Quick weekend hits

Nesbitt article on Yahoo!/Rivals. Pretty good read about his transition from passer in HS to runner in CFB. Here's a Q/A with Nesbitt from the AJC. It's good too. I really like hearing from Nesbitt. I think it's shining a good light on an otherwise silent killer on the football field (compared to previous GT QB's, anyone remember post-game comments from this game?).

Of course it's old news now but Roddy dislocated his wrist doing power cleans at the GTAA. He'll be okay but sidelined nonetheless. It sucks he'll be losing reps but now we'll definitely see the depth at A-back shine.

Let's try this again... Season Preview: Clemson Women

Ok, ok, last week we took the easy (but fun) way out. This week, I'd like to present the women of Clemson University.

I'm only posting this one at the request of Furrer4Heisman. If you don't like your job, take off your search filter and google "Lauren Bowden." You've been warned.





And my favorite.... sweet short spandex....

Thanks, Clemson. This one wrote itself.

The Dead Period's Inaugural Random 10

Let's play a game. Many blogs do this and this is very unoriginal but we're doing it anyway.

Turn on your music player, put it on random, and listen to your first 10. Tell me what you got.

The first Random 10 of TheLegacyx4 is brought to you by the Centennial Wreck of Georgia Tech. In honor of Georgia Tech's Centennial Celebration, a commemorative Wreck was restored and then auctioned off to the highest bidder. It now sits in a Boston car dealership. The Centennial Wreck has been on the field once and only once as it followed the ONE and ONLY Ramblin' Reck on the field in 1985 victory over Georgie.



Anyways, Let's get bumpin'!


1. Funky Monks - Red Hot Chili Peppers
2. American Ghost Dance - Red Hot Chili Peppers
3. True Men Don't Kill Coyotes - Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. Jamie - Weezer
5. Ocean Avenue - Yellowcard
6. Johnny, Kick a Hole in the Sky - Red Hot Chili Peppers
7. Pink Triangle - Weezer
8. Girl on the Wing - The Shins
9. Fire - Red Hot Chili Peppers
10.Yertle the Turtle - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Clearly, my computer is in a California State of Mind. Big WTF to my iTunes.

Conference Misalignment

As an environmental engineer I like to look at pollution numbers, energy efficiency, consumption, waste, etc.. So something that has interested me as of late is the distance-to-travel for ACC/SEC teams. I took Atlanta as a central point for ACC comparisons while Athens (the cesspool) is the center of the SEC world. Just for the Hell of it, I also came up with an interesting scenario.

ACC-SEC comparison
Looking at the ACC, GT is approximately 474 driving miles from all other 11 ACC foes. GA is 348. This means that at a rate of 60 mph, Georgie is 2 hours closer driving distance to all of its SEC brethren than Tech is to its ACC foes. That sucks. Comparing divisions, Tech's Coastal Division average drive is only 4 miles less than the ACC average at a whopping 470 driving miles. Georgie, in contrast, is 279 driving miles from Eastern Division foes making the average driving distance a ridiculous 3 hours less than Tech's average driving distance. That's pretty terrible, too.

Obviously, Miami, BC, and MD don't help Tech fans with driving times. But then again the ACC is spread so thin across the East Coast that removing those three teams only makes the ACC slightly worse than the SEC's actual average driving distance. When arguing conference supremacy, the SEC can definitely state proximity as a huge plus. Hell, I would've gone to almost every game if the average drive was only 4 or so hours. Then again, you can't really fly into most SEC cities anyways so you better be willing to drive.

Regional/Dream/Ridiculous Scenario
I've kind of been toying with the idea of a playoff that involves MASSIVE conference realignment across the board. Regionals divided up by proximity. The goal is to save energy, reduce transport time, and ultimately save money. I don't have the regions completely sectioned up but I think by 2050 or whenever gasoline has to be rationed, we'll be seeing something similar to this. Like the 1910's schedules where Tech would only go to one road game and teams would only play 5-6 games a year. I'll work up a post on this when I have more free time.

