Is it harder to establish relationships with coaches, AA staff, or high level boosters. Which is the easiest to stay in communication or how would you rate each type of contact and the actual real information that ends up checking out. This can be an in-general or GT specific question answered or both.
KQ- This is an interesting question out of the box. The answer is the athletic association staff because the nature of their job and my job are sort of at odds and they have less of an incentive to talk to me. The ones who get it and are really good at their jobs cultivate the relationship thought like D-Rad did or others in my career who I am still friends with to this day. I'm been fortunate to get to know and become friends with a lot of high-level boosters at GT and other programs I've cover(ed) over the years as well that are still close relationships and the coaching things goes on forever. I still talk to people and text with coaching friends I have not seen in person in years and years. I think most of them like how I handled things and tried to walk a tough line as someone who has to be a reporter and also run a message board as well. In a bigger market, I would likely be in more of one bucket or another and less of the blurred lines of being a beat writer/commentator/columnist/board personality.
Is it crazy to think Techs ceiling (this is obviously not how it’s played out to date) is actually higher in the NIL world than previously?
Reason being, the blue bloods have had bagmen paying the elite guys forever. There’s more money now, but there are diminishing returns at some point.
Tech is certainly not lacking in rich alumni, but for whatever reason theyve always wanted to play by the rules a bit more. If there was a great plan in place, could Tech tap into that and really get some juice flowing? Not to recruit at a top 10 level, but maybe top 25 and keeping our best players around?
KQ- I think GT can use the portal and NIL to their advantage in a big way once everything is funded properly. GT has never had the benefit of guys who write stupid large checks with their heart only like TAMU or other SEC programs so it is taking longer to get it going and I think there were people rightfully trying to do things in a compliant manner and that bit GT a little bit this past offseason, but I think if you have the right culture and are building toward something it becomes a very valuable tool to recruit to. At GT though it will primarily be a retention and grad transfer tool due to the nature of the school and the difficulty getting transfers in who are not early underclassmen.
If Chadwell is indeed our man (!!!) has Batt put out feelers about what this would do to generate money? I can see going over $5M pretty easily for the current campaign once the hire is announced.
KQ- Not being a dick here, but is this a serious question or just an attempt to phish?
Maybe a dumb question, but GOL left in December 2001. The upper north wasn’t completed until summer of 2003. Was there no way to press pause or adjust the project considering it was primarily being done to appease the coach that had already bolted? Could some or all these years of money problems have been avoided?
KQ- No clue, maybe someone on here can explain how it was funded and what the plan was. I was still in college during all of that.
If you were J Batt what are some small but immediate changes you could make to help GTMBB? Is the simplest fix for now just hiring more staff? Understanding that finances are bad and all eyes are on football, it’s still alarming to read multiple fans report that they can’t get a callback when trying to purchase tickets or donate money to the #2 sport at the school.
KQ- The biggest thing is getting Pastner like $500-750k to get NIL rolling and allow him to go find one or two missing pieces in an offseason and retain what they have. That ceiling to get there is low and one guy can make the difference between 4-5 extra wins in basketball.
I’ve seen Suddes mentioned in a few threads and I had forgotten about him. Can u speak to his time at GT. Was he responsible for some of these recruiting misses and the lack of OL? What about his relationship with HS coaches and his overall reputation in general.
KQ- Suddes was always great to RJ and me. RJ can speak more to the recruiting piece and his rep in the recruiting world. The plan as far as scholarship distribution and how they were going to do things was mainly Collins however and the path to take transfers over HS kids at some spots like OLs was also a Collins push as he wanted to change body types fast rather than trying to work with the Charlie Clark/Mikey Minihan/Connor Hansen types.
What do you have to pay Jamey Chadwell?
KQ- I would think he would command north of $3 million per season because that just seems to be the low-end base pay now for a P5 coach.
Are we currently recruiting any big men for 2023? Franklin and Rodney both gone after this year and we keep missing on transfers so seems like HS would be a safer route to try?
KQ- Rodney is not gone after this year, he is technically a R-Jr. this year and has already spoken about possibly coming back to me. Yes they are looking at big men, but after missing out on Michael Nwoko to Miami, Pastner isn't going to just throw a random big offer out there. They also have Cyril Martynov who just signed and Jordan Meka so they have three big men back next year plus Jalon Moore who is a hybrid 3/4/5 type. I would expect them to make another run at a portal guy at the 5.
Since the firing of GC3 we haven’t seen a mass exodus to the portal minus two guys who had worked out a weird RS deal with the previous HC. Does retaining Key at HC maintain stability and lead to less people transferring or do you see it being similar regardless of who the next HC is?
KQ- Yes, there will be guys who leave anyway, but the important ones seem to be locked in on Coach Key and that would help keep the core of the defense and some key offensive guys in place.
Who are the players you expect to see hit the portal come December (ranked in order of impact loss to program)? And of those players, do you think any would change their mind and remove themselves from the portal?
KQ- So two things on this, one is I'm never going to speculate on who might leave, that is incredibly disrespectful to the player, his family and the coaching staff at GT. Secondly, there is no way to know beyond a handful of names of guys who don't matter as much who I think might leave because who leaves will be based on the hire, the system fits, and other factors I can't even guess at yet.
It's been a few years and sorry if you've answered this before...what the heck happened with Will Bryan's playing time at the end of his tenure?
KQ- It seems like so long ago it is not worth digging back up, but for whatever reason Sewak seemed to have an issue with Will and kind of shit on him. It was sort of that simple. Will was a polite kid and didn't push back like others did and that probably cost him playing time per the people around the program at the time.
How is his dad doing? Do you keep up with them?
KQ- I got a text when Collins got fired from Mac. I hadn't heard from him for a while, but he is doing well. He is a grandpa now.
I know you weren’t covering GT at the time but do you know who some of the big names in 2007 when CPJ was hired? You have said GT hasn’t had a home run hire since Bobby Ross. It just made me wonder who were some of the guys that they could of had. Thanks for all you do, KQ!
KQ- So from what I remember and what people have said on here and what I've heard it was Rick Neuheisel who was on the Baltimore Ravens staff after getting fired from Washington for NCAA issues and late sued and won, but he was considered sort of a dangerous hire and it proved to be accurate when he failed at his alma mater UCLA. Will Muschamp the DC at Auburn at the time was in the mix and according to Paul Johnson the other was David Cutcliffe. Johnson told me he had offers from GT and Duke and that Cutcliffe got the one he turned down at Duke. I'm sure there were other people that D-Rad looked at.
