Technical Tidbits 7/17

As many of you know, one of the state’s top prospects at OG, Brandon Sandifer, was on campus yesterday. He did not commit on the spot like Dante Wigley did on Monday, but to his credit Calvin Johnson wasn’t on the premises. However, we did learn via Twitter that Sandifer had a good visit – more news is expected to be released over at GTSwarm.com as the day goes on. In other recruiting news, potential future B-back Joshua Thomas had a visit scheduled for today, but it is rumored to have been cancelled because Ted Roof is out of town. Thomas plays fullback and OLB at Buford High School in Georgia, and has a very impressive film. He runs hard, has good speed, and some good power as well. He comes from a powerhouse school, too: Buford has won 6 of the last 7 state championships in their division (AA and more recently AAA).

ESPN published an article yesterday about wild card players in the ACC Coastal. The premise of their article is locating a player on each team that could potentially have a breakout season and that is not a freshman or a quarterback. Tech’s wild card player is not who you would expect; upon seeing the title of the article I thought surely Justin Thomas was our wild card – so much hinges on his performance this season, even if we do have who we believe to be a solid backup – but he is a quarterback and consequently disqualified. ESPN has our wild card as none other than Kenderius Whitehead at DE, which, for the first time in a while, I agree with. I agree with ESPN. There. I said it. In my opinion, Whitehead will be seeing the field early and often this season, and could prove to be an invaluable addition to our pass rush if his performance pans out like it should.

Tech men’s hoops made an aggressive move yesterday in offering five-star 2016 PG Kobi Simmons. Simmons holds offers from a reported 21 schools including Kentucky and Kansas. While recruiting potential one-and-dones hasn’t exactly been Gregory’s style so far, I like the move. It’s an outside shot at best, currently, but it’s good to see Gregory and co. going after elite athletes.

It must be really tricky navigating the minefield of NCAA rules and regulations as an official staff member of any collegiate athletic program. Just yesterday, Georgia Tech had to self-report two erroneous phone calls to recruits. The calls were made on accident and not completed, but the NCAA still needed to know that they happened. Had these heinous crimes gone unreported, the increasingly powerful NCAA Trophy Repo Department might have struck hard and true by taking some trophies from the late 70's out of our cabinets and metaphorically throwing our record books into a bonfire of athletic justice.