Mailbag 8/10

Frodo Swagginz: I watched a podcast with Kelly Quinlan on ACC Nation discussing Tech’s 2022 season preview. During this, Kelly says that he believes Tech will have around 4 wins this year with the best outcome being 7 wins.

He sees wins against WCU, Duke, Virginia, and Virginia Tech (If I recall correctly).

With tossups against UNC, UCF, and someone else who I have forgotten.

The reasons being a lot of uncertainty in the Coastal (Shocker).

The only team he sees as completely out of Tech’s reach was UGA.

My question is, how does this sit with the experts here at FTRS? I know the Binion Index strongly disagrees, but Vegas agrees with 4 wins (If you round up).

Ben: I think four is generous, but I don’t think six is unattainable. The Coastal is always going to be chaotic, and there are a lot of changes Tech has made since last season. I won’t believe it until I see it, but it is a possibility that Georgia Tech does win six games this year. I disagree about the teams completely out of reach. Clemson may have had a “down year” last year, but Georgia Tech isn’t beating Clemson this year.

Logan: the ACC is pure chaos, so anything is possible. I like to be on the optimistic side, it’s just hard given what we’ve seen over the past 3 years. In my mind the 2 games that are completely out of reach are Clemson and uga, anything else is at least winnable in my mind… that doesn’t make it likely but it is possible.

I think Kelly’s projection is not unreasonable. I’m a little surprised he gave us Virginia, but I assume he did so because it was a home game. UNC on the road seems like a strange choice given the strides UNC is taking to improve. Not sure where that comes from. I would put my money on Miami being a win instead of UNC. FSU was likely the other team but I didn’t watch the clip so I don’t know for certain.

If I’m going purely off the teams he expects us to beat I would put us closer to a 5 win than a 7 win because I don’t see UCF being a pushover and I don’t understand the UNC pick at all. That said, 6 wins is definitely on the table given the lack of consistency in the conference. Love it or hate it, anything is possible in the ACC.

Chris: Yeah I think that’s about right although I’d probably through UVA in the “toss up” category as well.

Jake: I think I agree with Chris on the UVA comment, but I might also put Clemson or Ole Miss in a tier between loss and out of our league. Seems like their talent level is high enough to make those just pretty tough in general.

Submitted via email: Hello guys,

Kind of busy this week so I’m gonna keep things short. My question this week is, if you could design a championship trophy what would you make it look like? been thinking about this as some bowls may be shrinking or removed, not sure if some more will pop up or not but I think it would be cool to win the last trophy for a bowl before it becomes defunct... as long as the trophy looks cool as heck. I don’t want no boring trophy on my shelf. So what trophy would you design? Later guys.,

Jesse Owens

Ben: Any bowl trophy I designed would have to also function as a bowl, whether it be a cereal bowl, a guacamole bowl, something. It’s gotta be a bowl.

Logan: absolutely, if it’s a bowl it has to be a bowl. Not a big fan of the glass bowls filled with the thing the bowl is about though. Just seems cliche at this point. Maybe a big bowl with a flame that can be turned on with two football helmets on either side looking into the fire. Maybe some kind of logo projected onto the fire… I dunno, that sounds cool to me but it might be a bit gaudy for others.

Chris: A hand-carved bowl made of really high quality African wood. Gorgeous spalting and color. The base would be some kind of intricately carved display of the two teams competing each year - I think that would bring an awesome one-of-a-kind touch to it.

Jake: I like the concept of designing a trophy. I think that a great trophy often is unique in some way or represents the event in some visual way. For that, it is unfortunate that there is already an iconic trophy in the NHL and no widely popular team championship in, say, swimming or water polo, no offense to the International Swim League, as using crystal as a water splash or hockey spray would look awesome.

Logan Again: Wanted to put this below Chris’s because he kind of inspired me. With technology being what it is now I think it would be cool if we could take one of the pictures of the major plays of the game and laser etch the picture onto the trophy somewhere shortly following the game. That would be pretty cool in my mind. Also it would be cool to watch as they just laser etch the trophy... not sure that is feasible but that would be cool.