Why did O'Leary have to leave?

Jerry the Jacket

Jerry the Jacket

Jolly Good Fellow
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Sep 18, 2002
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Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

You know every time we get this train rolling pretty good something seems to wet the fire in the furnace. First Dodd retires and we stumble and bumble around in the wilderness for 25 years. Then Ross gets things back on track only to blow town for a Pro career that nearly put him in the graveyard. Then the B*** L**** years before the big O comes along and really builds a qaulity program back up. But George decides the grass is greener and leaves us for ND only to fall flat on his butt and to be exiled into a footnote in coaching history. Now we have a pretty good group of players who are not performing for a new coaching staff and the vibes for the future are pretty negative if you take the pulse of the majority of Tech nation.

It just seems so needless. If O'Leary had just remained loyal I believe we would have been doing much better now. Life is cruel sometimes and there ain't anything you can do about it. That is what's frustrating to this Yellow Jacket fan.

Go Jackets!
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Why?

Let me count the ways...........

First of all, in Dodd's book, "Dodd's Luck," he mentioned how difficult it is to be a Yellow Jacket. We are pretty much the most disrespected place in any state to the media and the fans of "the other place."

How often do we pick up the paper and read about the great exploits of UGAg and we only getting a few lines? How often does the TV trucks make the trek up SR 316 to Athens, yet won't got about 15 blocks to cover us? It is and has been an ongoing problem and won't go away anytime soon.

Back in college, I went through the microfilm of the AUC back in the 1950s and read the sports pages back then. Even when Tech was beating UGAg seven in a row, the bias was clearly there! It was all UGAg all the time. It was at that point, I realized that Tech is always going to have their hands tied behind their back as far as being competitive on an annual scale.

All the good coaches we had simply got tired of the favoritism given to UGAg and decided to move on. We beat UGAg three years in a row under O'Leary and the local and state media gnashes their teeth in anguish. It was so bad in 2000, that Adams had no choice but to dump Don_an. And the media turned to a full-court press against O'Leary, led by Mark Bradley, to run O'Leary out of town. When the Notre Done job came open, who in hell could blame him???

We are NOT a second rate program! But in the eyes of the local and state media, we should be! When we do well, it makes them go crazy and they especially hate it when Ga Tech beats their beloved 'dawgs.

I remember back in the 1980s when Curry beat UGAg twice in a row. Before the scoreboard was turned off on that foggy night, Macon's Telegraph & News' Harley Bowers begin to write a series of hatchet job articles on Tech football. His intent was clear and he later admitted it: To destroy Tech and to destroy Curry. And it worked. Coming off a 9-2-1 season, Curry had a miserable recruiting season. He stumbled to a 5-5-1 season and left for Alabama. Bill Curry would never admit that a redneck writer in Macon ran him off, but to us Tech fans living in Macon at the time, the implication was clear: Tech will always be the red-headed stepchild in the State of Georgia.

I'm still convinced Gailey will right this ship. We ALL knew this season would have rocky times. But we must pull together and support the staff and the players. They sure as hell don't want to crash and burn!

GO JACKETS!!
byteback
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Great post Byteback... I remember those Bowers articles too... Harley Bowers could not write an unbiased article if his life depended on it... he and Bill Nigut should be buried beside each other.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

the sad thing is , if he had left 1 year earlier, we would probably have ralph fridgen as our head coach and all would be happy as hell.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

It has been said before that all the coaches that left GT later regretted the decision.

If I was a coach I would want to coach at a place like GT where the pay is as high as anywhere but the expectations are reasonable.

At least they are reasonable for big time college football.

I would not care so much about newspaper coverage. Newspapers are a dying media form. I would focus on the TV News and the Internet. Newspapers are far less influential than they were in 1988.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

O'Leary left because he had a lifelong dream to coach the Irish. That's why he left. I don't think it had anything to do with the media or Bark Madley or anything like that.

I was sad to see GOL leave, because he knew how to recruit good talent to come to Tech. As far as coaching though, we owed so much of our success to Ralph.

I was a student at Tech when Curry left. He had been poisoned by none other than Bobby Dodd. Dodd didn't think Tech could ever win a championship and neither did Curry. One guy over on the Hive was talking about that the other day and I agree...Dodd had himself become a cancer to the program. That's sad to say, but so true. When your leaders and legends no longer believe you can be competitive, then they need to move on. I was so glad when Curry left. The only sad thing about that was that he was Tech man. Usually, a school can keep their own alumni interested in staying around.

