What's the commitment CPJ wants from GT?

18in32

18in32

Petard Hoister
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This is a serious question...

CPJ has on many occasions explained why it's unrealistic to expect consistent 'big seasons' at GT. (He went into this at length during last week's coach's show.)

He pointed out that our competitors in the ACC and SEC and elsewhere have demonstrated a "commitment" to football that we have not. He specifically mentioned facilities at Clemson and stadium upgrades at Duke.

Does anyone have any idea what commitment he wants from GT? We had an indoor practice facility before most of our peers (some still don't have one). We're redoing the locker rooms this offseason, I believe. I think the weight room, meeting rooms, etc. were redone in the past few years.

What facility problems do we have? Does he want more money for assistants? If so, how much? Seriously, *exactly* what commitment does he want?

For those of us who care and want to improve things... what does he want? Or is this another nebulous 'academics' excuse?
 
Have you seen Clemsons student athlete facility?
 
Give $$$ to the program, buy season tickets, show up for games.

I think the Institute is doing everything it can within its academic boundaries to support athletics.

The extras come from alums and fans donating and doing fan type of stuff. The problem is we have a student body and increasingly an alumni base that doesnt care about/support athletics as in years past.

Beyond that, we are not an easy team for non-affiliated sidewalk fans to embrace. We are in direct competition in state with a behemoth factory that has strong vertical support throughout the state including government and media. They are already bigger so they attract more resources and even more support. I once had a media type tell me that the quickest path to bankruptcy in local sports media was to be seen supporting Tech over UGA.

The upshot of all this is that if you CHOOSE to be a Tech fan, you are already an iconoclast and someone who enjoys swimming against the tide. Almost by definition, those people are less likely to be the joiners of the world that often make up a supportive fan base.
 
Other Universities give more $$ to athletics than Tech. If I remember correctly, Tech is near the bottom of the ACC in $$ given to athletics from the University. Maybe that kind of commitment.
 
SolJacket said:
Give $$$ to the program, buy season tickets, show up for games.

I think the Institute is doing everything it can within its academic boundaries to support athletics.

The extras come from alums and fans donating and doing fan type of stuff. The problem is we have a student body and increasingly an alumni base that doesnt care about/support athletics as in years past.

Beyond that, we are not an easy team for non-affiliated sidewalk fans to embrace. We are in direct competition in state with a behemoth factory that has strong vertical support throughout the state including government and media. They are already bigger so they attract more resources and even more support. I once had a media type tell me that the quickest path to bankruptcy in local sports media was to be seen supporting Tech over UGA.

The upshot of all this is that if you CHOOSE to be a Tech fan, you are already an iconoclast and someone who enjoys swimming against the tide. Almost by definition, those people are less likely to be the joiners of the world that often make up a supportive fan base.
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If this is what he means — GT needs more fans! — then I both agree with him... and yet can see how this looks like a cop out. Tough to connect the number of season tix sold to our poor defensive performance against Duke.
 
Yooperbuzz said:
Other Universities give more $$ to athletics than Tech. If I remember correctly, Tech is near the bottom of the ACC in $$ given to athletics from the University. Maybe that kind of commitment.
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I do not think you remember correctly. Our overall athletics budget size is quite average. That has a profound impact on our ability to offer additional varsity sports, but I've never seen stats showing that it has a big effect on our football budget.

The biggest football budget issue (as I understand it) is dollars for coaches. If that's the issue, then basically CPJ is saying he doesn't have enough coaching budget to hire people good enough to get us from 6-7 wins/season to 8-9 wins/season. That doesn't sound right...?
 
My understanding is that the main support that comes from the institute for the benefit of the GTAA is admissions breaks and some support from student athletic fees. This is pretty standard. I have no idea what % of the GTAA budget comes from student fees.

The rest would be from donations, conference and tv contract payouts and advertising.

