Jerry the Jacket
Jolly Good Fellow
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2002
- Messages
- 1,641
. . . where we go from here. With the pending realignment of the ACC it would appear more schools are being added that give equal if not greater weight to athletics as academics. It appears Tech continues to struggle to stay true to it's academic mission yet be competitive in athletics. I see no willingness on the school's part to change the curriculum or requirements to allow for a greater pool of talent to be recruited to Tech. If all this is true about academic casualities it is a resounding bit of evidence that we have been recruiting some very marginal academic qualifiers who have not had the motivation either internally or externally to get the work required done. A loss of this many atheletes comes close to wiping out the equivalent to an entire recruiting class. No program can sustain such a loss without noticable negative impact on the on field performance of their football program.
This, if true, confirms my long standing belief, that Chan Gailey, is not the right guy to lead our program. That is another story for another day.
What I really wanted to put forth in this post was the idea of giving serious consideration as to where Georgia Tech really fits in the scheme of current competition in college athletics.
Certainly the ACC is going to be much tougher going forward. Schools like Duke, Wake Forest and Tech have a significant disparity in number of atheletes required to compete with the FSU's, Miami's and Maryland's in football. I think a total reassessment of aligning conferences based on ability to compete should be given serious consideration.
What if the Big East were to be refashioned on the basis of schools that had more parity in terms of ability to compete. Such a league might look like the following:
Gerogia Tech
Wake Forest
Duke
North Carolina
Vanderbilt
Rutgers
Temple
Conneticut
Boston College
Army
Navy
Central Florida
You can substitute one or two of these for some others, but basically you would have a league that would produce a competitive championship campaign with all schools having some opportunity to be on top at any given time.
The ACC might shape up as follows:
Clemson
FSU
Miami
NC State
Maryland
West Virginia
Pittsburgh
Virginia
Syracuse
Va. Tech
Penn State
Marshall
This would be an attractive league and again these schools would be closer to parity from a number of atheletes required to compete level.
The bottomline is Georgia Tech needs to decide what it wants to be. If there is no willingness to change the current environment, our chances of ever being successful in a big way in the ACC in football are minimal. If we are willing to make some changes, then I say let's stay, compete and fight for football fortune and fame. I would be interested in the thoughts of my fellow Tech fans on this topic.
Go Jackets!
This, if true, confirms my long standing belief, that Chan Gailey, is not the right guy to lead our program. That is another story for another day.
What I really wanted to put forth in this post was the idea of giving serious consideration as to where Georgia Tech really fits in the scheme of current competition in college athletics.
Certainly the ACC is going to be much tougher going forward. Schools like Duke, Wake Forest and Tech have a significant disparity in number of atheletes required to compete with the FSU's, Miami's and Maryland's in football. I think a total reassessment of aligning conferences based on ability to compete should be given serious consideration.
What if the Big East were to be refashioned on the basis of schools that had more parity in terms of ability to compete. Such a league might look like the following:
Gerogia Tech
Wake Forest
Duke
North Carolina
Vanderbilt
Rutgers
Temple
Conneticut
Boston College
Army
Navy
Central Florida
You can substitute one or two of these for some others, but basically you would have a league that would produce a competitive championship campaign with all schools having some opportunity to be on top at any given time.
The ACC might shape up as follows:
Clemson
FSU
Miami
NC State
Maryland
West Virginia
Pittsburgh
Virginia
Syracuse
Va. Tech
Penn State
Marshall
This would be an attractive league and again these schools would be closer to parity from a number of atheletes required to compete level.
The bottomline is Georgia Tech needs to decide what it wants to be. If there is no willingness to change the current environment, our chances of ever being successful in a big way in the ACC in football are minimal. If we are willing to make some changes, then I say let's stay, compete and fight for football fortune and fame. I would be interested in the thoughts of my fellow Tech fans on this topic.
Go Jackets!