I finally got around to finishing Bill Connelly’s Study Hall: College Football, Its Stats and Its Stories this summer....right around the time he announced he was going to be leaving SBNation. Sad. Despite this news, there were a few things I found very interesting towards the tail-end of the book and could provide a basis for comparison as Georgia Tech football moves further and further into the Collins era.
Background
When talking about Georgia Tech football, one of the things I hear most often from friends who are fans of other schools is “Why can’t Georgia Tech be like Stanford?” Now, Tech fans know the answer to this question is deceivingly complex (more on this later), but to an outsider, the Stanford model seems like a simple, albeit long-term, method to elevate Tech to the national stage.
And to be fair, that characterization isn’t necessarily wrong. There are a number of parallels you can draw between the Stanford and Georgia Tech football programs: high-level academic profile and consequential restrictions on recruiting, weird niche run-based offense (well, not anymore at Tech, but bear with me), nearby larger/historic brand-name programs, and so on and so forth.
In 2007, the Cardinal found themselves at a critical juncture similar to what the Yellow Jackets stand at today (albeit possibly more dire because the Stanford of yore was just awful). I’ll let Bill set the mood here:
Be it because of talent, athleticism, stamina, resolve, some other reason, or all of the other reasons, Stanford just couldn't hold on in 2006. The Cardinal trailed by just seven points late in the second quarter against Oregon in the season opener, then faded terribly and lost by 27. They built a 27-7 lead midway through the second quarter against San Jose State, then collapsed and lost, 35-34. They trailed Navy by seven points at halftime and lost by 28. They Trailed UCLA by seven late in the third quarter and lost by 31. They trailed Notre Dame by four late in the first half and lost by 21. After stunning Washington for their only win of the season, they strike quickly against Oregon State and trailed by only seven late in the first half; they lost by 23 (Connelly, 2013).
You: “So yeah, they were bad in 2006 and couldn’t finish games. Surely, they weren’t terrible before then given their stature now?”
Since Tyrone Willingham had left Stanford for Notre Dame following a 9-3 campaign in 2001, the Cardinal football program had lost its way. Buddy Teevens and (Walt) Harris had combined to win just 16 games in five seasons (Connelly, 2013).
Oof. Whenever your program is averaging 3.2 wins a season, it’s (very obviously) time for some change. So, during the 2007 offseason, Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby (now commissioner of the Big 12) fired lame duck (seemingly both in status and performance) head coach Walt Harris and replaced him with a surging young coaching hot-shot by the name of Jim Harbaugh.
Stanford’s Harbaugh Era
I’ll spare you the minute details of Harbaugh’s coaching history pre-Stanford, but in short, he re-engineered offenses wherever he went. Most notably, he turned Rich Gannon into an AFC championship-winning quarterback while with the Oakland Raiders in 2002 and led the University of San Diego Toreros to back to back conference titles in 2005 and 2006, losing only five games and averaging 40.63 points per game over his three years at the helm.
And so, ole Jim arrived in Palo Alto in 2007 to take over a 1-11 team that had nary a whiff of national contention or prominence for most of a decade and faced surging Cal and dominant USC teams every year. Given that tough schedule, one might think Stanford’s new golden boy was destined to fail from the get-go (seriously, they kicked off the season at #14 UCLA, who returned 20 starters and was expected to finish third in the Pac-10...but only because Cal and USC were national contenders).
Well, life college football works in mysterious ways. Here’s how Harbaugh’s career at Stanford (2007-2010) maps out:
2007 Offseason: Harbaugh hired in December 2006; #52 recruiting class in the nation
2007 Season: 4-8 - upset #1 USC 24-23, take Stanford Axe back from Cal for first time since 2001
2008 Offseason: #50 recruiting class in the nation
2008: 5-7 - nothing really notable happens until the offseason...
2009 Offseason: #20 recruiting class (including 8 4* recruits)
2009 Season: 8-4 - first AP poll appearance since 2001, first bowl appearance since 2001, Heisman runner-up (RB T. Gerhart), #3 offense in the country per F/+ (Connelly, 2013)
2010 Offseason: #26 recruiting class in the nation
2010: 12-1 (8-1) - first 11-win season in program history, Orange Bowl victory, #4 in final BCS poll, COTY, Heisman runner-up (QB A. Luck)
2011 Offseason: #22 recruiting class in the nation; Harbaugh leaves for the 49ers, but OC David Shaw takes over and keeps the gravy train rolling.
“Harbaugh era” record: 29-21 (21-15 Pac-10)
The Stanford Model
There is a very obvious and drastic jump in the quality of players Harbaugh brought to campus during his Stanford tenure and a similar jump in the performances of the players on Stanford’s roster. Additionally, given the benefit of almost ten more years of Stanford performances, that jump doesn’t look a sign of initial program enthusiasm that has since tapered off — it represents some sustainable foundational success on the recruiting trail and on the football field. So how did Harbaugh do it? Bill paints a nice picture for us:
Harbaugh’s first Stanford staff consisted of...a host of young, hungry 30-somethings (Connelly, 2013).
“We started to realize as a staff that we needed to recruit kids earlier,” Shaw says, “getting Stanford in front of these young men earlier and getting them to realize what it takes to get into Stanford. We need to inspire them early enough to take the right classes to get into this school” (Connelly, 2013).
“There were so many big changes,” Shaw says, “but the first thing that had to change was attitude...he wanted people saying to themselves, ‘If I want to survive here, I need to be pushing myself and my teammates.’ And the staff was very conducive to that” (Connelly, 2013).
“We made everything about competition,” Shaw says. “When a guy realizes there’s no more wiggle room, he either begins to compete, or he goes by the wayside” (Connelly, 2013).
A young and hyped-up staff, a renewed emphasis on branding, a movement to recruit kids very early on, an obsession with competition in all facets of the program...any of that sound familiar to you?
Takeaways
If Harbaugh’s approach doesn’t make you raise your eyebrows, you’ve most definitely been living under a rock that lacks good access to Twitter. Geoff Collins has been doing all of those things and more. Athletic director Todd Stansbury has expressed his respect for the Stanford model before, and Collins’ hire and activities in the last six months suggest a desire to follow the Cardinal’s example to a T.
But let me be clear: I’m not saying that Collins is going to mimic Jim Harbaugh and co.’s success at Stanford from the jump — Tech has yet to play a down with Collins at the helm, and we have no idea what things are going to look like on August 29th in Death Valley. Building a college football program virtually from the ground-up is incredibly difficult, and each school (and coach) has its own unique set of challenges to face.
But applying the Stanford model to Georgia Tech has always been a tantalizing proposition for fans. It shows us what Tech can be: a world-class research institution with nationally-prominent athletic programs. For many Tech fans (myself included) that grew up in the “mass-media” era of college football (a term I just made up to encompass the time between the 1984 NCAA v. Oklahoma ruling on conference TV deals and today), aligning with and achieving the Stanford model would be a dream come true (especially considering the difference in available resources between the two programs).
Given that, it’s heartening to see that model has some clout at the Edge. While it may be (incredibly) premature to make any long-term predictions and take any definitive stances about the state of Georgia Tech football, given the story of Stanford, it seems like we’re headed in the right direction. The first few years could be rough (I mean, have you seen the schedules for 2020 and 2021?), but if you keep your pitchforks down juuuuuust long enough to weather that storm, what comes after could be a lot of fun.