I was thinking (and drinking) this past weekend about basically one thing: Would I be excited about the Gus Bus coming to GT? And that led to a great many digressions and now we're here: Who are Georgia Tech's peer programs that we should compare ourselves against? Well, peers in what sense? I could see a few different angles:
1. Nerd Schools in a P5 Conference
Vanderbilt
Duke
Northwestern
Stanford
2. Georgia FBS Programs
u[sic]ga
Georgia State
Georgia Southern
3. Programs with similar football/athletic budgets
Frankly, I don't know how to research this list. But I wanted to throw it out there as food for thought.
4. Programs with similar expectations
This one is much harder to define, and it's definitely subjective what our expectations are, as well as what other schools have those expectations. I'm going to limit us to the CFP era, and in that time, I think the expectation for Georgia Tech is to compete for the division title every year. Nobody is expecting us to compete for the natty every year; I don't think many are expecting us to compete for the ACC championship every year, at least since 2014. But under CPJ's last 5 years, the expectation I saw was to compete for the Coastal every year, with harsh down years being accepted in trade for high highs of a NY6 bowl. And in all the conversation about Collins prior to the crash and burn this year, I saw reasonable expectations for the program post-rebuild to be going back to competing for the division every year. With that caveat out of the way, who else in the power 5 has similar "compete for the division every year" expectations in the CFP era?
Miami
Pitt, maybe?
Florida
Auburn
Texas A&M, maybe (lol)
Michigan State
Penn State
Iowa
Wisconsin
Nebraska (lol)
Oklahoma State
Stanford, maybe?
(Excluded teams, in my opinion, either have higher or lower expectations. FSU is a special case, since they went from wanting to compete for the natty to just wanting to go to a bowl game at all seemingly overnight)
The point, and a poll
If we want GT to go back to competing for the Coastal every year (ignoring that the ACC is maybe planning to dissolve the divisions in favor of pods or something), what should we ask for in a coach? I've seen a similar dialogue to this on and off the board:
"Clay Helton would be a great coach for us"
"I don't want to hire a coach that just got fired from another job"
"USC's expectations were to compete for a national title every year. Helton didn't meet those expectations, but he could still be good for what we want at GT"
which... yeah, okay, I'll buy that. But when people start throwing around names that got fired from the stops in the fourth category above, I'm more hesitant. If a coach has the same expectations as we do, and probably has more resources than we do, and he still gets fired, I'm not sure I'd be excited about them coming to Tech.
All that said, would you be excited about hiring a coach that got fired for failing to meet expectations at another school, if those expectations are roughly in line with your expectations for GT?
1. Nerd Schools in a P5 Conference
Vanderbilt
Duke
Northwestern
Stanford
2. Georgia FBS Programs
u[sic]ga
Georgia State
Georgia Southern
3. Programs with similar football/athletic budgets
Frankly, I don't know how to research this list. But I wanted to throw it out there as food for thought.
4. Programs with similar expectations
This one is much harder to define, and it's definitely subjective what our expectations are, as well as what other schools have those expectations. I'm going to limit us to the CFP era, and in that time, I think the expectation for Georgia Tech is to compete for the division title every year. Nobody is expecting us to compete for the natty every year; I don't think many are expecting us to compete for the ACC championship every year, at least since 2014. But under CPJ's last 5 years, the expectation I saw was to compete for the Coastal every year, with harsh down years being accepted in trade for high highs of a NY6 bowl. And in all the conversation about Collins prior to the crash and burn this year, I saw reasonable expectations for the program post-rebuild to be going back to competing for the division every year. With that caveat out of the way, who else in the power 5 has similar "compete for the division every year" expectations in the CFP era?
Miami
Pitt, maybe?
Florida
Auburn
Texas A&M, maybe (lol)
Michigan State
Penn State
Iowa
Wisconsin
Nebraska (lol)
Oklahoma State
Stanford, maybe?
(Excluded teams, in my opinion, either have higher or lower expectations. FSU is a special case, since they went from wanting to compete for the natty to just wanting to go to a bowl game at all seemingly overnight)
The point, and a poll
If we want GT to go back to competing for the Coastal every year (ignoring that the ACC is maybe planning to dissolve the divisions in favor of pods or something), what should we ask for in a coach? I've seen a similar dialogue to this on and off the board:
"Clay Helton would be a great coach for us"
"I don't want to hire a coach that just got fired from another job"
"USC's expectations were to compete for a national title every year. Helton didn't meet those expectations, but he could still be good for what we want at GT"
which... yeah, okay, I'll buy that. But when people start throwing around names that got fired from the stops in the fourth category above, I'm more hesitant. If a coach has the same expectations as we do, and probably has more resources than we do, and he still gets fired, I'm not sure I'd be excited about them coming to Tech.
All that said, would you be excited about hiring a coach that got fired for failing to meet expectations at another school, if those expectations are roughly in line with your expectations for GT?
