In a radio interview Wednesday, Georgia Tech athletic director Todd Stansbury said that he has felt the same frustration that many Yellow Jackets fans have experienced during the team’s 2-3 start, particularly its three-game losing streak.
“I hope I don’t have to remind people, but I’m an alumnus, too, and a former football player at Georgia Tech,” Stansbury said on the Chuck & Chernoff show on 680 the Fan. “So that when I see losses that we’ve had or when we’re putting balls on the turf or when we’re not covering on kickoffs, I feel it just like everybody else. I get it – frustration, anger, we’re better than that – I think our coaches feel that way. All the frustration that the fans have, we’re having internally, as well.”
The verbal expressions of that anger and frustration were what led Stansbury to send an e-mail last week to urge fans to continue supporting the team and to deem criticism of the team as counterproductive.
“My feeling was that, there’s obviously a lot of season left, especially prior to last week’s game, and I just felt like we needed to see how things play out before getting too hysterical,” said Stansbury, who is a weekly guest on the show. “And so I think with what happened last weekend (Tech’s win over Bowling Green), we’ve got a great opportunity going up to Louisville and we’ve got to take advantage of it.”
Stansbury was also asked about the possibility of adding majors or lowering Tech’s academics standards – two suggestions that fans have often had to help with Tech’s recruiting. Stansbury called that “recruiting hype.”
He proceeded to note that the Tech football team has been successful in the past even with the institute’s academic rigor and that he believed that can continue. He added his belief in what he referred to as “our secret sauce” – the professional success that Tech athletes have enjoyed five and 10 years after graduation. Part of Stansbury’s vision is to incorporate that post-sports success into Tech’s recruiting message.
“I definitely would not be interested in messing with that in any way, because in my mind, that is one of the things that we are recruiting to, and a lot of that has to do with the kind of majors that we have and the rigor of the program,” he said.
