proved that Georgia Tech could still compete at the highest level. His teams were the most popular in Atlanta for 5-10 years. He rose the bar for all sports at Georgia Tech.

Worse thing- Scheduling Penn State after we won the National Championship in football. We scheduled a football kickoff classic with Penn State at the Meadowlands. This was basically a Penn State home game. We of course got beat. We lost all momentum from the previous season before we even had a home game. The Atlanta press was quick to get off our bandwagon and so was the city.
We ended up 8-5 lost Coach Ross and then the Bill Lewis years. Our National Championship teams were led by sophomores and we threw away their junior and senior years.
 

midatlantech

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Interesting. I was at PSU and we just didn’t seem to have our rhythm yet. It was a tough night.
 

18in32

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. I have been following Georgia Tech sports for almost 50 years. Since this is a lull in sports I was trying to think what been the best thing we did and the worse. I would be interested to hear other comments.

Best thing- Hiring Bobby Cremins. Our athletic department was at absolute low point. Some were thinking about dropping our football team to a lower division. Our basketball team was even worse. Bobby proved that Georgia Tech could still compete at the highest level. His teams were the most popular in Atlanta for 5-10 years. He rose the bar for all sports at Georgia Tech.

Worse thing- Scheduling Penn State after we won the National Championship in football. We scheduled a football kickoff classic with Penn State at the Meadowlands. This was basically a Penn State home game. We of course got beat. We lost all momentum from the previous season before we even had a home game. The Atlanta press was quick to get off our bandwagon and so was the city.
We ended up 8-5 lost Coach Ross and then the Bill Lewis years. Our National Championship teams were led by sophomores and we threw away their junior and senior years.
What squandered the momentum of 1990 was the Bill Lewis hire. You can't blame that on Penn St.

How far back are you considering? Because I'd say it's a close call between leaving the SEC and hiring Bill Lewis.

On the positive side, hiring Bobby Cremins is a great one.

Perhaps hiring Geoff Collins will be another.
 

JelloJacket

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What squandered the momentum of 1990 was the Bill Lewis hire. You can't blame that on Penn St.

How far back are you considering? Because I'd say it's a close call between leaving the SEC and hiring Bill Lewis.

On the positive side, hiring Bobby Cremins is a great one.

Perhaps hiring Geoff Collins will be another.
Letting Bobby Cremins come back was the beginning of the great hoops decline.
 

JelloJacket

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That's was a tough spot for Bobby and for the AA.
I'm not saying the AA wouldn't have screwed it up but we were in a great position to get the best hire out there. We have never been close to that since then even with the 2004 season. It was apparent the best years of Cremins were behind him.
 

Tampa Jacket

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. I have been following Georgia Tech sports for almost 50 years. Since this is a lull in sports I was trying to think what been the best thing we did and the worse. I would be interested to hear other comments.

Best thing- Hiring Bobby Cremins. Our athletic department was at absolute low point. Some were thinking about dropping our football team to a lower division. Our basketball team was even worse. Bobby proved that Georgia Tech could still compete at the highest level. His teams were the most popular in Atlanta for 5-10 years. He rose the bar for all sports at Georgia Tech.

Worse thing- Scheduling Penn State after we won the National Championship in football. We scheduled a football kickoff classic with Penn State at the Meadowlands. This was basically a Penn State home game. We of course got beat. We lost all momentum from the previous season before we even had a home game. The Atlanta press was quick to get off our bandwagon and so was the city.
We ended up 8-5 lost Coach Ross and then the Bill Lewis years. Our National Championship teams were led by sophomores and we threw away their junior and senior years.
I completely agree with that.

The media was as anti Georgia Tech then, after we win the NC fairly, as it is anti-Trump, now.

There is NO WAY Vince Dooley and UGA would have agreed to that matchup, game, first game, 1981 after winning the NC in 1980.

That was a stupid agreement. Don’t know who did it. But it was dumb.
 

jj06

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letting Paul Johnson walk away is the dumbest thing they have ever let happen
 

18in32

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I'm not saying the AA wouldn't have screwed it up but we were in a great position to get the best hire out there. We have never been close to that since then even with the 2004 season. It was apparent the best years of Cremins were behind him.
I think it's Monday morning quarterbacking to say it's obvious Bobby's best years were behind him. His waffle occurred right at the end of the 1993 season. We'd won the ACCT & gone to the Final Four in 1990, made it to the second round in 1991, made it to the sweet 16 in 1992, and won the ACCT & made the NCAA in 1993. Those four years yielded similar records and similar finishes as in the four years before 1990.

To put that in perspective, that following year (1994) was the year that Coach K had to quit midway through the year due to exhaustion and back surgery; Duke finished with a 2-14 conference record. At that point he and Bobby had both been at their schools the same amount of time, and both were obviously suffering from mid-career fatigue. Some might have thought it was a gamble whether Coach K could ever regain his form – but within a couple of years Duke was back to 30-win seasons.

I do agree that in retrospect we never reached the same plateau – that solid-NCAA-pick-every-year level – after Bobby's waffle. I just can't agree it was obvious at the time. During the good years under Bobby, we were fun, competitive and talented, but never year-after-year world-beaters. That's still how we looked at the end of 1993.

I do remember a sense of growing fan discontent in 1993, which resulted in some ambivalence about him coming back – which I attribute not to a decline in Bobby's performance, but to the fact that after 1990 many thought we'd move into UNC/Duke territory, which obviously never happened. That was frustrating to a lot of people. But Bobby failing to reach that next level isn't the same as Bobby regressing. All IMHO!
 

gtfan1147

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Worst - leaving SEC and Braine/Hewitt contract. Both are still hurting today.

Best - (I hope) Hiring Stansbury. If he, an experienced and successful AD who knows Tech, can’t get everything reset and fixed to Homer Rice levels on a large scale across all sports, then nobody probably will.
 

texstinger

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Best - Hiring Rice, Hiring CBC, Hiring CBR, Hiring Jim Morris, Hiring Puggy Blackmon, joining ACC & pushing to get FSU in ACC.

Worst - letting CBC come back, letting CBD remain too long as AD, overreacting on CPH contract, Hiring at least 4 HC in MBB & FB for no reason other than they were "Tech Men".

The Worst (and the decision that has had the biggest impact good or bad) was leaving SEC. That was why we tried to get back in.
 

GtFan021

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Can’t believe no one has said it yet, but dumping Russell and picking up the Adidas contract has got to be up there as one of the best.
 
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