Old wine in new bottles

This, I am sure, changes everything.

Georgia Tech has made a leap forward in its recruiting efforts. It is the hope of coach Paul Johnson that the Yellow Jackets now won’t be playing from behind.

The team has expanded the recruiting department from one person to four, a staff that includes Tech great Joe Hamilton.

Only thing is, the genius still has to seal the deal.

Johnson has come under criticism for perceived recruiting shortcomings, to which he has responded that Tech’s recruiting results are similar to what his predecessors have achieved, with the star-studded 2007 class standing as an outlier.

Yes, that, because Chan Gailey is the gold standard of Tech recruiting.

Johnson has charged the recruiting staff with a lot of the legwork that previously occupied the time of the assistant coaches, such as gathering transcripts. The team evaluates thousands of prospects each year, and Griffin’s staff will endeavor to streamline the process. For instance, if there are 100 offensive line prospects to look at, Griffin said, “we can go through the 100 to find the 10 that we think they’d like and then let them make the decisions from there.”

With as many as four coaches heading to Florida next week — assistants have been on the road evaluating prospects since the end of spring practice — Cassano surveyed high school coaching contacts in the state to check on who would be worth seeing. Griffin estimated Cassano’s 45 minutes of work saved the coaching staff two days of travel and evaluation time, hours that can be more devoted to more worthwhile prospects.

“Two phone calls, we can cover about four counties — who can play, who can’t,” Griffin said. “People we know and trust.”

I guess that means they’ll be able to find even more kids who’ll run afoul of the Johnson Doctrine.