I think Ross left because he's a coaching gypsy. He likes to bounce around and is never happy in one place for too long.

It's clear that Tech is a distant second for fan support and media coverage in this state. The eyes of Georgia are focused on Athens and all things UGA. On top of that, in our border towns like Columbus, Augusta, etc, we have to compete with fans of schools like Auburn/Clemson/USC/UT on top of competing with UGA. I think it's hard to keep a good coach in that type of situation. Nick Saban was Michigan State's coach in the late 90's. He had built a pretty good program but was tired of being the red-headed step child of his state (behind Michigan). So, he packed up and moved to LSU, where his program would be the undisputed #1 in state from a fan and media standpoint. I think this same sort of phenomena can rear it's ugly head with us.

What we have to do is focus on continuing our winning ways and building better and larger facilities. The improvements that we've made have made Tech a better place to coach than it was 15 years ago. We need to continue that. We also need to keep increasing our fan support as we've done in the last decade. Those kinds of things keep coaches happy.

I hope CG stays a long time and builds a powerhouse. If he left one day, it would not shock me...but if Spurrier can pick up and leave Florida, then anything is possible. So, I don't really worry about coaches leaving. It's a fact of life at alot of schools.

Sorry for the long rambling post.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Byteback,

While I'm sure there is much truth to what you say, your post smacks of just a bit of paranoia.

1. "We are pretty much the most disrespected place in any state to the media and the fans of "the other place.""

Do you really think that we are more disrespected in comparison to UGA than Texas A&M and Texas Tech are to UT??? Do you really think we are more disrespected in comparison to UGA than VT is to UVA?? How would you like to have "Mr. Jefferson's University" shoved down your throat 24/7 for 365 days a year?? Or NCSU to UNC?? I could give you any number of comparisons. We will always be the red-headed step-child in some ways because we aren't the "state university". Big deal...those other places have the same problems - in that regard - and they seem to have overcome them, at least to some degree.

2. "How often does the TV trucks make the trek up SR 316 to Athens, yet won't got about 15 blocks to cover us? It is and has been an ongoing problem and won't go away anytime soon."

I'm confused. I was just reading a post a few days ago about how lucky we are to be on TV so often. Someone help me out with the real story here.

3. Back in college, I went through the microfilm of the AUC back in the 1950s and read the sports pages back then. Even when Tech was beating UGAg seven in a row, the bias was clearly there! It was all UGAg all the time. It was at that point, I realized that Tech is always going to have their hands tied behind their back as far as being competitive on an annual scale.

You obviously had more free time at Tech than I did.
smile.gif
Be that as it may, someone just posted a couple of days ago (either here or on The Hive) about the Look Magazine spread in 1952. It had Marilyn Monroe on the cover in a GT sweater!!! Not only that but it talked about how the GT athletes are "treated as heroes" (or WTTE) in the city of Atlanta!! I was only 2 years old in 1952 so I know not from experience, but from what I've seen I think we got our share of good pub.

4. All the good coaches we had simply got tired of the favoritism given to UGAg and decided to move on...the media turned to a full-court press against O'Leary, led by Mark Bradley, to run O'Leary out of town. When the Notre Done job came open, who in hell could blame him???

C'mon!!! O'Leary is irish catholic!! It was ALWAYS his dream job!! He would have left for ND regardless of what some bozo in the paper said about him -- good or bad. Give O'Leary more credit for having some spine than that.

5. We are NOT a second rate program! But in the eyes of the local and state media, we should be! When we do well, it makes them go crazy and they especially hate it when Ga Tech beats their beloved 'dawgs.

Again...so what's your point?? It happens in most states. Some schools overcome it - some don't.

6. "Bill Curry would never admit that a redneck writer in Macon ran him off, but to us Tech fans living in Macon at the time, the implication was clear: Tech will always be the red-headed stepchild in the State of Georgia."

If Georgia Tech let a "redneck writer in Macon" run their coach off, then you have just proved that we indeed are a second rate outfit. 'nuff said.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

I am sick and tired of everyone talking about how hard it is to compete at GT. It is hard to compete everywhere. UGA hasn't sniffed a conference championship in 20 years despite having a lot of good teams - you don't think they are in a tough competetive situation? Boddy Dodd did nothing for this program after about 1968 except leave the SEC (destoying all our traditional rivalries), let the facilites deteriorate to the point of a div. 2 school, and bitch about how tough it is at GT.

