(08-17-2015 04:04 PM)panama Wrote:  So why is GT unpopular?

I'll hang up and listen

Less popular. And that'd be because GT hasn't sold out everything it values in the pursuit of athletic gain. UGA has. And hilariously, still hasn't won as many National Championships (or even more recently) than GT has. Some moves that GT consciously made that hurt its ability to draw the Wal-Mart crowd:

1) Leaving the SEC over not being able to pass a rule to prevent coaches from cutting a player's scholarship. At the time you could sign as many as you wanted up to the limit, and cut everybody who didn't pan out. Bobby Dodd found the practice revolting, and pushed for the rule change. It would have passed but Bear Bryant, who promised Dodd he'd vote for the rule, never showed up to vote and his proxy voted against it. Dodd and Bryant never spoke again afterwards.

2) Playing the first racially integrated game with a Deep South team in the (1956?) Sugar Bowl against Pittsburgh, over the protests of Georgia's governor and much of its other state level elected representatives.

3) Imposing (much) higher than NCAA minimum admission standards and even curriculum requirements within GT after they get in, such as requiring everybody to take calculus regardless of major. If you required UGA or LSU's players to pass GT calculus to get on the field, you'd lose dozens of players right off the bat. There is now nowhere to hide at GT. Even the business school is nationally elite. Stanford has the "Easy A List" they pass around between athletes (Google it). There are no music or "interdisciplinary studies" or "kinesiology" classes, much less majors, to hide players in at GT.

4) Spinning off what would have become the liberal arts wing into Georgia State. This limited the degree offerings greatly. GT has over the years lost blue chip players to Stanford and Notre Dame and similar because they wanted to major in something GT didn't offer.

5) Due to the previous, to be really successful, GT has to recruit NATIONALLY to find the players good enough to play at this level and get in and stay in. This means GT fans and alumni are quite spread out so you don't get a big concentrated lump like you do with a liberal arts college. The nature of the degrees GT furnishes (engineering) means their alumni are also exported far and wide further exacerbating this issue.


Those impediments have meant success at the highest levels (bandwagon fan zone) are much harder to come by at GT. UGA has removed all such barriers, and so it is easy for them to at least be Top 25 year in and year out. But that comes at its own cost. Such as the Jim Harrick "how many points is a three pointer worth?" class where you got an A even if you didn't show up. And the most infamous of all right after the 1980 title team ... the Jan Kemp revelations. From the NYT:

Quote:While coordinator of Georgia’s remedial English program, Dr. Kemp was among several faculty members who had complained that officials at Georgia intervened in the fall of 1981 to enable nine football players to pass a remedial English course in which they had received failing grades. The athletes remained eligible to play for Georgia against Pittsburgh in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 1982.

Dr. Kemp was demoted in 1982 and dismissed the next year. She filed suit, maintaining that she had been ousted because of her complaints, a violation of her constitutional right to free speech.

In Atlanta Federal Court in January 1986, university officials defended their actions concerning the football players, saying the athletes had been admitted to the regular curriculum because they were making progress in their studies. Dr. Kemp, they said, was dismissed for disruptive conduct and for failure to conduct adequate scholarly research.

O. Hale Almand Jr., a lawyer for the defense, offered a justification for the favorable treatment accorded the athletes, citing a hypothetical player. “We may not make a university student out of him,” he told the jury, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbageman when he gets through with his athletic career.”

The jury found that Dr. Kemp had been dismissed illegally and awarded her more than $2.5 million (later reduced to $1.08 million) for lost wages, mental anguish and punitive damages. She was later reinstated.

I want to win National Championships. But not at the cost a ruining one of the world's most elite and prestigious academic institutions in the fields that actually matter in the real world (STEM). If you think you're going to out UGAg Georgia ... you've got a lot of 0 to 2 win seasons in your future bucko.

(08-17-2015 04:05 PM)StanMolsonMan Wrote:  Then play us. No travel costs for us. So a discount on having to play the Fighting Hens or the Blue Hose. You play an FBS school, no FCS, and the Tech fans would probably love rubbing another team's nose in it. You'd finally know what it is like to be UGA and dominate over an in state school. Make your alumni and students feel better from having to deal with all the TBS in school.

You have to provide something of value or have a GT connection. With Curry gone you lost the second. You're not in some recruiting turf that GT doesn't have access to. You want a game, you're going to have to provide value the only way you can: make it cheap ... cheaper than a FCS out of the MEAC even.