Technical Tidbits 6/30

With the Tech front-court concerns behind us for the moment, the focus has shifted to the Yellow Jacket back-court and guards Travis Jorgenson and Corey Heyward, the Yin and Yang of Tech's rotation. Both are pass-first point guards, a prototypical mold for players in the Brian Gregory offense-- when the guards aren't sharing the ball, things get ugly very quickly for the Jackets.  Just how ugly? Uh, this ugly. Heyward, despite looking rather nimble for a human bulldozer in 2013, has dropped about 20 pounds this offseason. Couple a bit more quickness with his sneaky good shooting stroke and we could have a really solid guard to complement Jorgenson, who (barring injury) is in line for a great season. He showed us flashed of brilliance last season, especially while driving to the basket and scoring for our offensively challenged Tech squad. Not to mention that he made more than a few pretty passes before going down..

Oh, so the dwags don't consider Tech a true rival? Tell that to the writers over a Dawg Sports, which ranked Tech in the "top tier of uga rivals", citing the Institute as a "must play every season school" along with Auburn and Florida. Despite dominating the series with Tech lately (in disgusting and gut-wrenching fashion), uga still considers us to be a true rival regardless of what some people would suggest. Why? Because the history of bad blood and good games between the two schools is more than enough to fuel the rivalry forever. It's silly to think that just because the series has been dominated by the team from Athens lately that we are not true rivals any more-- it just means that when Tech does decide to play well against uga, the taste will be sour enough in the mouths of the dwag faithful to fuel the rivalry, just like it did in 2008. Suggestions to kill the annual meeting between the two teams are both misguided and downright ridiculous.

Cartel, noun: "an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition." Do that definition and that word accurately reflect the premise of the NCAA? The court system says so, and now the NCAA is reluctantly referring as itself as, yes, a cartel. No matter how you feel about this particular issue, the NCAA would hardly even be able to operate at all if it wasn't a cartel in this sense of the word. If the NCAA had competition, the entire landscape of college athletics would become a, well, competition. I frankly have no idea if that would be a good thing or a bad thing (I imagine that it would be a little bit of both), but the NCAA just needs that kind of control in order to operate properly. That's just my two cents.

Former Georgia Tech star Ricardo Wimbush and his wife Therian Wimbush were both arrested last week after being charged with child cruelty for locking their 13-year-old son in the basement for almost two years. Wimbush, a former linebacker at Tech, served as a team captain in 2002 before playing a one year stint in the NFL with the Falcons. The couple claimed to have locked their child in the basement because he was a "threat to their other children" after apparently taking the family's DVD player and lying about it, which certainly does not justify locking him in a basement. The ten children will be in state care, likely divided, until a decision regarding their parents is made. The religion (although the website denies it being a religion) mentioned in the article is called "The Kingdom of YaH"; it's a hybrid between Judaism and a few other unique ideals. Based on what I read about the (non)religion, it doesn't seem to be the cause of the son's imprisonment.

Daily Debate: Is the NCAA a cartel? Is it necessary for the NCAA to be a cartel? Are there both positive and negative impacts of the NCAA being a cartel?