I moved to the Atlanta area over 25 years ago and 'adopted' Tech as the college program I would root for (I found UGA fans obnoxious). Maybe we need to start another thread on this, but I have always felt that the GTAA doesn't do nearly enough to embrace what I believe to be the key to getting more sidewalk fans...ATLANTA.
I am very active in youth football, and this is a HUGE enterprise in Atlanta. Even though most play on Saturday, I have asked the ticket office several times for significant discounts for tickets for youth football players and cheerleaders, to no avail. Perhaps even arranging some youth games to be played before or after the Jackets play would put additional fannies in the seats from the area. Maybe we will only see a few hundred or more, but at least we could get the YOUTH of the area (and their parents) to become Jacket fans. Let's be honest (those of you who live in the Atlanta area), how many kids do you see wearing GT spiritwear? In an area with so many transplants (as opposed to other parts of Georgia), there should be SOME effort to turn this folks into Jacket fans. Heck, I've seen more billboards for Auburn and Tennessee in parts of Atlanta than I've seen for GT.
The alumni base will always be where the majority of the fans come from, but why can't we get a few fans from a metropolitan area with 4 million folks.
You have to give to get. Maybe bigger discounts for youth organizations and government (city, state & federal) workers (I wonder who was the last Atlanta mayor to come to a GT football game). Maybe we need to attract the young urban population with pre-game, halftime or post-game concert from the city that has become the hip-hop music capital of the South.
These are just a couple of suggestions. I came to Atlanta as a sports fan wanting to root for a local sports team. I was attracted to GT because of the academic reputation of the school (I'm and Ivy League grad) plus quality athletics. This isn't enough for most transplants, admittedly, but the effect for me is that my kids now also root for the Jackets.
I think we ignore our biggest resource...Atlanta. Instead, we allow rural Georgia to talk down about one of the most dynamic cities in the country. We also allow our alumni to ignore the majority of citizens in this city, because most don't look like the GT alumni base. More fans in the stands and the excitement that creates is something the athletes who are being recruited are looking for, and something the athletes who are playing here want. Unfortunately, JD may have shown us that it is something that our former athletes really missed.
