Georgia, Georgia, Georgia
Tech should not settleAmen!
David Hale
A few days before the College World Series kicked off last month, I read a humorous complaint from a Georgia Tech supporter that, even amid an enormously successful baseball season, the Yellow Jackets were forced to share the spotlight with their in-state rival Georgia Bulldogs, who were also heading to Omaha, Neb.
I haven't lived in Georgia long, but I know an inferiority complex when I see one. I grew up just a few minutes down I-95 from Philadelphia, a city with the biggest inferiority complex in the U.S., so I'm aware of all the tell-tale signs: jealousy masked by arrogance, talking the talk without walking the walk. Philadelphians are always a bit louder in an argument, despite less substantive evidence to back up their point. New York invariably bests Philly on all points, except cheesesteaks, of course.
And that's Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets are the Jan Brady of college athletics in the Peach State, the insecure middle child, forever toiling in the shadow of the smarter, prettier, more popular Bulldogs.
Growing up in Philadelphia, however, even if we knew we couldn't compete with New York's nightlife, famous residents or winning sports teams (remember when the Knicks used to be good?), no self-respecting Philadelphian would ever admit defeat. From coaches and players to mayors and congressmen, Philadelphians would kick anyone to the curb in a heartbeat if they weren't carrying their weight in the unending battle to finally upstage big, bad New York.
Apparently Georgia Tech just doesn't have that resilient attitude.
Last season, the school inked head football coach Chan Gailey to a five-year contract extension that runs through the 2010 season despite having posted just a 27-20 record since Gailey took over and boasting an unremarkable 6-3 record at the time.
Gailey's Jackets celebrated the new agreement by dropping two of their final three games of the season, including an embarrassing 38-10 loss to Utah in the Emerald Bowl in which players clearly quit on their team.
"They quit on themselves," Utah's Travis LaTendresse said after the game. "Slowly but surely, they gave up. That first quarter, they had a lot of fight, and they were talking. But slowly their talk diminished, and their heads went down."
And that's apparently par for the course at Georgia Tech these days.
When reporters questioned athletics director Dave Braine (who has since stepped down from his position) whether Gailey deserved such a rich contract and ringing endorsement after four inconsistent and largely disappointing seasons, Braine said that perhaps Yellow Jackets fans were just expecting too much of their team.
"Georgia Tech can win nine or 10 games. It will never do that consistently. That's my feeling," Braine told reporters after Gailey's extension was announced.
Oh really? I somehow doubt the folks sending checks to support the football program would agree.
A few weeks later, the Tech football brass faced tough questions again, this time in response to NCAA sanctions stemming from the use of ineligible players. Talk about great PR! Of course, that got more press than Georgia's suspension of two players to start the 2006 season has. Tech only grabs the headlines when it's bad news.
Last week, the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame hosted the annual Peach State Media Day. The event brings the head football coaches and a handful of players from each of Georgia's college programs together to meet the media in a brief preseason get together. While every coach from Mark Richt to Mike White was there to meet and greet the media, one was noticeably missing: Gailey.
I'm not going to criticize his absence because for all I know he could have been wooing a recruit or attending to a family emergency, and in my dealings with Gailey in the past, he has always been courteous and accommodating. But when your program has gone from perennial contender to national afterthought, and you've lost to your in-state rival four straight years, don't you need all the good press you can get?
Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated recently published a list of its top 10 college football coaches in the county. Right there at No. 6 was Richt, who in his first five years in Athens has turned around a struggling program, won two SEC titles, gone to three conference championship games, inked several of the nation's top recruits and managed to finish in the top 10 in the country each of the past four years despite losing a bevy of current NFL stars along the way.
And what about Gailey? Sports Illustrated ranked him as the third worst head coach in the country. Ouch. Gailey took over at Tech a year after Richt arrived at Georgia and has finished with exactly seven wins in each season, despite inheriting a much stronger program (Gailey's predecessor, George O'Leary, ranked as the 10th best coach, by the way). While the ACC has gotten deeper and tougher with the additions of Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami, Georgia Tech has settled for mediocrity throughout Gailey's tenure.
But apparently mediocrity is just fine with the current Georgia Tech administration.
With a senior quarterback and a talented offense led by one of the country's most dynamic receivers, this season will be a defining year for the Yellow Jackets. But if you expect to win seven games, chances are, that's the best you'll do. Which is too bad for Tech fans.
While even Jan Brady got to crack a sly smile when Marsha took a football to the nose just before her big date to the dance, the Yellow Jackets seem poised for another season hearing about nothing but Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.
(Note: The GSB doesn't normally cut and paste articles. However, this article rotated off the Albany Herald's sports page - it doesn't have a direct link -- we're copying and pasting it here for posterity. If someone has an issue with that, drop me a note in the comments below.)
hat tip - jeromefromdecatur on dawgpost.com
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5 comments:
Do you remember the episode where Jan rubbed lemon juice on her face to make her losses to Georgia go away? That was a classic.
I also loved the episode where Jan pretended she had a boyfriend named George P. Burdell, I mean Glass.
The Jan Brady comparison is so eerily accurate that I wish that I had come up with it first.
I remember the episode where Jan tossed a 4th down ball into the stands at the end of the game and everyone laughed at her.
Then again, I also remember those horrible episodes where Marsha was going steady with Jim Donnan and Jan beat Marsha up at least twice while Donnan just stood by and yelled "Sweep right!" over and over again.
My favorites are the episodes were Jan really, really, really thinks that she's going to beat Georgia only to have her heart torn out and stomped on. I think that they aired one of those in 1997 in football.
Another classic was the where when Jan started playing baseball and she thought that she had FINALLY found something that she's better than Georgia at. Only to lose in the regionals, super regionals and regular season (at least any time that it mattered).
I love the immediate use of Jan in reference to Georgia Tech. That might have to stick around for a while - remixing the "Nerds! Nerds! Nerds!" chant with "Jan! Jan! Jan!" every so often.
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