Mailbag 8/5

Who would you cast in the CPJ biopic? Now that the Hulkster has a biopic, who would play the prominent characters in the Paul Johnson Era biopic?

Ben: Oh man, this is a fun question! Just for kicks, because I think it would be fun, let’s say Nicolas Cage.

Carter: The first and only person that came to mind was Clint Eastwood.

Akshay: I feel like Gary Oldman could pull off the grizzled-veteran-coach-who-doesn’t-give-a-[Soundgarden] vibe very well.

Jake: While I appreciate Carter’s Eastwood, I think a great take on the trope would be to make it a comedic misadventure starring Bill Murray in a madcap romp. Wouldn’t that be fun? I feel like that would be fun.

Levi: Woody Harrelson would nail this. Remember, the Carolina accent is crucial. “One grenade would take ‘em all out”

How about all of the Head FB Coaches? Who would you cast in those roles?

Ben: I would like to offer up the role of Geoff Collins to Steve Buscemi. I think this picture is all I need to show.

Jake P.: Les Miles can play Les Miles.

Jake: I think I would give an obscene amount of money to see Nick Saban say “we have to steal the declaration of independence.” I wish I had more answers to this, but I feel like John Belushi’s Joliet Jake Blues is to Chicago and music what Ed Orgeron is to the state of Louisiana and football.

Levi: I’m quite convinced that Tom Cruise could play Mark Richt. As for other CPJ villains? Modern day Jack Nicholson for Frank Beamer AND Bobby Bowden (insert What a Twist meme). John Slattery could play Kirk Ferentz in the 2009 Orange Bowl debacle. However, the climax is the 2014 Orange Bowl against Mississippi State and Dan Mullen (played by David Harbour).

What are the 10 best Georgia Tech football seasons ever? One condition: You have to exclude the natty seasons (1917, 1928, 1952, and 1990) from the list, as those are too easy.

Ben: I’m certainly not enough of a history buff to go through 10 seasons, but I would argue that 2008, 2009, and 2014 should certainly be on or near the list.

Carter: I, too, am a bit lacking in firsthand knowledge of the glory years of Dodd and Heisman, so I’d be hard pressed to name ten. If 2014 isn’t in your top three, though, something’s wrong with you.

Jake: OH A HISTORY QUESTION! I got this! Cutting out the national title years of 1917, 1928, 1952, and 1990 yields a pretty clear top three: 1916, 1951, 1956. In these years, we were either selected in the moment or retroactively by a pollster or whomever to be a national champion, but Tech doesn’t claim these titles. The 1956 team was dubbed by this here very site in a Rearview to be the best, with just a loss to no. 3 Tennessee on their record, while the 1951 and 1916 teams tied a mediocre Duke and Washington and Lee, respectively. However, the 1916 team, as laid witness permanently to by the 222-0 unholy clobbering of Cumberland, was one of the most deadly and efficient offenses to ever play the game. After those three, 1918 ranks highly, as expected, as do 1939, 1943, 1947, 1955, 1966, 1985, 1998, 2009, and 2014. Ultimately, I think the list should go about like this:

1. 1956 (10-1, Gator Bowl W)
2. 1916 (8-0-1, 222-0 W vs. Cumberland)
3. 1951 (11-0-1, SEC Champions, Orange Bowl W)
4. 1918 (6-1, SIAA Champions, 128-0 W vs. NCST, 123-0 W vs. Eleventh Calvary, 118-0 W vs. Furman)
5. 1947 (10-1, Orange Bowl W)
6. 1955 (9-1-1, Sugar Bowl W)
7. 1998 (10-2, ACC Champions, Gator Bowl W)
8. 1966 (9-2 in Dodd’s last year)
9. 2014 (11-3, Orange Bowl W)
10. 2009 (ACC Champions)

Levi: Yeah, 2014 made me feel like a real man. so, 2014 ten times. Thanks.

How many weeks of games do you think will be played before things get shut down?

Ben: I’m not entirely sure we get to Week 1, but I’m also very pessimistic about all of this.

Jake P.: I’d set the o/u at 3.5.

Carter: I’ll take the under.

Akshay: Give me an O/U at 0 and I’ll still take the under.

Levi: I think we can shuffle the deck at least 3 times before everyone is infected. Plus one week to realize it. Week 4 is the end baby.

Jake: Much like baseball, I’ll believe it’s happening when I see the Reck roll out of the tunnel.

If a team in another P5 conference has a rash of covid cases (say 20% or more players on a single team), do you think that will drive the ACC to end the season? Or will we keep playing until an ACC team has a big outbreak?

