AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2005 > October > 18
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Chan just isn’t the man for Jackets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It brings no pleasure to announce, after considerable thought and much hedging, this conclusion:
Chan Gailey isn’t going to make it.
It brings no pleasure because Gailey is a nice man and, in the main, a good coach. He hasn’t had a losing season at Georgia Tech and won’t this year. But college football is different now, the money and the expectations far greater than they were 20 years ago. Not losing isn’t enough anymore, and Gailey hasn’t won big enough to win over an increasingly skeptical constituency. Part of this is simply bad luck. Part, but not all.
The N.C. State loss was, for this observer, the tipping point. Coming off a bad performance against a superb Virginia Tech team, the Jackets had 10 days to prepare for an opponent that had lost its past six conference games. Somehow they contrived to look as addled as the notoriously skittish Wolfpack. Tech fell behind by 10 points and didn’t score until the 39th minute. Then it appeared to right itself. Then it got unlucky. Travis Bell missed a point-blank field goal, and Calvin Johnson turned the game-winning touchdown into the game-losing interception.
But sometimes luck really is the residue of design. Tech didn’t look primed to play, a chronic ailment under Gailey, and even after it steadied and took to gaining ground by the chunk — the Jackets had 157 more yards and 15 more first downs than State — there was little sense of physical domination. Reggie Ball threw 53 passes, which was twice as many as a team with P.J. Daniels and Tashard Choice in its backfield needs to throw. This observer has been critical of Mark Richt for his penchant to err on the side of finesse, but Gailey, who is wrongly characterized as stodgy, sometimes out-Richts Richt.
The State loss was the kind that can downgrade a season. Just by winning a game it should have won, Tech could have positioned itself to finish 7-4 — which would have met athletics director Dave Braine’s request for improvement over the 6-5 of last season — without beating Miami or Virginia on the road and without beating Georgia. Now Tech has to upset somebody else to do better than 6-5, and even if it does there’s never a guarantee that these Jackets won’t turn around and lose the next week.
It isn’t that Gailey hasn’t beaten anybody. His Jackets have felled a ranked opponent in each of his four seasons, this one included. In a way, that’s the most telling indictment of his stewardship. If you’re good enough to win at Auburn, you have to be good enough to handle N.C. State at home. Tech wasn’t.
And how, you ask, did the Jackets respond to their galling defeat? By going to Durham and falling behind Duke, something no other ACC team has managed this season. (Until Saturday, the Devils hadn’t scored in the first half of a conference game.) That the Jackets squashed Duke with a big third quarter only underscored the point that scarcely needs underscoring: Tech doesn’t always — doesn’t often — play to its capacity. No matter how spiffy the Jackets might look in a given game or a given quarter, they never seem to sustain anything. That’s not a failure of talent but a failure of coaching. And that’s what ultimately will undo this regime.
The guess is that Tech won’t win seven regular-season games and will thereby render Gailey a lame duck. His contract runs through the 2006 season, and it’s possible that Braine, who hired him and who remains his biggest fan, will retire by next summer and leave the distasteful deed to his successor.
This observer has been wrong about many things and wouldn’t mind being wrong about this, but from here it’s hard to envision Chan Gailey coaching Georgia Tech come 2007.
Permalink | Comments (152) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Yates’ golfing legacy went far beyond the ropes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Charlie Yates was a man of many splendors. More than a mere golfer, but it was golf that gave him his launching. He grew up in a home just behind the fourth green on the No. 2 course at East Lake. (And there was a second course at East Lake, and it was a very good one.) The story is that Bobby Jones was sitting on a terrace having a beverage one day when he saw this kid deliver his drive over the lake, then pitch to three feet of the pin and sink the putt.
Whereupon, it is said, that Jones said, “That young fella has a beautiful swing.”
Part of the garbled lore that golf seems to concoct? Could be, but who’s to contradict such a story? The Presley D. Yates family tree was laden with golfers. The mercantile business supplied the family needs, but golf was their diversion, and it trickled down to the grandchildren, the most resplendent of whom is Danny Jr., Walker Cup player and captain, Mid-Amateur champion and a staggering number of achievements of one sort or another.