Everyone that constantly complains about the media coverage needs to wake up and look around - we are in SEC football country. The average sports fan doesn't care about ACC football. We actually get more coverage than UGA does in b-ball despite their success becuase more folks ar interested in ACC b-ball.

I swear that we have to be the most whiney, insecure fan base. We lose a couple of close games and all of the sudden we are doomed to be a second rate program.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

It seems like we've been doing pretty good in the TV coverage department lately. I live in north Texas, and can you believe the Texas Tech vs. Texas A&M game wasn't even televised in my town....?????? Talk about getting screwed by TV coverage! So far, I've been able to watch every GT game on TV that I haven't been able to actually attend. Whoever pushes for TV coverage for us is doing a pretty damn good job in my opinion!

Go Jackets!
drinking.gif
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Thanks for the voices of reason in this thread!

Nobody "ran off" Bill Curry from Tech. He left for what he regarded as the top job in college football.
Bama ran him off, and probably when we say B__ L_____, they say B__ C_____.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

1) Red-headed stepchild school or not, We've got 4 national championships. Centuries will pass before UGA has that many.

2) This Jeff Schultz *&$)#(4 is starting to make Mark Bradley look like our biggest fan. I do believe Schultz even wears little red and black panties to bed.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Having been around when the Bobby Dodd era started at Tech, I can tell you my view of the media at that time. As far as I could tell, Dodd had the AJC eating out of his hand. He was a master at using his country wit, wisdom, and charm to get Tech all the media attention we could stand.

The Tech team was the darling of the South, and Dodd was considered a legend alongside of Bear Bryant at Alabama. We did not lack for media attention.

Tech is located in the Darling City of the South, and there are many coaches that would love to come to Tech. Is Tech harder than most of the SEC schools and some of the ACC schools? yes, definitely, but we have proven time and again, we can recruit with most of the big schools.

We can not use Tech's inability to beat Wake Forest, Clemson, North Carolina, NCSU, Duke, etc., on recruiting. We have outrecruited them in most years when we have had good coaches. The problem comes when we have poor coaches and inconsistent years.

We have good records against most of these schools, and have fallen behind some of them, including Auburn and Georgia in the years we had poor coaching. At one time, we led both UGA and Auburn in wins.

Proof in point, when we were winning under O'Leary and Friegden, we were in the top 15-25 teams in the nation in recruiting for three or four years. The results of recruiting this year will be directly proportional to this season at Tech.

We will get a lot of coverage if we start winning consistently again. The AJC needs the circulation and will write about topics that bring in the most readers.

The AJC, like many of the large papers, has lost many conservative subscribers. This loss cuts into their pocketbook and affects their ad prices, so they are trying to pay lip service to some of the conservative items to get these readers back.

If all loyal Tech fans and Tech businessmen were to quit their subscriptions and pull their business ads from the AJC, you would see a change in their attitude toward GT sports. However, in each instance, the GT fan would have to cancel their subscriptions and ads with a personal letter stating the reason.

This would have a huge impact and cause them to be sensitive to our demands for equal sports coverage. Complaining to them will have no affect, it must affect their pocketbook, and the movement by Tech fans would have to be by a large majority of us. I have not subscribed to the AJC for over 30 years.

They will jump on the bandwagon in a minute if we start winning consistently and start beating UGA like a red-headed step child. It happened in the Dodd era and will happen again with consistent winning. They need something to write about.

drinking.gif
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

I remember the TECH coverage by the AUC being pretty good back in the 60s. Furman Bisher was always a good supporter but like its been stated before, there are no journalism majors at TECH. BIG major in Athens.

I also agree that somebody's preaching TECH tv time somewhere because we're getting the games up here in TN. PTL!

In my experience the UGAg fan base has ALWAYS been
significantly larger. Leaving the SEC when you're the center of the conference universe was a boo-boo. Oh well, the days of the Bear, Shug, Wally/Dooley & Dodd are long gone. TECH's tradition or potential to be successful is not in the redheaded stepchild category however. In my modest opinion.
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

O'Leary was 6-5 in the regular season last year with an offense that included Godsey, Campbell and Burns. And your point was....?

Maybe you meant: Why did Friedgen have to leave?
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Of course, I hear that in Orlando, they are bad about advertising the regional coverage of the Tech games all week, then deciding just minutes before kickoff to air a different game.....

I believe I'd have to mail the TV station a photocopy of my a$$ if they did that here....

Go Jackets!
drinking.gif
 
Re: Why did O\'Leary have to leave?

Great post, Ahso. Keep up the good work!
 
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