Technical Tidbits 12/2: No more shrub ripping. It’s time for us to check our privilege.

In case you haven’t heard, Georgia Tech’s thug football team committed the cardinal sin of collegiate athletics over the weekend by harming the hedges at UGA. Your mouth is probably agape at the sheer barbarism required to do such a horrible thing to a living and breathing organism, but have no fear: the PC train is here to save the day yet again. In all seriousness, these people have got to calm down. Did Tech’s players hurt a shrub that will grow back in three months? They sure did! Did UGA’s players rip up turf at Bobby Dodd Stadium a year ago? They sure did! Does it matter? It sure doesn’t! I have no issue with it being called disrespectful, because it is. That’s the point. The thing is that there’s this strange thing called “the world,” and it has this unique tendency to keep spinning like usual even when something disrespectful happens. Let’s take a look at some of the finer points from the argument.

Yep, I see the comparison here. Ripping up a hedge that takes just months to grow back is exactly the same as poisoning an entire tree that takes decades to grow in the first place. Maybe this is why Marcus Marshall and Dorian Walker decided to transfer: they smelled that Class C felony coming from a mile away.

No, no one considered his response “reasonable” except for a probably severely intoxicated Harvey Updyke. Stop. That’s a blatantly irresponsible claim.

Football blinds us to a lot of morally questionable things (see Hardy, Greg and Shembo, Prince), but vandalism is so obviously not one of them. I wonder if I’ll see an article about respecting people the next time a college player KO’s some lady at a bar. Yep, plants are where we draw the line around these parts.

With under a week remaining until we officially learn Georgia Tech’s bowl fate, the Jackets appear to be gaining some significant traction with the representatives of the TaxSlayer Bowl. Citing Atlanta’s proximity to Jacksonville and suggesting that they expect a large number of Tech fans to make the drive to Florida (shhh, don’t tell them), the committee has elevated the Jackets into top consideration along with Miami. I’m all-in on heading to either Charlotte for the Belk Bowl or Jacksonville for the TaxSlayer Bowl, but the Russell Athletic Bowl, Pinstripe Bowl, and Sun Bowl are also in play for the Jackets at this juncture. All we can say for sure is that the options have shifted from Shreveport and Detroit to our current five-bowl slate. That’s worth celebrating.

First-year head coach Josh Pastner’s team fought hard against Penn State earlier this week but came up just short of the victory, falling by a final score of 67-60 in State College. Perhaps it’s because our expectations were so low coming into the season, but the Jackets have looked significantly better than expected even in defeat so far. Freshman Josh Okogie struggled mightily against his toughest opponent to date, hitting just 5-21 shots for 13 points on the heels of his 38-point outpouring against Tulane. Ben Lammers was solid as usual, but his latest double-double was not enough for the Jackets to overcome a second-half slump in Pennsylvania. Tech will be back in action on Saturday afternoon for a road game at Tennessee.