foreign [Music] podcast taping this on a Tuesday evening first timer from jackets online it's Kelly Quinlan Kelly good evening sir how are you I'm good how are you doing I'm good I got something for you oh that's funny yeah I had one of those I lost it in the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport because I left it in my bag and I was flying out of town the next week for an away game and I had to just leave it at the TSA checkpoint that's tough it's my late grandfather's uh he went to Tech and actually this is a good segue Kelly last name Dodd Die Hard Georgia Tech fan there you go but for some reason Georgia Tech wants to change Bobby Dodd Stadium um Kelly what is happening here is it gonna be Hyundai is it gonna be Lexus of Atlanta also at Bobby Dodd Stadium at the flats are they gonna try and do this weird combination thing like what is actually true and what are you hearing on the naming rights front here so they've been looking for basically Revenue sources um you know they've had a rough few years with with obviously covet impacting kind of everybody in terms of their bottom lines and then the lovely Jeff Collins experiment that sapped away a chunk of attendance for football the main Revenue Sport and they're paying him between 7 and 12 million dollars to go away depending on how you interpret his contract and what's going on there so um yeah they've just been in tight spot they fired the ad Todd Stansberry finances have been always kind of an issue Georgia Tech they have a lot of debt and they just need to find some new ways to raise money this is a easy one because it really involves very little other than putting some signage up on the stadium and irritating certain parts of the fan base a little bit but it's free money right like if you're getting million to three million dollars to put some branding on your stadium that you don't even really have to pay for it seems like easy money at a time where they they could use some a cash injection until they get on their feet with with football and men's basketball for that matter so do you think it happens ultimately yeah I mean I heard about this a while ago um and I wasn't sure exactly what the deal was I had kind of caught wind that something was going down and just kind of forgot about it and then I think around July 1st was when it was supposed to be like announced announced and it's been pushed back a little bit but my understanding is like it got leaked for a reason um to the to AJC so I think it was a way of getting it out there and and so people would be so surprised when there's a formal announcement very soon who do you think it's going to be do you know uh uh Hyundai is it so Hyundai is gonna it is gonna be Hyundai yeah and uh it makes sense they're opening a giant plant down in the savannah area they're trying to get more involved they own part of Kia Kia is a huge plant in Columbus right in the Columbus area yep and so it's kind of surprising I think people don't understand some of these deals like everyone's like why isn't it Porsche or BMW or Ford or whatever it's about people who want to are trying to build their brand or whatever and it's part of a larger project with Georgia Tech as I understand it in terms of they're wanting to have a presence on campus there's a thing called Tech Square on Texas campus they have all has all these Fortune 500 companies and everyone's trying to kind of tap into the student body and build kind of that bridge and I think this is one way they can do it the school president was involved in all of this so I think that um it's a cool deal they need money you know it's right now yeah every you know you think about it too with nil coming up um everyone's kind of changing how they're funneling their money right like and it's going more towards people wanting to support that as a direct thing and maybe not donate as much so you have a lot of different you can't really necessarily hit up your base for money again and they've done a lot right because everyone was out raising money during covid they just did a competitive Drive initiative where they were funding scholarships that was so there's three sort of main budget issues and two of them were you know the debts The Debt Service for Georgia Tech and then the second one is scholarships that's what the people to think about is the cost of attendance and those things and it's not free so you they pay you're paying 10 12 million dollars or whatever it was a year towards scholarships they've been able to eat away with that too so all that creates more more free money for them to to invest back into the product the budget keeps getting bigger every single year it's gone up almost 20 million dollars in the last three years so you know the money's got come from somewhere it's not just coming from the ACC Network that hasn't been the financial windfall that maybe people expected interesting um when you look at brinky and what's already changed from the time Jeff Collins uh was roaming the sidelines in July of last year to now what have you noticed is the biggest difference between this being Brent Keys program versus Jeff Collins program there's very little artifice very little you know cuddling of people very there's not music at practice like every day they had a DJ when Jeff Collins was a coach whether it was an actual DJ early on and later they had someone on the staff assigned to play DJ every day and they had theme days you know techno Tuesday I think it was or techno third one of those like every day there was like music every day all during practice right and it was sort of this it wasn't very professional would be the way that it could nicely say it um that was how it was Brent key is all about work Brink he played for Georgia Larry coached under him worked for Nick Saban in Alabama for many years he's not suffering fools he's an old line coach those guys are not going to be into doing hip cool stuff they want to play football and Greg Key's philosophy is if it doesn't help win football games I'm not super interested in it unless it's like involving the kids and you know them needing something or whatever but outside of that he really just wants to coach ball and that's the option I mean Jeff Collins had a clothing line for cried out loud to watch like I didn't know that yeah the 404 denim line it's a notorious joke on our website that we bring when they were talking about naming the stadium a joke that they could use that the proceeds from that could be used to to pay for instead of you know giving the naming rights away from the stadium but yeah well he's like hair brain schemes and like different things that and there was no winning so you can't really create any buzz in the city they had a little bit of Buzz the first year and then it kind of died away and so yeah Brad's just about coaching ball he wants to win football games he wants to make a tough team and instilling that and having very little time for for shenanigans who leads quarterback one is it Haynes King is it somebody else like I think a lot of people probably assumed it was going to be Haynes King so this is one of my favorite things that's been going on for the last