Best food trucks in Atlanta?
Carter: Oh man. I remember when the food truck craze hit Atlanta a decade ago. A lot of the best trucks realized the dream and established brick and mortar locations (Slutty Vegan, Mix’d Up, the Blaxican). Of the ones that are still just truck-only, I’d nominate Tex’s Tacos and the Pickle.
Jake: There’s a bunch on campus that rotate, I’d say Cattywampus is solid.
What should I get with my tax return?
Ben: Well, I had planned to upgrade my cell phone. I currently have an iPhone 7+ and my audio board died in it last week. Fun fact, that is one part that is not fixable on any iPhone newer than a 7 (when they got rid of the separate audio jack). Unfortunately, my taxes ended up costing me about what I would need to upgrade my phone, so I guess I’ll be waiting on upgrading.
Akshay: Nothing - throw that in the bank for a future rainy day.
Levi: All Publix Subs are on sale for $5.99. Chicken Tender Sub Y’all.
Carter: Save it for the summer Steam sale. You played Hollow Knight yet? Get that.
Jake: Buy slightly nicer dinner out/drinks/tickets to a sporting event than usual and bank the rest to do that thing where people turn money into more money.
Chris: A bunch of cool Georgia Tech adidas gear! oh wait...
Jeff: I live with two, but soon to be three girls, so I am only a middle man for transactions.
What are the top 3 unheralded or most inconsistently known traditions of the Institute?
Akshay: This is an extremely Jake question, so I’ll save the heavy hitters for him, but here’s a quirky one I didn’t know until I got on campus: putting a penny on Sideways’ grave can net you some good luck on exams. (Edit after everyone else had written their responses: I completely forgot about Midnight Breakfast + Midnight Bud, and dancing to “The Horse” after any/all home sporting events deserves a shout as well. Stay until after the game is over, y’all.)
Levi: In no particular order, Dropping goalposts on the president’s lawn. “Bust their A**” after “Go Jackets” in the fight song. Stealing all the T’s.
Trevor: #1 - Swimming in the Campanile, #2 - Midnight Breakfast, #3 - Sublime Donuts (yeah I know it's not a real tradition but it should be)
Chau: I don't have 3 but Wingnuts Wednesday is something I've discovered post graduation that a lot of folks did not know about.
Carter: Akshay took my contribution of Sideways and her grave, so I’ll say Midnight Bud.
Chris: Less “tradition” and more “historic facts”, but the two things I can always blow people’s mind with are: Nixon and Khrushchev sang our fight song together, and John Heisman made his fame as our coach.
Jake: Ah, this is a Jake question. I have many opinions on vernacular red brick and things like that that I’ll save, but in terms of sports, people sleep on baseball (especially the Sunday Song) and its traditions like Dead Skunk instead of the seventh inning stretch. In terms of whole institute traditions, the Whistle gets taken for granted a lot, I love the pageantry and Tech-ish-ness of things like the ME 2110 competition, I’ll miss the writing hometowns on the Howey bathroom walls a lot now that they’re renovating them because that was the first thing that I felt like I took ownership of on campus. In terms of naughty things, swimming in the Campanile and nighttime on the roof of Architecture aren’t too well known. I could go on forever, I love waxing poetic. A lot of what I love about Swim Club and Reck Club is in their little quirks. I think it’d depend on who you ask, but the most egregious of them all? People who have never heard of Midnight Bud.
Jeff: I will second the Dead Skunk song in the 7th inning. They even play it on the radio broadcast. Another one is the fourth part of the "What's the Good Word" chant. A GT fan who starts the chant will sarcastically yell "How bout them Dawgs" at the end. The reply is "Piss on em." However, most people seem not to do it as I was completely left yelling it on my own in the Varsity parking lot before the 2013 CoFH. I got a lot of nasty looks from georgia fans. Also, "Put on for my City" should be the third official fight song.
Reggie Ball: do we remember him fondly or still clown him?
