AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > November > 25
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Tech needs spark only new coach can offer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
This time of year used to be a bowl scramble. Now, institutes of higher learning — but even higher bowl mandates — have turned into cutthroat job roulette.
We’re not even through November, but already there are openings at Michigan, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Mississippi, Baylor and SMU. A buyout is underway at Colorado State. Exits could be pondered at Auburn and LSU.
At Georgia Tech, things remained quiet Sunday.
It won’t last.
Chan Gailey is scheduled to meet Monday with athletics director Dan Radakovich, at which time his future at Tech will be determined. In the words of associate A.D. Wayne Hogan: “Dan is going through the process that he laid out from day one. He’s never wavered on that. He was always going to wait until the end of the year, evaluate things and go from there.”
Sounds good. But a question: What exactly is left to evaluate?
Radakovich has known this day was coming for weeks, even months.
Make a decision. Move on.
There is only so much to analyze. Whether the plan is to fire Gailey — the odds-on favorite — or to keep him, it doesn’t seem fair to let the man and his coaching staff twist in the employment wind for another 24 hours.
Some assistants left Sunday to recruit. Does that seem right?
Lloyd Carr told his players he was retiring the day after Michigan lost to Ohio State. Nebraska (Bill Callahan) and Mississippi (Ed Orgeron) announced firings Saturday. Dennis Franchione beat everybody to the punch — he announced his resignation one hour after Texas A&M beat Texas. (To his credit, he didn’t leak it in a newsletter.)
There’s a school of thought that Radakovich is balking at firing Gailey because it would be too costly, given Gailey has four years and over $4 million left on his contract. But if you believe that school of thought, change schools.
If Radakovich makes a coaching change, it will be because of money, not in spite of it. Tech is in a financial hole, largely because of the football stadium’s expansion. But the Jackets’ best hope for paying down debt is selling more tickets and personal seat licenses, attracting more sponsors, luring more donations from alumni and boosters.
All of those things are contingent on creating a perception that something better is around the corner. That perception hasn’t existed with Gailey, and it’s not likely to change.
If Gailey is fired, it will be because Radakovich sees a ceiling with his coach, not merely in victories but in marketing. Radakovich wants atmosphere. He wants excitement. He wants anticipation. If he has that with the next coach and the Jackets still win seven games every year, so be it. But he will have given it a shot, and maybe more people will have bought in.
The worst thing about Saturday for a Georgia Tech administrator wasn’t that the Yellow Jackets lost to Georgia for the seventh straight year. What must have made it a truly miserable day for Radakovich was that this was a home game but Bobby Dodd Stadium seemed half-filled with red-clad Bulldog fans.
If Tech fans are excited about Gailey and their program, that doesn’t happen.
College coaches are fired often today. Wins and losses are only part of the reason. Consider what happened last week at North Carolina. First-year coach Butch Davis had his contract extended a year through 2014. He was given a $291,000 raise to $2.1 million. But it wasn’t because the Tar Heels were going to a BCS bowl — they were 3-8 at the time.
Part of the reason was rumors linking Davis to the Arkansas job. But the biggest reason was North Carolina sold out its home games all year. Revenue was up. Interest was up. There was a general perception: Something better was around the corner.
The crowd Saturday at Tech reaffirmed that feeling doesn’t exist on or around campus. It rarely has under Gailey. It doesn’t mean he can’t coach. It doesn’t mean he’s not a good man. It just means it’s not working.
When Radakovich meets with Gailey Monday, that figures to come up. The way this all ends seems predictable. It has been for weeks. But for one more day, everybody waits.
Permalink | Comments (146) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Tech / ACC
More than a few coins needed to make change
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
He has never had a losing season. Last year his team even played for the conference championship. But lost to Wake Forest. Then was invited to one of the old socially prominent bowl games. But lost to West Virginia. Just when it seems that one of Chan Gailey’s Georgia Tech teams is poised to make a breakthrough, it seems to find a way to blow a fuse, as of the recent Saturday at home.
For a half, Gailey’s team stared down Georgia eyeball to eyeball. You look for excuses, you begin with this: He lost his quarterback. Taylor Bennett went down at the end of the first half. When he came back he was wilder than a left-hander they call “Rube” or “Boots” in baseball. Along the sideline, Gailey was more vigorously involved than usual carrying his case to the stripe-shirted officials. This, he had come to recognize, was a critical time in his pursuit of coaching football at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
When the man for whom the game site is named was coach, Georgia Tech teams were going to bowl games year after year. Not some nuts and bolts game, like the Emerald or Meineke Car Care. Real bowls, like Sugar, Orange, Cotton or Gator. His teams weren’t losing five or six games a season. That would have closed down shop after Thanksgiving.
Look at Georgia. When Knowshon Moreno was shut down, Thomas Brown broke loose and picked up the slack. Georgia Tech has Tashard Choice, and when Choice was shut down, so was Tech’s offense. Nobody steps forward. Call it recruiting, call it coaching, call it what you will, but I will say this: The hard-line old guard at Georgia Tech is tired of having to address it in any term. The natives are not getting restless, they are restless and weary of subsisting on seasons of five or six losses.
You may recall a previous story in which Dan Radakovich, the athletics director who inherited this situation, was asked about Gailey’s future at Georgia Tech. His answer went something like this: “That’s something we don’t address until after the season.”
Was that sending a message? That after the season Gailey’s status would be reviewed? If not, there is an army of Tech alumni out there who are going to fire up a rebellion. They’re steaming. They’re tired of being fed out the back door. They want to move up front and dine in the drawing room on white tablecloths. They have seen their team lose to Georgia seven years in a row, and that is more than enough to fuel a rebellion. That still isn’t the record for this bitter series. In Bobby Dodd’s heyday, Georgia Tech beat Georgia eight times in a row, and the Bulldogs’ depression reached such depths that it seemed they might never beat Tech again. Vince Dooley came along and began to find a cure for that situation.
Firing a high-paid football coach is not easy, nor is it inexpensive. Whoever would have thought that in virtually the same week you have seen Nebraska, Texas A&M, Ole Miss and even Baylor all cleaning house. At Georgia Tech, it involves far more than simply sweeping out a coach and his staff. It means digging deep into the financial well.
Gailey has four years left on his contract. A buyout would probably cost Georgia Tech around $4 million at the least. We dig back further into Tech’s athletics finances, to the era of Dave Braine as athletics director and George O’Leary as coach. They envisioned a new and expansive stadium, not only that, but luxurious new offices, suites and special seating for alums willing to pay the price. Both Braine and O’Leary are long gone, but not the debt they built up. Some estimates are that Tech still has a debt of $90 million hanging over from that outlandish expansion project. Not verified, but estimated.
There are Tech alumni out there willing to step up and stand for a Gailey buyout, but it can’t be done that way. Then what about the expansion debt? And what about the president, Wayne Clough? He is a campus dictator. Nothing bypasses his desk.
So, as you see, this is not the mere process of firing one football coach and hiring another. Coaches don’t come cheap these days, in case you hadn’t noticed.
Permalink | Comments (93) | Categories: Furman Bisher, Tech / ACC
Services »
