Brian Gregory didn’t blow up the needle.
The ticket offices were manned by the usual numbers, no extras brought in, and the phone line wasn’t constantly busy.
Message boards and comment sections -- daily havens for the fact- and logic- and courtesy-challenged -- lived down to the reputation.
In politics and in sports, he who knows the least types and speaks in capital letters.
Our latest example is courtesy of the most recent hiring that affects a Georgia team, that of Gregory as Georgia Tech’s head basketball coach.
I made the mistake of peeking in on what the anonymous experts had to say. Makes a head hurt.
An aversion to objectivity or seeking knowledge doesn’t mean an athletics director absolutely blew it. You’d have thought in some views that the Yellow Jackets brought in Ron Jirsa or the Gerry Faust of basketball.
Vice president John Hoynes “The West Wing” circa 2001: “The total tonnage of what I know that you don’t could stun a team of oxen in its tracks.”
Athletics directors must yearn to say that to fans after every big decision, regardless of the inevitable wisdom of the move or not.
Georgia Tech will do fine with Gregory, much better than its fan base realizes.
Reason 1: Dayton is a better college basketball city than Atlanta.
Note that the city has Dayton and Wright State, the latter of which just sent a head coach to Clemson, where Brad Brownell won 23 games and reached the NCAA tournament in his first season.
Dayton and Wright State have had a substantial edge in facilities (capacities of 13,455 and 11,019) for years. Tech is just now upgrading its home.
In 2009-10, Dayton was 28th nationally in attendance (12,259) and Wright State averaged (5,277). By contrast, Georgia Tech was 65th (7,979) and Georgia State, which has never had a capacity crowd for a men’s basketball game at its arena, reported 1,385. There’s a lot of “reporting” among struggling mid-majors and lower.
In Tech’s Final Four season, the order was: Dayton, 12,597; Tech 8,231 (behind even Georgia); Wright State, 5,302; Georgia State, 1,117.
And those NCAA play-in games are in Dayton because, again, it’s a basketball city.
Reason 2: The term “mid-major” is increasingly deceiving.
Many mid-majors are better than the middle-of-the pack teams in BCS conferences, and the big boys won’t play good mid-majors because, well, they know how good they are. Outsiders only pay attention at tourney time.
Reason 3: “Reviving the fan base” is, of course, is irrelevant months before the season, 99 percent of the time, for good or bad. You’ll like him when you meet him, and then love him when he wins or curse him if he loses.
But goodness, let’s wait until the actual testing begins before grading.
As for the requisite “hot, young coach” argument: a three-hit day at the plate in April doesn’t make you Albert Pujols, but 10 or 15 of them a year -- and in a pennant race -- can inspire a nice conversation.
Iowa swiped Todd Lickliter from Butler three seasons before firing him. Dennis Felton was Georgia’s anti-Jim Harrick and next Tubby Smith. And wasn’t Paul Hewitt up for jobs at Notre Dame and St. John’s?
ESPN called Hewitt the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference’s “it” coach in 2000. Entering all of his third season as a head coach.
And for Pete’s sake, nobody loses the introductory news conference.
This isn’t to pick on Georgia Tech, because, again, you can substitute any program in any year with this tirade. A lone consensus national title in 30-plus years does not a “national program” make, nor do two Final Fours in the 73 seasons of the NCAA tournament.
Nevertheless, for a variety of reasons, Gregory is a quality hire for this program. Grumble at me now, thank me later.
Contact Michael A. Lough at 744-4626 or mlough@macon.com