Ben: Mostly, I just kinda feel bad that he got wasted on the Flats. He had a lot of potential and was never developed well. I remember a few years ago, there was a blog that did a really good Q&A with Ball, but it seems that blog no longer exists, or I would have shared that here.
Carter: Reggie Ball actually followed me on Twitter for a hot minute, but then I made this joke, not realizing Reggis and Reggie are indeed related, and he immediately unfollowed me. Clown.
Jeff: I feel he gets a little too much heat at times, but then again he threw the ball out of bounds on a 4th down against uga one time.
It was suggested that our CGC Year Zero 3-9 was worse than CPJ’s 8th season of 3-9. Can we please expanded upon the worst record teams playing each other?
Ben: That’s a tough one. The 2015 team was super plagued by injuries all year in addition to being super young. I would take the defense from last year’s team, but outside of that, I think it would probably be a toss-up.
Levi: No way, Do y’all not remember the expectations entering that season? I was so devastated after the ND loss because I legitimately thought we might win all the games. That season was brutal and why the Miracle on Techwood Drive was so cathartic. Students were angry and it showed. I even saw a burning couch.
Jake: The 2015 team had the talent to beat 2015 Florida State. It took luck in a down, injury-prone year, and was emblematic of a teamm that did not live up to expectations. Regardless of that team being more disappointing in hindsight, no reasonable person can say they expected 2019 CGC Year 1 to come anywhere close to the expectations of 2015. We were lucky to get to 3-9 last year. 2015 was incredibly unfortunate to wind up there.
Chris: Reiterating what I said last week, SP+ favors 2015 over 2019 by 21 points. 2015 was the worse season from an overall perspective, but the 2019 team is statistically the worst football team by far.
Carter: The 2015 team was badly snakebit, but they still had Justin Thomas. I’d take them over 2019 100 times out of 100.
Jeff: The 2015 season was painful, but they were probably more talented. The injuries were killer from the get go. Gotsis going down in the middle of the season was the biggest one.
Thoughts on the ACC being pro transfer rule: good or bad for the sport?
Ben: I LOVE THIS. I wholeheartedly support the idea of allowing players one free transfer with no questions asked. It’s allowed in almost all other collegiate sports, so it’s time to fix that.
Akshay: Undoubtedly good (because anything players’ rights is good for the sport), but it will have some consequences with respect to player movement between G5 and P5. Elite schools are going to poach the G5 level for proven talent (or come up with yet another version of insert-color-here-shirting to stash players at the lower level — could be a KC Athletics and NY Yankees situation with some schools), but at the same time, some players that don’t see playing time at the P5 level are going to transfer and immediately start at the G5 level. Whether this movement is good or bad long-term remains to be seen.
Levi: Welcome to The Georgia Institute of Transfers. Seriously, this is good for us. Outside that, I don’t care.
Chris: This is a good move.
Jake: This is great. Unify the policy across all the sports. Makes everyone’s lives easier, and the transfers go all directions at this point, anyways.
Carter: I saw some Navy guy on Twitter complain, calling it the “keep the AAC in its place” rule? Seemed weird, especially seeing as how the MAC (which is inarguably a lower league than the AAC) is for it. Anyway, I think it’s great for everyone, especially the athletes.
Jeff: I think it is good for players who already play, but as noted above the big schools will find some weird loop hole for scholarships, or there will be a lot of mid tier high school players left without many offers as transfers eat a scholarship spot.
Do y’all still play NCAA 14?
Ben: I still have a copy, and I keep my rosters updated, but it’s been a minute since I’ve fired it up.
Akshay: I do, but not regularly. I have a Georgia Tech dynasty going where I only run the ball, and the option is so OP in that game that opponents will just let you get away with that.
Levi: Actually found it while home for thanksgiving and have won 5 straight natty’s since then. Someone out there updates the rosters every single year. Look it up.
Carter: Never been into sports games, unfortunately. Wait, do they still make NFL Blitz?