I was able to find that UGA's athletic budget is 3% student athletic fees, but with huge football ticket sales, licensing, sec and tv money, UGA runs in the black and actually gives money back to the university. We are nowhere close to that and I fear that the gap becomes more pronounced with every passing year. They are generating more revenue and attracting even more fan numbers and $$$. My perception is that we are having a much harder time keeping up.
 
I suspect he wouldn't mind a couple new majors being added that his players may be inclined to choose. But I don't see us ever adding majors just to benefit athletics, unfortunately. I think that would be the easiest way to significantly improve our football program.
 
He's gotten most if what he's asked for, and we can't get much else without going through the Georgia Board of Regents, which has routinely cock blocked GT on major expansion purely for football reasons. At this point, if I were him, I would settle for "reasonable expectations from the fan base."
 
Money drives all decisions. Tech would greatly benefit from some style of IPTAY program.

Some options

TECH - ($10/$20 (T) Each payCHeck)
FEW - ($5/$15/$50 (F) Each Week) ("the few, the proud, the Jackets)
FEM - ($5/$15/$50 (F) Each Month)
FEQ - ($5/$15/$50 (F) Each Quarter)
 
HurricaneJacket said:
Money drives all decisions. Tech would greatly benefit from some style of IPTAY program.

Some options

TECH - ($10/$20 (T) Each payCHeck)
FEW - ($5/$15/$50 (F) Each Week) ("the few, the proud, the Jackets)
FEM - ($5/$15/$50 (F) Each Month)
FEQ - ($5/$15/$50 (F) Each Quarter)
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Some variation of this.

Get 1,000 fans to donate $50 a month. Boom. $600k a year. That would go a long way toward staffing a recruiting office and some additional support personnel.
 
05GTCorndog said:
Money for recruiting staff and additional quality control 'coaches.'

http://www.heraldsun.com/sports/college/acc/duke/article163255803.html

Schools have lapped us here.
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this.
And more admission exceptions.

What Dabo has done at Clemson (and is true of all of the top programs) is to get everyone on the same page: students, alumni, boosters, administration, professors, admissions, former players all pulling together to make a great team.

At GT there's a large percentage of students and alumni who simply aren't interested in football or athletics. The administration, admissions and professors are sometimes actively hostile. While we have enthusiastic boosters, there's just not many of them compared to UGA, Clemson or any other top school.

I've done consulting work for GT, UGA and Clemson. There's just no comparison between the general on-campus enthusiasm level between GT and Clemson. Every meeting at Clemson begins with some type discussion about the next (or last) game. It never comes up at GT.
 
I posted this in the CPJ contract thread, but I think it is worth reposting here. Some context on increasing budgets to be more competitive:


ScionOfSouthland said:
My personal opinion is that the variety of academic majors and very limited JUCO transfer potential are more limiting than the actual academic rigor of GT. A quick browse through public university academic rankings would reveal that there are quite a few with high performing football teams (Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, come to mind - even Georgia). I speculate that athletes take classes in areas like sports sciences, communications, kinesiology, liberal arts, etc. that Tech doesn't offer. Some people just aren't interested in engineering/business.

I'll give an anecdote on cost. When we went through CPJ's first bad season, I suggested poaching Scott Frost from Oregon as a replacement. Back then he could be had for similar contract terms as Tech was paying CPJ. Could Tech have kept him in today's high spending world? I'm not sure. He's rumored to be on the market in the $5m range today - double what Tech is paying CPJ.

In 1982, Bear Bryant was the highest earning college football coach at $450,000. A quick CPI adjustment from 1982 to present says that's worth around $1.1m today. Nick Saban earns 7x that. In 2016, Clemson spent $27m on football and Alabama spent a whopping $51m. They both netted a revenue around +80-100% on that, so they are essentially self-sustaining at these spending rates. For perspective, Brent Venables' salary is about the same as Tech's entire defensive coaching staff. Bobinski and Stansbury have both increased the school's athletic budget by about 50% from where it was when CPJ took over, but Tech is still in the bottom 3rd of the conference. You're essentially looking at doubling athletic spending at a program already netting negative balances to its operating budget to bring the football program into the spending levels of playoff contenders.
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