Naturally, in a family such as this there is inevitably one “who was the best of us all,” in the words of the Charlie’s brother Dan. “Better at 15 than I was at 18,” Dan said. But Allen played for the joy of it, especially after he and Dan formed own their insurance business. But topmost of them all was Charles, and it is to him that we bow in grief today. Charlie Yates had been awaiting his appointment with death for quite awhile. Now, trying to compress all of his accomplishments into one capsule of a column is a test, so noting his arts and civic career, this will stick to the golfing side.
Charlie was one of the last two survivors who played in the first Masters Tournament in 1934. The other, Errie Ball, was a pro, and now, somewhere in his mid-90s, was living in Florida at last notice. Charlie’s ticket to the first tournament at Augusta National, which was an invitational, was that he was Georgia State amateur champion. His monumental achievement was yet to come. In 1938 he would win the British Amateur, played at Troon. Now, the British didn’t take too kindly to these colonists who came over and made off with one of their cherished trophies. Jones had done it. Jess Sweetser had done it. Now comes this towhead with the fetching smile and a sorghum accent, and they warmed to him because he warmed to them.
He stood before them at the trophy presentation, hoisted a dollop of their national beverage and sang to them their drinking song in their native tongue. What Scot could but take him to his bosom? A bit later, in Walker Cup competition, Charlie came to grips with a resident favorite named James Bruen. Now, having won the Amateur, to lose to Bruen in international play would have tarnished that title. “They were high on Jimmy,” Charlie said later. “He was to be their savior.”
But Charlie prevailed and scored one of the Americans’ rare points. Most of us who have occupied a chair in the press facilities at Augusta National have come to know Charlie Yates in an official status, not as a player. Though he did play in 11 Masters and was low amateur three times. Soon after he retired from play in 1948, he was made a member of the Press (later Media) Committee, and from 1971 to 1999 served as chairman. That meant appearances before our hungering throng as he mediated the press conferences of the players and champions. He had served as financial officer for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad before retiring early to join Mayor Ivan Allen in civic projects, then later heading a fund-raising campaign at Georgia Tech, but nothing detracted him from his commitment to Augusta National. Unfortunately, he had not been able to continue his duties at the Masters, and was succeeded by Billy Payne, with whom he had served on the 1996 Olympics Committee.
“I didn’t consider myself an exceptional golfer,” Charlie once said. “The thing I’ve learned is that golf is very much like life: You have good things happen to you and some things that are bad.” And thus the curtain is drawn on the life of this man who meant so much to so many people in so many different ways, beyond a mere game.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Golf
Tuesday Countdown: Leo, BCS, etc.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Nothing against Leo Mazzone, but he ain’t Bobby Cox.
9: A lot of players have left the Braves. A lot of pitchers have left the Braves. I hear them talk endearingly about a Cox far more often than I hear them talk about Mazzone. Don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean Mazzone hasn’t done a great job as pitching coach. But it starts and ends with the manager, and few managers in baseball history have handled pitchers as well as Bobby Cox.
8: If the Braves lose Mazzone to the New York Yankees, it’s a loss. Probably. But it’s not going to be the difference in terms of what they do in the regular season or the playoffs.
7: Just a hunch: He’s not going anywhere.
6: The BCS got what it wanted — a one-day buzz. But somebody’s going to lose. Maybe it’s USC to UCLA, or Texas to Texas Tech (or somebody in the Big 12 title game), or Virginia Tech to Miami (or in the ACC title game). Georgia, you’re not out of it. Just don’t lose.
5: So who’s up for an Astros-White Sox viewing party! Hello? Anybody?
4: Jim Haslett: Just shut up.
3: There were bad calls both ways in the Falcons-Saints game. Guess the NFL didn’t want to send the “A” crew to San Antonio. That said, New Orleans lost because its defense allowed the Falcons to drive down the field in the final minute for a field goal, not because of a penalty.
2: I’m sure any minute now, the Thrashers will realize they’re not supposed to stink.
1: An injury to Dallas receiver Patrick Crayton likely means Peerless Price WON’T be inactive next game. So. Does this open a spot on deck in Dallas for Dez White?
Permalink | Comments (62) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
