You’d think in that rarefied academic atmosphere Georgia Tech inhabits, the Jackets would be regularly fighting off the likes of Duke, Vanderbilt and Stanford for the services of the kids it recruits.
Georgia Tech’s signees had a lot of choices. Most often, it appears, Marshall was one of the options. Marshall offered nine Yellow Jackets signees, according to 247 Sports, the most of any team. Marshall was followed by Georgia State with seven and Appalachian State, Middle Tennessee State and South Carolina with six.
Marshall was something of a surprise, given that Marshall is three states away (four if you count South Carolina). You wouldn’t think there’d be so much fishing from the same pond. Marshall only has seven Georgia players on its roster. Of the nine Tech signees that Marshall offered, seven are from either Lamar County (DBs Lance and Lawrence Austin and WR/DB Qua Searcy) or Florida (OL Gary Brown, DB Step Durham, LB Terrell Lewis, OL Jake Stickler). The other two were DE Kenderius Whitehead (Georgia Military College) and C Jake Whitley (South Carolina).
Marshall recruits plenty in Florida, as does Tech. There were at least a few Marshall signees who chose the Thundering Herd over Tech.
Appalachian State, Georgia State and Middle Tennessee State all were often competitors for whom Tech was the top choice, conference-wise.
Marshall, you may recall, was Kendall Gant’s fall back option – his “out” in the words of his coach – when he failed to meet Georgia’s entry requirements. I’m betting Gant won’t be struggling with calculus at West Virginia next fall.
On the bright side, no Georgia State signees picked the school over an offer from Tech. So there’s that.
Get The Picture 
My training indicates I should file this away, making no comment that might disturb the Doldrum slumber of the Kharmic Bitches.
But I am going to whisper that if recruiting and stars and all that Newbergian crap does actually matter, is Tech even relevant, football-wise, in the ACC?
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The dearth of talent there is startling. In 2012, we were really good, but it appeared we were playing a Sun Belt Conference team. We were so extremely more talented it was sad.
This past year, they had a 20 point lead at home with us starting a kid at QB for the first time, 1/2 our roster out with injuries and all the momentum in the world and we had absolutely nothing to play for…and it still didn’t matter. It took 2 OTs and all we had, but we still won the game because once we decided to play, our players are just a lot better.
CPJ is so bad at recruiting it’s embarrassing. And quite enjoyable. Long live CPJ!
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I understand the point you’re making (and this probably qualifies as nit-picking), but I hope things haven’t gotten to the point where the players think they have absolutely nothing to play for in any game against Tech.
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Hate, that’s what we have to play for. But, in this day and age, it’s a dangerous game when that’s all we’ve got and that have loads of other motivation, like this year. We weren’t going to drop significantly in the bowl pecking order with a loss. We were out of Atlanta and out of BCS or big time bowl conversation. Our season was shot and our QB was hurt. We played for pride and hate. They were playing for everything…and it still didn’t matter.
It’s always the biggest game for me, but this was not a year where we had a lot of motivation besides the games’ intrinsic value. That was my point. And I, too, hope the kids always understand it’s importance.
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Well, you know Harvard is the Marshall of the East.
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That’s funny, I always have known Marshall to be the Oxford of the Ohio Valley.
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I hate to inject any actual reasoning behind the Marshall thing since the other comments are much more fun, but I can’t help it. Thomas Brown and Ben Hartley, both UGA grads of course, are position coaches at Marshall, and more importantly, guest coach at almost every UGA camp (I believe Brown and his family still live in Atlanta also). Many of the kids at the camp won’t quite be able to get the UGA offer, and Marshall can get a relationship built through guest coaching. They know that a lot of the kids at UGA camp are fans of the school and might choose a smaller school over the hated rival. In Gant’s case, I wouldn’t be surprised if UGA encouraged Marshall to keep up the relationship and even helped facilitate the offer knowing they might have to pull theirs. The coaches have a very good relationship. Take it for whatever, but no matter what, I love the current state of Tech recruiting!
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now that was a worthwhile follow up to a post on a rather widely agreed upon notion from the Senator (how many different ways can we rehash what we know about tech’s recruiting?)
for me the real issue is what tech chooses to do about Johnson. the program is not terrible awful, but its ability to really good team is severely limited. there is no momentum whatsoever. Ultimately, I lump him in with other “gurus” of a very specific scheme that can be disruptive but seemingly lack the broader context and willingness to adapt to have their programs succeed. in short, their egos and professional identities are tied to the scheme for which they are known that the focus of being good at the scheme inhibits development of all the other aspects that go into fielding a winning program (recruiting great defensive players being one of them!). Paul Johnson actually had an interesting window after 2009. He could have evolved and used his knowledge of option football to create a hybrid offense more akin to the Kansas state’s use of collin klein as opposed to rich rod/malzahn spread/urban meyer spread.
that said, he chose to stay in the stone age…..and he is reaping the consequences of such. Vad Lee possibly being the prime example.
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Speaking personally, I’d call that a Grail question. Maybe one day I’ll have an answer for you. 😉
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there is only one holy grail and it ends with a UGA football player holding a crystal football…..
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Just how many licks DOES it take to get to the center of Tootsie Roll® Pop?
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Tech will never be good as long as Fishfry is HC there. He can’t recruit. Ask yourself, “Would I want to play for him?” The answer is obvious. Kids aren’t stupid. Once again, Tech has gotten itself into a coaching mess. They don’t want him any more but it will cost too much to fire the guy. A repeat of their basketball mess of a few years ago. For people who think they are so damn smart they certainly are stupid.
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