Jeff: I traded mine in when I upgraded consoles...
Would you rather CGC have a winning record against UGA with no Natty OR win 1 National Championship in his time here with a losing record vs UGA?
Ben: Would you rather say, “Ha, we’ve beaten y’all five of the last nine times,” or “Ha, we’ve beaten y’all four of the last nine times, and have also won two national championships since your last one”? Personally, I’ll take the second.
Levi: A title.
Chris: Natty, easy.
Jake: Gimme the trophy, gimme the ring, gimme the banner. Not even close.
Carter: Beat georgia one year, and you get to talk trash for a year. Win a natty, and you get to trash talk for a long, long time.
Jeff: Winning another title before uga would cause a black hole to open up in downtown Athens. So yeah that one.
What is a record do you think GT can break in Football?
Ben: Just about any kind of passing record is a gimme. College football is a much more pass-heavy game than it used to be, and Tech is 11 years behind some of the offenses that started passing more a few years ago.
Levi: Passing touchdowns in a single season (29 by Joe Hamilton- 1999) seems pretty breakable in these modern offenses.
Carter: If you’re talking school records, any passing record is up for grabs. Maybe all-purpose, but..... let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Jeff: Besides passing records I think sacks could be broken since teams pass a lot more.
Thoughts on Astros cheating?
Ben: I think it’s laughable how lightly they’ve gotten off compared to the penalties the Braves received under Coppy.
Akshay: The sign stealing was bad, but the commissioner’s handling of the investigation and its aftermath has somehow been equivalent or worse. Additionally, it’s all very strange to watch a very-respected team turn heel before your very eyes.
Levi: I’ve heard the death penalty thrown around and I like it. In all honesty, they should at least have the title taken away and players involved banned for life. Seriously. This is in the same breath as the Black Sox Scandal.
Chris: I honestly don’t see how the title hasn’t been vacated. That feels like a very obvious move to me. I also don’t see how the Astro players are gonna get any at-bats this season without being aggressively thrown-at. The handling of the whole thing has been ridiculous too. It’s the old advice of “you just have to survive the 24 hour news cycle”, except people keep saying ridiculous things and extending the cycle.
Jake: This is a crime against baseball. Can’t wipe them off and vacate the title, but they deserved a stiffer penalty than what they got. Really losing a lot of respect for Manfred from this too, but he’s in hot water with me for the reliever rules, the intentional walk, and all this other nonsense of fixing problems that don’t actually exist.
Carter: As someone who grew up in Dallas, the Astros can drown in Galveston Bay.
Whats the worst cheating you have seen personally?
Ben: When I was in sixth grade, I cheated on a spelling quiz by trying to hide with my notes under a bean bag. I got caught. It wasn’t pretty.
Akshay: Screen-cheating in Halo 3. It’s an unforgivable sin.
Levi: I’ve seen it all. I’m a villain in most games. Taken money in monopoly. Moved chess pieces. Academic stuff I won’t get into. Yeah....
Chris: Almost got in a fight during a high school tennis match with a guy cheating me on line-calls.
Jake: Was subbed out in water polo during my senior night and saw one of my best friends deck a kid on the Hinsdale Central Fightin’ Andy Demetras (not that they don’t deserve that in a metaphorical sense, at least, go Huskies), and talk his way out of the most blatant sports foul I’ve ever seen, despite cussing out the ref in the process, and him and my coach convincing the referee that he said “it wasn’t a fouling foul” despite everyone for a half mile around clearly hearing him shout the other f word. Not a proud day for Oak Park Water Polo, but we won by a lot, so there’s that.
Carter: Mario Kart. 200cc. That’s all I have to say about that.
Is CGC planning to go to any local Touchdown Clubs in Georgia?
Ben: I personally don’t know of any, but I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. One of the big things Collins has tried to do is build up connections within the state of Georgia. With Kirby going towards a more national recruiting plan, it could pay HUGE dividends in the next couple years.