Thanks to our sponsor Inteleca for helping bring back Q's Take my weekly look at things around GT and college sports from my vantage.
Every year I do a run through the camp circuit with Rivals hitting up most of our camps in places like Miami, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Dallas and I always ask players who have Georgia Tech offers or even some who have passed through about the Jackets. There are kids they are seriously recruiting who say great things, some who think they are above a program like GT and are dismissive and some who are not really clued into GT.
This Saturday was the first Rivals Camp Series event for me this year (2nd Rivals Camp overall after L.A. last month) and the first of four straight weekends where I will be seeing top Tech targets. It was interesting to see the temperature change in how recruits view Tech from a year ago.
Generally, kids fit into one of the three categories above and often there is sort of a blank look from the more unlikely kids whom I am often just asking so RJ and I can stop tracking them because the kid is going to Bama or UGA or Florida State and isn't going to OV or have serious interest. That was not the case today and it was really weird. There was only one kid who gave me that cold stare and that was one I was just running multiple schools by as a favor to someone else and threw GT in there just to make sure.
Every other kid I spoke to had good things to say about GT. Most of the good ones have been on campus at least once on their own dime since Brent Key and his staff took over. That means they had elite underclassmen taking early visits last year and were scouting well a year ahead and it was the same with the 2026 kids who would've been sophomores last year. These are all kids 7-10+ hours away from the city of Atlanta who came on their own or with their team/7v7 team to visit the Flats and came away impressed.
I legit had a kid who I was interviewing about Alabama just throw GT out at me a possible school he has legit interest in and recently visited. That would be Wiregrass CB Graceson Littleton. Even guys who GT wouldn't take right now were talking up GT and talking about Atlanta and how much they love it up there and how impressed they were with Brent Key and his staff, etc.
I'm not going to knock the previous regime, but I'll add that both that crew and CPJ's staff never really had this kind of love at these camps and this is our 10th year doing it or something like that so they overlapped with some good GT seasons during that span under CPJ and the initial hype train from GC3.
What GT did in year one has caught the attention of kids and has them interested in Georgia Tech and monitoring the program. If Key can win over the next year or two, that can change perception quickly and turn GT into more of a destination.
You are already seeing a pretty strong start to the 2025 class and that was intentional by Key. They waited to take commits until they got the guys they were absolutely sold on instead of taking someone to get on the scoreboard.
Between the recruiting and Coach Key's reaction to the scrimmage on Saturday, I think it could be a fun summer and fall for Yellow Jacket Nation.
Every year I do a run through the camp circuit with Rivals hitting up most of our camps in places like Miami, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Dallas and I always ask players who have Georgia Tech offers or even some who have passed through about the Jackets. There are kids they are seriously recruiting who say great things, some who think they are above a program like GT and are dismissive and some who are not really clued into GT.
This Saturday was the first Rivals Camp Series event for me this year (2nd Rivals Camp overall after L.A. last month) and the first of four straight weekends where I will be seeing top Tech targets. It was interesting to see the temperature change in how recruits view Tech from a year ago.
Generally, kids fit into one of the three categories above and often there is sort of a blank look from the more unlikely kids whom I am often just asking so RJ and I can stop tracking them because the kid is going to Bama or UGA or Florida State and isn't going to OV or have serious interest. That was not the case today and it was really weird. There was only one kid who gave me that cold stare and that was one I was just running multiple schools by as a favor to someone else and threw GT in there just to make sure.
Every other kid I spoke to had good things to say about GT. Most of the good ones have been on campus at least once on their own dime since Brent Key and his staff took over. That means they had elite underclassmen taking early visits last year and were scouting well a year ahead and it was the same with the 2026 kids who would've been sophomores last year. These are all kids 7-10+ hours away from the city of Atlanta who came on their own or with their team/7v7 team to visit the Flats and came away impressed.
I legit had a kid who I was interviewing about Alabama just throw GT out at me a possible school he has legit interest in and recently visited. That would be Wiregrass CB Graceson Littleton. Even guys who GT wouldn't take right now were talking up GT and talking about Atlanta and how much they love it up there and how impressed they were with Brent Key and his staff, etc.
I'm not going to knock the previous regime, but I'll add that both that crew and CPJ's staff never really had this kind of love at these camps and this is our 10th year doing it or something like that so they overlapped with some good GT seasons during that span under CPJ and the initial hype train from GC3.
What GT did in year one has caught the attention of kids and has them interested in Georgia Tech and monitoring the program. If Key can win over the next year or two, that can change perception quickly and turn GT into more of a destination.
You are already seeing a pretty strong start to the 2025 class and that was intentional by Key. They waited to take commits until they got the guys they were absolutely sold on instead of taking someone to get on the scoreboard.
Between the recruiting and Coach Key's reaction to the scrimmage on Saturday, I think it could be a fun summer and fall for Yellow Jacket Nation.
