A New Era Begins At Georgia Tech

Kickoff for Georgia Tech football is just a few days away. Friday September 1, 2023 will be the first time since 2018 that someone other than Geoff Collins leads the Jackets out of the locker room for the season opener. Granted, Brent Key has coached Tech through 8 games already, having done so as the interim HC in 2022. Now he is the official head man. What’s the difference, you might ask?

There is a big difference, and Tech fans are eager to get on with it all. Because the Collins show had worn thin in TechWorld long before he was ousted after game 4 last year. And that might have been true even if he had produced a winner. Given that he never came close to a winning season, the door for his exit was being held open–emotionally anyeay– long before the 2022 season even began. The fact that then AD Todd Stansbury had written a public letter in December 2021 reaffirming his belief in Collins’ plan pushed the discomfort among Tech fans into overt disinterest. The attendance figures dropped significantly, and the critics became louder. And they had plenty to criticize. For starters, how about allowing blocked kicks in four consecutive games? As my old physics prof might say, that level of poor play would be ” intuitively obvious to the most casual observer”.

Collins ended up his time on the Flats with 3 full seasons and part of a 4th. To be clear, one full season , 2020, was truncated to 10 games because of Covid. In each of his 3 full seasons, Collins” Jackets won only 3 games. He was 1-3 in 2022 when his time at Tech came to an abrupt end. His career at Tech finished 10-28, a record which will live on in the record books as a historical footnote for futility , akin to Bill Lewis’ tenure from the early 90’s. The handshake/ brush-off with Narduzzi occurred at roughly the midpoint of Collins’ time at Tech, the penultimate game of his second season at the helm. Many Tech fans would not have been upset if he had been turned loose after that weird episode, one which Collins attempted to explain by claiming he was trying to get with his guys to “celebrate” — not the 34-20 loss to Pitt, but Senior night for 2020. He then said he couldn’t recall exactly what he’d said to Narduzzi, and followed that with assurances to the press that he had talked with Narduzzi at the 2022 ACC media days and all was good. None of that rang true–and this is over a post-game handshake?

All the while, Collins was busy reassuring everyone that progress was being made in his program, despite the fact that his team was not winning. He was ignoring the wise words of Bill Parcells– ” you are what your record says you are,,” Collins was often telling his audience that progress was being made, though he acknowledged that the fans maybe couldn’t see it, or worse, that they werent open to seeing it. He said that the evidence of improvement was behind the scenes, in the form of catapult scores, recruiting, team attitude and other subjective areas not directly related to winning games.

Over time, he had a diminishing ability to persuade Tech fans to buy his message. But he did successfully sell it to his boss at Georgia Tech-, Athletics Director Todd Stansbury. Shortly after the 2021 campaign, Tech’s AD sent out a public letter in support of Collins. In that letter, Stansbury assured Tech fans that he craved success as much as anyone, and he encouraged TechWorld to give Collins their continued support. Notably, Stansbury cited Collins’ oft- repeated contention the the “margin of error was getting smaller” for Collins and crew and that more patience was needed- and justified. Of course, we know that the best programs have a large margin for error, but malaprops aside, the number of Tech wins under Collins was low and it was staying low–, and that sad fact itself was the problem (see Parcells quote above).

Tech fans are not the most crazed football fans in the country. Not close. They are , however, loyal and proud. And savvy. They know bad football when they see it.They saw little evidence that Tech football was moving forward under Collins, and plenty of evidence that things were actually getting worse. So when Tech’s prized running back Jahmyr Gibbs announced his intention to transfer on the very day that Stansbury’s letter came out, that was reality clanging loudly against a plea from the man in charge for Tech fans to hang in there. (Think Wizard of Oz–” pay no attention to thst man behind the curtain!”–but with the obvious difference being that Collins was fine with that attention). And so, when Tech began the 2022 season with losses in three of their first four games, no one was surprised when he was fired. Some were surprised that AD Stansbury was also let go, but he was the man who hired Collins and who had doubled down on Collins’ work with that letter.

So what did Collins leave us with? A big hole in the budget for one, from the buyout of his 7 year contract. And for the cynical fan, Collins had given us a master class in demonstrating how to lower expectations for anyone accepting a new job ( we at Tech are taking on “the greatest transformation in the history of college fotball”).

And a positive–perhaps he gave us a better awareness of the obvious fact the Georgia Tech sits in the middle of one of the country’s hotbeds of high school prospects, and that Tech has much to offer any recruit . Collins, ever the salesman, reminded all that Tech had much to sell. And that was a refreshing message to hear, versus the old mindset that “we can’t get those players”.

So 2023 begins with a energizing focus by Key and staff on basic football. The new coach conveys authenticity in his presentation, his style, his philosophy. He’s not big on props or embellishments. The fact that he comes with a 4-4 record on a 2022 test drive is reassuring. So is the fact that he does not crave personal attention, but almost deflects it. The press conference settings are not festooned with print images of his likeness. There is no cardboard cutout of him greeting all who enter the athletics offices. And he is fine with that. He has repeatedly said the 4-4 record he earned in 2022 is not good enough. That contention rings true. He likes to win. And he hates to lose. He has done away with the showy appendages of his predecessor’s reign— the single-digit numbers to highlight various players, the money downs, the above-the-line depth charts, the 404, etc. There is a consequent clarity to his mission. He is interested in winning football games. And doing so with a group of young men who are growing as people and as footballers.

The early results are encouraging. Players appear to have bought into the message. But Key knows that appearances alone mean nothing. You are who your record says your are. Georgia Tech’s recent past says 10-28. Losers. That doesn’t square with Key’s notion of his alma mater.

Nor does inferior performance sit well with another prominent alumnus– Georgia Tech President Dr. Angel Cabrera. His quote from September 2022 on the occasion of the dismissal of Stansbury and Collins stated strongly his position on Tech’s exploits in intercollegiate athletics.

Said Cabrera last September: “Georgia Tech is a competitive place. We are top- ranked on many academic lists. Athletics is no different…. We want to be among the best just like in everything we do.” Those words sounded sweet to Tech fans. And they align with Brent Key’s take on the status of his football team.

Tech faces Louisville at Mercedes-Benz in Atlanta on Friday night. The Jackets open as an 8 point underdog. A win gets Tech a jumpstart on a more satisfying season than they have seen in a long while, perhaps a bowl bid. There’s a new coach , a new QB, many new coaches and players- all reasons for optimism. Most important, there’s a new focus. In the end, Tech football will be about the W’s and L’s, not the A-T-L.

Patrick Conarro

RamblinSports.com