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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
AD resets program’s expectations to fit coach’s capabilities
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
It sounded like a concession speech. In announcing Chan Gailey’s new contract, Dave Braine essentially declared that his school must stop pretending. “Georgia Tech can win nine or 10 games [in a season],” Braine said, “but they will never do it consistently. That’s my belief.”
Braine isn’t some egghead athletics director imported from the chemistry department. He’s an old football coach who considers himself a pragmatist, and Tuesday he offered a clear rebuke to those old-line Techsters who can’t understand why their beloved Jackets don’t win the way they did under the sainted Bobby Dodd.
“Some people who graduated from Tech in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s have no idea what it’s like today [academically],” Braine said. Also this: “We are an academic institution that happens to play football.”
Significantly, Braine did not say he expects this coach to win the ACC championship in the next five seasons. (Indeed, the AD said he won’t be around — his contract expires in 2007 — to preside over all five.) Braine did not say he feels Gailey has done the best job of any coach in Division I-A these last 47 games. Instead: “Chan Gailey will continue to be successful, though maybe not as successful as some people would like.”
We disinterested parties on the periphery can applaud this bow to reality, but not all Tech zealots will be so effusive. This, after all, is the program that expanded Bobby Dodd Stadium because George O’Leary insisted he needed a bigger venue to compete at the highest level … and now, the donations banked and construction done, Tech admits it can’t quite compete at the top level because its academic standards are too lofty.
“My off-the-cuff reaction is, will people continue to pay for mediocrity?” said Taz Anderson, the Atlanta entrepreneur who played under Dodd in the ’50s and in 1960. And then: “Contrary to what the athletic director would believe, we alumni who put thousands of dollars into the program would like to think we have a shot to win every game — not that we will win every game, but that we have a shot.”
Braine called coaching Tech “the third-toughest job in the country,” trailing only Army and Notre Dame. And if the Jackets changed coaches, Braine wondered, “who are you going to want to hire? Somebody who’s going to ask for [admission] exceptions and recruit people who aren’t going to do the work?”
Gailey is apparently doing the job Braine hired him — and is re-hiring him — to do. He’s winning enough games to go to a nondescript bowl every season without cutting recruiting corners. He is, as even his critics will allow, a relentlessly nice man and not a terrible coach. But the cold reality is that he hasn’t yet won more than seven games in a season, and nothing suggests Tech is about to get a whole lot better anytime soon.
Fifty weeks ago, sitting in the room where Tuesday’s media briefing was held, Braine was asked if 6-5, which Tech was after the 2004 regular season ended, was good enough. His words: “This year, yes.” And next year? “No.” Yet the Jackets must upset either Miami or Georgia to do better than that. Braine’s verdict Tuesday: “We needed to see improvement, and we have.”
From the periphery, what we’ve seen seems a further indication that Tech under Gailey has become all it’s apt to be — a team talented enough to win a huge game every season but too flaky to consolidate its gains. The Jackets under Gailey have seldom been an embarrassment to their backers — the Georgia losses of 2002 and 2004 stand as stark exceptions — but neither have they become a source of burgeoning pride. And now the AD has given the status quo his blessing.
Said Anderson: “I’m disappointed Georgia Tech would expect mediocrity in anything. We certainly don’t teach it in architecture or chemistry or engineering. It’s kind of hard to build half a bridge. … Maybe we need to concentrate on basketball and golf.”
Permalink | Comments (178) | Categories: Mark Bradley, Tech / ACC
Tuesday Countdown: Sticking with Chan
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
10: Here’s a tip for all of your budding athletic directors: When you plan to give a head coach a contract extension, always do it before the team might get flattened in its final two games, never after.
9: See, as unpopular as Dave Braine’s decision to give Chan Gailey a new deal might be with some Tech fans, it figures to be even more unpopular after the Miami and Georgia games. So, really, it was a brilliant move. Sort of.
8: OK, maybe not so brilliant. Gailey does deserve some credit for beating up Auburn, a 6-2 start and the Jackets cracking the top 25, even if for only five minutes. But this all goes to what a program aspires to be. If Braine and Tech aspire to have a seven-win football team every season, then they’ve got their man.
7: But is that what you want? I’ve always operated under the belief that teams should try to win championships. Does Chan Gailey point you in that direction? In year four, the answer is still no.
6: This stat might come off as a defense of Gailey, but it shouldn’t. It’s just an illustration of the win-now times: He has the third-best winning percentage (.574) of any coach in Georgia Tech history. The only two ahead of him: Bobby Dodd (.714) and George O’Leary (.609).
5: If Reggie Brown, from Georgia, had any chance of making people in Philadelphia forget Terrell Owens, it disappeared Monday night when he dropped that pass. But he’ll certainly make them remember Reggie Brown.
4: It was bad enough when Ralph Nader came out saying that Owens has been wronged. Now it’s Jesse Jackson. Hey, here’s an idea: Maybe the two can go buy an NFL franchise and sign T.O. and all of the other poor and oppressed players in the world. Then let’s see how you react when Owens rips your quarterback and your franchise on national TV.
3: The lottery has reached $310 million. There’s an outside chance this will be the final Tuesday Countdown.
2: I’m guessing this will come down to dollars and Rafael Furcal is a goner. That’s fine. But given that he hasn’t had the most stable life away from baseball, he may want to take that into consideration before he decides to leave the Braves and Bobby Cox and goes to work for the Mets or Cubs.
1: Over/under on the first Hawks win anybody? Thursday? Friday? December? The winner gets 2 free tickets to a game. Second place gets 4 tickets. (Sorry. I still feel that occasional pull to the cheap joke.)
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
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