My Daddy started taking me to Tech games in 1957, when I was 7 years old. I have been a Tech fan all my life. I do not find any joy in writing this. I am very invested in this program.
Specifically, I do not mean this as a personal criticism of any administrator, coach or anybody else.
However, in my life, I have seen Tech go from a time when people could not buy tickets to a time when you cannot give tickets away. I have seen Tech go from being one of the most respected programs in the nation to being nothing short of a total joke.
We do not have any leadership that has accomplished anything to give me hope. I think our football coach is in way over his head. I do not believe he will recruit much better than past coaches, and I do not think he is a competent head coach. In short, with him running the football program, I think Tech is doomed.
I think our basketball coach is worse than incompetent. The things that have happened under his "watch" should never be tolerated. We would be better off with a student coach with a strong sense of right and wrong than with our present coach. I wish him the best, but I hope it will happen somewhere else. Maybe he was just not paying attention, but that is itself enough reason for him to be fired.
I feel better about baseball and some other sports, but with dismal, hopeless football and basketball regimes, the other sports will not survive.
None of this speaks well of our Athletic Director. He seems like a good man, but his decisions on coaches have been catastrophic. I don't have any confidence in him, either.
So, to keep from continuing to make a mockery of Tech's proud athletic history, we need to either make a ton of changes to rescue our sports program or we need to drop sports. The people in charge of the Institute must make the decision: Fully support this proud program or put it out of its misery. I hate that it has come to this, but it has.
I know the people on this board will ridicule my views and make fun of me for being an old man living in the past. Well, I have about the same level of respect for them and their views as they have for me and mine. I don't think they know what they're talking about. Maybe, if they had more historical perspective, they would at least tolerate and respect my feelings. But, of course, they don't.
By the way, we don't need Paul Johnson. He couldn't get it done. We need people like Bobby Dodd, Bobby Ross, Whack Hyder, Bobby Cremins, Homer Rice, and Bill Curry. We need integrity, leadership and excellence. We need the "A Team."
