Technical Tidbits 12/7: Johnson reacts to recent transfers, Burden named to ESPN All-ACC team

Paul Johnson is hardly a fan of Tech’s recent rash of transfers, but there’s at least one thing that the longest-tenured coach in the ACC can appreciate: the fact that transfer levels in football haven’t reached pandemic status like those of college basketball quite yet. Johnson made some very candid comments to the AJC yesterday about the “sense of entitlement” that he sees in many of the more recent student-athletes, remarking that legitimate reasons for transferring out of a program seem to be on the decline in favor of moving on for increased playing time. He isn’t wrong, but it’s hard to imagine that such commentary will endear him to a team that has already seen a number of transfers over the past few days. At any rate, the transfer trend is one which will remain in vogue until some aspect of the rule-book changes. The more disturbing issue is that it really reflects a declining desire to receive a meaningful degree from a college in favor of more playing time at a lower level of both play and, in many cases, education as well.

When Georgia Tech basketball makes the journey up to Virginia for a matchup with the VCU Rams, we could be looking at a rotation that features a good bit of Christian Matthews following his solid performance last time out against Tennessee. The Jackets were blown out by the Volunteers up in Knox Vegas, falling by a final score of 81-58 against one of the not-best teams in the SEC, but Matthews showed some glimmers of hope for the future in his 14-point game. He left the rest of the stat sheet relatively empty, tallying just one assist and one steal, but the Jackets will take scoring from anyone willing to shoot. After all, Josh Pastner went 11-deep for the game but got a combined three points from non-Matthews contributors on his bench — Tadric Jackson put up two, Sylvester Ogbonda scored one, and each of A.D. Gueye, Kellen McCormick, and Jodan Price went scoreless.

Freddie Burden didn’t get the recognition he deserved from the ACC last week, but ESPN’s panel attempted to rectify that this week by naming Tech’s stalwart center to their All-ACC team. He’s the only Georgia Tech representative on ESPN’s team, but there’s no question about whether or not he was deserving of the accolade — Burden has been a bright spot on Tech’s line for years now. He is also ranked as the No. 14 center prospect in the upcoming draft, meaning that he will likely get a shot to hone his traditional blocking skills for an NFL team sometime next year. Perhaps he, like former Tech guard Shaq Mason, currently of the New England Patriots, will stick with a pro team after an underrated draft position. The ESPN staff, meanwhile, continues to show an astuteness that much of the country is lacking when it comes to recognizing Tech’s offensive contributors. Their current contributors do a very nice job, even though there’s no longer any bye week doomsayer on staff.