The Big Board

and if he did it was probably something to the effect of “shut up, he doesn’t matter, its not important.” After which the person who asked the question fell back on their seat and started weeping softly.

What a leader! He was relaxed, at ease, articulate except for one thing which I will get to at the end here. He began by talking about how excited he was about these recruits. He said these are guys who are going to win us some ballgames. He stated that we got exactly who we thought we would get and he was pleased with that. He then proceeded to discuss the Tech philosophy of recruiting. I would not do it justice if I tried to give a quick recap but suffice it to say, Tech does it right. He said at one point, “If you give 25 scholarships every year, you do the math. That does not add up to 85. We try to give just as many as we think we need, and that is the way it ought to be done.”

The reporters were charmed and acted gracious and asked intelligent questions. No one mentioned the Todd Spencer resignation and it would not have been appropriate for CPJ to have commented anyway since this was a Todd Spencer decision after some apparently terrible misjudgment.

The only thing I have ever had a quibble with in CPJ’s answers is that he does rely a little more than I would like on certain stock answers. How many times in a press conference have you heard him say, “I don’t know, its like anything else . .” ?

But that is getting pretty picky on my part when I consider the drivel that comes out of many coaches’ mouths.

It is something I learned decades ago. There are people whose whole lives revolve around their team (note, I didn’t say their school because many of these offenders did not go to the college whose team they root for) and, any rival in spitting distance is a threat to their small, orderly little world. As a result they do everything they can to try (in their mind) to disrupt the stability of opposing teams and their institutions. I am amazed at how often some of these will pose as Tech fans and go on chat rooms and say CPJ should be fired. Happens regularly. They are looking for any little perceived imperfection they can find so they can try to drive a wedge between members of the Tech community. It is really, really small stuff. It has parallels in the way our current political system operates but I won’t get into that since it opens up real wounds. But let us just say that depersonalizing people for the sake of your own small sense of security and keeping the world spinning the way you think it ought to is the sole purpose of an awful lot of lives these days.