Technical Tidbits 5/22

Georgia Tech football legend Joe Hamilton has been waiting for this day with a calm persona that very few other than him could muster at a time as exciting as this one-- Hamilton is waiting for news on whether or not he will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. If he were to be inducted, Hamilton would join Bill Alexander, Bobby Dodd, and John Heisman as Georgia Tech representatives in the Hall of Fame, great company for a great player. Hamilton finished second in the Heisman voting in 1999 and threw for 8,882 yards in his four years at Tech, or about Tevin Washington's career mark times three. He is currently entering his second season on the recruiting staff at Tech.

Paul Johnson released his post-spring offensive depth chart yesterday, and it went as expected for the most part. Justin Thomas is, as of now, your starting quarterback for the 2014 season. He will lead a relatively inexperienced Georgia Tech offense which has only three players who have made double-digit starts in their careers (Waller, Summers, and Mason). Overall, the group looks to be very deep on the offensive side of the ball with a lot of young talent stepping up to fill the voids left by longtime starters such as Robbie Godhigh and David Sims, both of whom anchored the run game for Tech for the past few years. The defensive depth chart is set to be released on May 28, next Wednesday.

The AJC broke down five recruiting headlines that people are talking about, and all of them were very deflating for me as a Tech fan. Perhaps the most discouraging was the very first lead, the story that Jaylen Brown out of Wheeler High School will probably rule Tech out of his choices now that Kentucky has offered him a scholarship. Tech was thought to be one of the front-runners for the services of the five-star SF, but that seems to be a thing of the past. Go home, Kentucky. How many five-star players do you need to win in a conference like the SEC? At least Brown provided us with the quote of the day with his comments about the recruiting process. "Sometimes you get tired of hearing the same stuff over and over again. Some of them are 40, 50 years old. I’m 17, so what do we really have to talk about for 20 minutes?". Anyone who can see through the recruiting smokescreens sounds like a Tech player to me.

Be sure to check out this great article from SBN College Football about one of the most difficult tasks in the nation and one that Paul Johnson is very familiar with-- recruiting at a service academy. The caliber that Navy, Air Force, and Army have to recruit are of the same academic standings as many Ivy League schools and institutions such as Duke and Stanford, but there are also added weight requirements and required military service. When you look at a school like Navy, which also runs a CPJ flexbone, you can really see how an offense like the triple-option can help with recruiting because it makes the most out of less desirable recruits, as we've seen in CPJ's time at Tech. The added strings of recruiting at a service academy make the job that much harder, and the above article does a great job of breaking it all down. Tech no longer has any grounds to complain about harsh academic requirements.

Daily Debate: What is the biggest surprise to you on the depth chart? What big surprises could be in store when the defensive depth chart is released?

Have a great Thursday!