Ben: I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see other conferences go down, but the others continue playing. This season (if it happens) is already gonna be really weird, so why not make it even weirder?

Jake P.: I think that it will depend on whether the team with the outbreak will play an ACC team. If they don’t play any ACC teams, and don’t play any common opponents with ACC teams, I don’t think that one team will shut everything down for the ACC.

Akshay: Despite my answer in the previous question, I feel that it’s entirely possible that teams will continue to play despite significant portions of their roster/staff having to be quarantined, just because there’s too much money at stake to not play if you’ve already made the decision to do so. My gut feeling is that the process here will probably follow the model that MLB has already put forth in dealing with teams with rampant infections (for better or for worse): isolate the proper players (or the entire team, if necessary), put the season on pause (if possible), wait a week or two for the entire group to test negative, then resume play. The problem is that this model gets complicated by a few things:

1. Preparing for a football game is an (mostly) all-week affair practice-wise.
2. There aren’t as many weeks available to reschedule games as MLB has at their disposal.
3. If you want to maintain some semblance of normalcy, you’re limited to only playing on Saturday (this one is definitely up for debate, but I figured I’d mention it).

The updated schedule has some flexibility for rescheduling games in case of a required quarantine, but assuming you’re only playing on Saturdays, how many weeks do you have to miss before those games just become impossible to make up? (IIRC, the answer there would be at least two game weeks, but depending on where you are in the schedule and your adjacency to open dates, it could be fewer.)

Ben, given your recent binge-ing, please POWER RANK great movies that could NEVER be made/remade in the Woke Era.

Ben: Oh geez, I don’t think we’ll see a remake of Gone With the Wind anytime soon.

Akshay: You can probably throw Blazing Saddles in there too. There are some movies from even recent times that haven’t aged well either — for example, there’s absolutely no way Tropic Thunder gets made in 2020.

Carter: Saw Sixteen Candles for the first time last year and.... yeah, that one hasn’t aged well at all. Neither has Revenge of the Nerds.

Nishant: Hoo boy. As close as Major League is to my heart, it did not age well. There are plenty of examples in the cast, but the one that stands out—even amid all the dudes whose characters are blatant racial stereotypes—is Jake Taylor. I’m amazed that the dude wasn’t considered an obsessive, dangerous stalker even by late 1980’s standards.

Levi: Today is the day I regret knowing all the movies: 1. Tropic Thunder 2. Back to the Future 3. Rain Man 4. American History X 5. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry 6. The Brave Little Toaster 7. Rambo III 8. White Chicks. 9. Animal House 10. Everything Will Ferrell made to this point.

Assuming we have a season, who do you want to see us play Out of Conference (besides U(sic)GA) and who do you think we will try to schedule Out of Conference?

Ben: Given that the game has to be played in Georgia, I would assume it’ll probably be another Georgia team, whether it be Georgia State, Southern, Mercer, Kennesaw State or some other team.

Akshay: You know, I have to wonder if the ACC drops that non-con game now that the SEC has gone fully conference-only. It always seemed to me that allowing for that and requiring that the opponent be in-state was an easy way to preserve various ACC/SEC rivalry games, but since the SEC is too scared unwilling to keep up their end of the bargain there, then you may as well take the extra week back to flex games if necessary. However, to actually answer your question, I assume State (despite the series coming up in the next few years) or Mercer would be top choices considering Tech’s recent history against other option teams.

Jake: Yeah, they can force us to play an out of conference game in the state of Georgia, but they move our Miami home game to Miami Gardens? And keep Syracuse in Syracuse? And add a trip to Boston College in for good measure? You can’t tell me that it’s irrational to think someone in the scheduling office doesn’t like Tech too much.

Levi: It was absolutely a tip of the hat to the SEC and they left us at the altar. This is actually kind of a big deal. Turns out that only 1 school (South Carolina) values the cross conference rivalries. Everyone else voted against it. We only did it for them, we should find another partner. The ACC vs Big 12 partnership I saw on Twitter seemed like a lot of fun.

Too much [Foghat] red in that stadium pic!

Ben: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the picture tool in our editor pulls the most recent photos first, so that’s what came up

Jake P.: Maybe if more of our fans showed up to games we wouldn’t have that problem. (I’ll ignore the fact that I only went to one home game last season).

Jake: I’m right there in the picture, wearing white and gold. I’ll let the toothless masses speak for themselves. As for our fans, it would be swell if they all actually came to games, rather than complain when the other team pays our light bill by turning out en masse.

Carter: You don’t have to pick the first image that comes up, Ben. Put some more care into the mailbag solicitations, jeez.

Levi: You guys see red? I should really see a doctor about that.