Georgia Tech vs. georgia History On A Graph
by BirdGT on Nov 25, 2011 7:00 AM EST
in Georgia Tech Football
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I put together a similar chart for hoops in 2010. The chart kinda shows the slow decline Tech has seen against Georgie since departure from the SEC. How much of a decline, you ask? Tech is 12-35 against the dogs since leaving the SEC. I think Craig will agree that it wasn't purely a function of departing the SEC but more related to the coaching carousel as Tech fans tried to replace the irreplaceable in Bobby Dodd. Coaches following Dodd had varying levels of success ranging from the zany Pepper Rodgers to the ultimate dud Bill Lewis all the way to the meteoric rise of Bobby Ross.
Unfortunately, Tech has yet to latch on to any particular coach since Bobby Dodd. In my conversation with Pepper Rodgers, he seemed like a genuine Tech man. I think his tenure was still too proximate to Dodd's and the fan expectations were still a little unrealistic. Fans who were around at the time can correct me if I'm wrong but Bud Carson and Pepper Rodgers appeared to be the two guys most likely to not have left Tech for bigger programs or the NFL if they ever ended up winning big. Perhaps more patience could've been afforded them? Any thoughts on the subject out there?
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What's odd to me...
is that Paul Johnson is indirectly descended from Vince Dooley’s coaching tree. I think we have a really good one now…certainly a coach who might stick around for longer than 6-7 years.
I don’t think with UGAs current ability to recruit highly touted players we’ll be able to run 9 out of 10 wins against them like they have against us…but given time to refine his system against big-time competition (and hopefully success will increase the talent level) we should bring the moving average back to .500.
"Reach down in there...TURN THAT DAMN THING UP!" - Coach Paul Johnson
Why CPJ is good for Tech
CPJ is good for Tech for the same reason he was good for Navy. He can put in a program that while it won’t attract the 5-stars we never had a chance for anyway, it can make us overachieve based on our level of recruits. The only other coach that comes to mind who could do that is Grobe.
Assuming CPJ sticks around (and I think he will—a bigger-name program won’t want him for the reasons I mention above), a 50% success rate against georgie and periodic ACC championships are attainable. But we will need up our recruiting—we can do and have done better.
To do better still will require jock majors in this day and age. Or Dodd’s Luck. Or all hell breaks loose at the NCAA (and per PV=nRT, the resulting drop of the pressure of hell causes a drop in temperature to the point where it freezes over) and the era of the football factory comes to an end.
Carson and Rodgers
Bud Carson was notoriously hard to get along with. Pepper Rodgers was considered by many of the influential alumni as a bit of a flake.
If Dodd had not encouraged Bill Curry to take the Alabama job he would have probably never left.
Curry would never have been fired, either
Tech just got lucky that Alabama hired Curry and Ross reminded us what winning was like.
That they fired Rogers while allowing Curry to start with two one-win seasons is astonishing.
Some observations
If you take out Dodd’s 8-game streak in the late 40s/early 50s, it really takes away the appearance of some kind of “halcyon” era of Tech domination.
What really has killed us in the series is not so much leaving the SEC (although that has hurt us greatly in other respects—while hindsight is 20/20, it was a big mistake!) but the 6-7 game losing streaks from the mid-70s on. That’s 20 games right there! Win 50% of those games and the series is about even.
Compare that to the seeming parity in the series before the mid-70s.
Something else to observe: Tech’s decadal performance against georgie:
1940s: 4-6
1950s: 7-3
1960s: 4-6
1970s: 3-7
1980s: 3-7
1990s: 3-7
2000s: 2-8
2010s: 0-1
I think the coaching carousel that happened post-Dodd hurt us greatly. georgie has managed to just resist the temptation to find the next Dooley, and it’s only Richt’s performance against us (plus the SEC championships) that has saved him. If they had fired Richt at some point, they could have gone into a tailspin, because Goff was a bad coach and Donnan was mediocre. Bama almost did the same thing as well post-Bear.
Probably the worst part of the series is the perpetual overshadowing. You have the Chattanooga paper which covers the Vols and georgie, but not Vandy or Tech (or either of the Bama schools), for example. georgie merchandise everywhere (coughMacy’scoughCostcocough) and no Tech stuff. Someone did some kind of analysis about college programs in the same boat as us (that is, damn good programs overshadowed by an even more famous and successful one, particularly in rivalry games), with UCLA and TAMU being the most notable names (which is why I don’t like Southern Cal or t.u.). So, we’re not alone in that respect.
Side note: If we hadn’t fired Rodgers, we might have gotten Spurrier as an heir apparent.
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