If Tech were to take its 11 closest I-A opponents to form a new ATL-centralized conference, the conference would include: Tech, Georgia, Auburn, Clemson, UAB, Troy, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, MTSU, Vandy, and FSU. Think about that. That's a lot of natural rivalries that could be reborn. Georgie, Auburn, and Clemson are obvious. Alabama brings back images of the epic Bryant-Dodd danceoffs. FSU is always close and ridiculous. Tech fans generally trust UT about as far as we can throw Phil Fulmer. The others are good fillers. The average drive time would reduce from the ACC's staggering 8 hours to a manageable 3 hours. Damn, that would be nice.

Interestingly enough, in the 50's an "Airplane Conference" was proposed by members of the current Pac 10, the Service Academies, and other dominant East Coast teams (like GT). The idea, at the time, was to create a super conference but the Pentagon didn't like the idea of flying college football teams back and forth across the country all season.

The Georgia Tech Universe Schedule

Now, I've been trying to explain to people why you can't use season stats to explain college football teams. I like using NFL stats generally moreso because of the parity and talent depth at the pro level. To me, college football is much more reliant on individual game performances and matchups less so than the NFL, which is moreso about warroom coaching and consistency.

In college football, you have many factors that lead to the rise and fall of college football teams. A major factor is "Who have you played?" or "Who have they played?" A look at the GT Universe Schedule shows the intracacies of the GT schedule. Momentum can be garnered or totally lost merely a game before someone plays us (read: one loss in CFB can ruin a season). The Universe Schedule also shows how comparable teams are to one another through the idea of "common opponents." That's a big time NCAA basketball buzzword but I like the idea for CFB as well since no one ever really likes to stray out of their region.

Any thoughts out there? I'm thinking the entire US should be broken down into 12-16 regionals to coincide with a major playoff configuration.

The Hokie has landed

Furrer4Heisman from Gobbler Country is in town.

God help us all.

ACC Championship Announced (Primetime)

That's right. The ACC got an evening slot to put its championship game.

Only one catch...it's on ESPN. Previously the ACC Championship has been held at 1pm on ABC.
So pick your poison, 1pm or 8pm? Local Channel or Basic Cable? Does the channel preference really matter to you? Everyone has basic cable anyways, so give me the 8pm slot. At worse case it will give me time to get my pre-game on longer.

Will it affect game attendance? Probably not. However, it will be interesting to see how this game at a later time matches up against the SEC and Big 12 Championship Games that same day.

Let's take off the gold-colored glasses for a minute...

Last season was amazing. It was the most exciting season I've seen as a Tech fan. Coach Johnson exceeded everyone's expectations, and has definitely found a place in the hearts of the Yellow Jacket faithful.

With that said, I'm going to be a Negative Nancy for a little while. We ran the train on a few of our opponents... JSU, Duke, Mississippi State, and Miami. I'm proud that we crushed these teams like we did, but let's not pretend that those large margins of victory qualify us as a good team. We defintely got donkey punched ourselves... UNC was embarrassing, and I don't even want to bring up what happened - you know what? Nevermind.

While last year's 9-4 season eclipsed any under Gailey, I cannot shake the feeling that we probably should have lost 3 of those games.

Boston College: We played pretty clutch D at the end of this game, but I honestly thought they were going to march down and not leave us any time on the clock. Even then, Nesbitt has to go superhuman to keep us from a 3rd and 'oh crap,' preventing BC from getting the ball back. Even ingoring the fact that this was a genuine scramble, not a run by design, it was still pretty darn close.

Gardner-Webb: A freakin' I-AA team held us to 79 rushing yards. Yes, this year, those kinks should be worked out. We should have dominated these guys, though, it just like with LSU, it shows that we can easily get shut down with good defensive line play.

FSU: I'm glad the game went down like it did, searing it into my memory. However, I know that I now exist in Bizarro Tech world with an alternate history, because in the normal universe FSU rans right into our endzone and I go home and cry myself to sleep. I know, I know, if Nesbitt was in, this game wouldn't have been a problem. (However, Nesbitt does seem pretty injury prone - do we expect him to show up for every game in 2009?)


Of course, there is always the counter argument... what about the close games we lost, that we should have won? These would be VPI and UVa.

It's hard not to blame losing to the Hokies on the refs; however, we did play some stupid ball. Maybe we should have won it, but we didn't. We had some bad turnovers, including an awful throwaway from Josh that was picked off.

With UVa, it was once again a matter of turnovers - this time, fumbling during what should be scoring possessions. Maybe we should have seen the debacle at UNC coming, because we managed to fumble at the worst possible times during both games.

We were fourth in the nation last year for rushing output, and our backfield is stacked. However, teams that we should be able to slice and dice were able to render our rushing attack completely impotent. Are we going to get stuffed like some people are predicting? Are we going to fumble away a double-digit season? Do we really even have a reason to expect better? Even if we play more consistently, it means that we swap the UNC and Virginia losses with the FSU and BC wins... not necessarily a better product (how does it go? "I'd rather be lucky than good any day.") Do Tech fans have any reason to expect more wins this season?

I think the fairest answer that I can give is that no - we shouldn't. This year, we should expect to win the games we should win, and lose the ones to better teams. Duh, right?

We haven't made it to the next level, where we are expected to win everything but the national championship game ever year. Maybe this is the year we finally start down the path to join teams like Oklahoma, WVU, uga, VPI, and other top schools that put big seasons together every year. Then, we can move to the tip top. Do we honestly think we are going to bring home a National Title anytime in the immediate future? Hold on.


*Puts his glasses back on*


Well, now that I step back and look at it, there isn't a game on this season's schedule that we should lose. It's going to be a good one.

Baseball type things

MLB
Matt Wieters, since being called out on June 7th for starting out with a 0.167, has batted 0.315 with 6 hits in his last 5 games. That's not too bad. Hopefully, he can start belting some homers like I remember back in the good ol' days.

CWS
The ACC is currently 1-2 in the CWS... Dadgummit. Come on UVA/UNC. Kick some ass. Don't get eliminated. Current conference roundup is below:

1. Pac 10: 9-4 (69.2%)
2. SEC: 25-13 (65.8%)
3. ACC: 23-14 (62.2%)
4. Big 12: 17-15 (53.1%)
5. Big East: 3-3 (50.0%)
6. Big 10: 4-6 (40.0%)
7. Other: 42-66 (38.9%)

Georgia looking up at Tech

Doc Saturday claims that Georgie probably shouldn't feel any sort of jealousy towards Tech's preseason love due to recent history. He also mentions, however, that through the O'Leary/Johnson years, Tech and Georgie have mostly been on par. The Chan Experience really put a governor on the Tech motor and kinda slowed us up comparatively, which I generally I agree with (as do most Tech fans).

There's an interesting mood in the state though. A mood that is emanating from the East. I think a lot of dog fans are realizing Richt will never take home a big one at Georgie or at least he won't in the near future. He can recruit all the talent in the world but he doesn't have the ability (or maybe focus) to coach an entire season without a blemish (e.g. UF, Tenn, and Auburn in recent years). He reminds me of Wisconsin in the Big 10. Not flashy, 10 win seasons, and always overshadowed by more interesting teams that get to big games with big regular season wins.

Oh well. You never know. I hope Richt doesn't leave in the near future except maybe to take the FSU job. I think CPJ's got his number and is a helluva lot better coach. But with two or three more losses in a row to the Jackets I think Richt is gone.

Any thoughts.

Two years removed

Two years ago on this date an accident happened that made national news and delivered my favorite one liner, "It's like saying you can get another wife to replace your wife, because she's a woman." I vividly remember everything from the smoking wreck of a Ford Expedition to the actual ride out on September 8th.

In general, the experience is a lot more fun to reflect upon than actually partake of but I guess that's how most traumatic experiences go. Anyways, if you'd like to help out the kids that are still running the Ramblin' Reck, click here. Every bit is appreciated.

And in keeping with last week's theme, I actually have met an ESPN sideline reporter. Stacey Dales was at the 2007 BC game in ATL and said I'd be interviewed if we could make the game close. Alas, Tater Biscuit was no match for Matty Ice. So no interview.

And for those seeking more media-ness, here's a bunch of Youtube clips.

Gani Lawal comes back to Georgia Tech

One more year...

This weekend was a pretty big weekend for Georgia Tech as Gani made an unprecedented move and actually decided to come back for another year of college basketball.

Gani's return will likely raise the already above-average potential next year for the basketball team. He will certainly raise the expectations for Paul Hewitt solidifying 2009-2010 is a "Do or Die" season.

Post your thoughts in the comments!