six months Haynes King came from Texas A M right Zach Karen was the starting quarterback at the end of last season before he got hurt in Miami game knocked out for the year Zach pyron was a higher rated recruit they're one year apart out of high school and somehow that's turned into Haynes King should be handed this job and Zach Karen's team right now and he would be qb1 now is there going to be a competition yeah Haynes king would be the first to tell you that his he was not put in a position he feels like to be successful by Jimbo Fisher and was not developed in the way that he would he would like to have been it's a coach's kid he's got work to do like it is if Zach pirate has a little bit of a lead in the clubhouse right now now could that change in Fall cap I guess I would say that you know pyron showed in his games last year that he was really capable of leading this team and so it's his they gotta beat him out at this point that's where it's at and all of the media seemed to be really fascinated with this idea that oh they got all these guys from Texas A M and they're going to walk in and start or the guys from Georgia or Alabama or whatever that's not really the case you got to earn it and so you know do I think Dominique Blaylock will start wide receiver the kid the guy from Georgia yeah probably but um you know Chase Lane maybe from a m I don't know that Haynes King will start I don't know that Andre White the linebacker they got from a m will be the starting linebacker at the end of the season so there's a lot of um expectations when you could take transfers and people automatically assume that a m was this great program and they've had Talent but if you kind of look around and dig into it a little bit like Haynes King really struggled when he was playing quarterback I watched him play a game against Sam Houston State who is not very good and struggle like struggled horribly is playing against the whole reason I watched the game was it was I think one of the first games that Jordan Yates the former Georgia Tech quarterback was playing it was home that day and I decided to watch the game because I wanted to see how Jordan did and it was like a battle of attrition between the two of them like because Jordan was struggling because a m at a good defense and Haynes King was struggling because the offense was so bad at a m so you know I I just feel like there's going to be it's going to be a slow burn to see kind of who wins that job and you know I'm very much against this idea that like someone's just gonna walk in with Frankie and have a job and that's certainly not been the way that uh quarterbacks coach Chris winky who's also the co-office coordinator approaches all of this he's he's very close to Zach and very close to Haynes and he wants them to compete and the best guy wins the job well you mentioned uh Chris so when you look at Chris because uh as a obviously you guys know a lot about him yeah I mean we do know a lot about Chris McGee I also know a lot about Buster Faulkner because I'm a Park View Alum oh wow Kelly so I've known uh about Buster Faulkner for a very long time and now he is um Co-op as a coordinator with Chris winky who's calling plays has that been decided Busters Buster's the offensive coordinator and and you know there's always like a guy that the you know whether it's Tony Elliott or Clemson or whatever there's these co-coordinator situations usually one guy so Buster's calling my offense and Andrew thacker's calling the defense even though they have quote because they have Kevin Shearer yeah who you also know yes ODC and linebackers coach so yeah there's those are the two the two play callers are Buster and and and and Andrew Thacker who's been the defensive coordinator for a minute at Georgia Tech well I think that's also the part of the reason that people aren't handing Zach power in the job right is because it's going to be a little bit different than what they were running last year right like there's gonna be some differences here and it's a it like have you already seen some early changes and what is Buster kind of tipped his hand on like what's gonna look different about Georgia Tech offensively than what we've seen the last couple years under Jeff Collins so I think it makes a little more sense actually they were really geared towards Jeff Sims and his ability to run the last few years and and running a lot of trying to run read option trying to run stuff to get him isolated in space and then using the running backs that they they had a decent stable of that are now in the NFL and this is more about getting guys in space and getting the wall whether it's Christian Leary the kid they got from Alabama or Malik Rutherford those are your two slot guys Dominic Blaylock Leo Blackburn who the whole receiver room is different like can you go through in the manual yeah this is all different I don't even know like Door Tech is just gonna have a whole new wide receiver room everybody's new so yeah so um Leo Blackburn who was probably their best receiver missed most of last year with the wrist injury and torn in his ACL towards other ACL in the spring and he might be back you know you can't necessarily count on him they lost all of their main outside receivers and Slot guys that were other than Malik Rutherford so they have three transfers their older kids have come into the program Abdul Janae it was a kid from Duquesne who's a big body wide receiver Dominique Blalock from Georgia who was playing a lot there and had some injury problems in the past and then Chase Lane was a kid from a m that played well there and just kind of suffered from the mediocre offense there those three guys jump in they have several younger guys DJ Moore's one that's going to play a lot and then the slot Malik Rutherford played last year when Nate McCollum got hurt Nate McCollum transferred to North Carolina and to play with um what's his name um Drake May yeah and and so Malik can handle that role and Christian Leary and him will kind of trade off in that slot spot so I think there's you know a lot of young Talent they have two young freshman receivers they're really excited about Bailey Stockton's a walk-on actually that's under Stockton's brother and then really oh there's the connection with Buster because Buckner Buster was the Lake Raven yeah yeah there you go and then um the other one is um Eric Singleton is like a track guy that can just fly yeah so they have a lot of guys but it's funny I went back and like pulled literally I think yesterday maybe it was kind of discussing with someone on message board and it was like pulling the career receptions or whatever and all of them are not at Georgia Tech like um anyway even the tight end position is a lot different so I think you know it's gonna no one I think really knows what to expect and it's year one and it's new coordinators a tweak of the offense to answer your question about Buster what they're gonna do is it's all about trying to get Playmakers the ball in space so a lot of the concepts are saying the same in terms of offense everyone's running the spread and running similar formations and things it's more about how you create mismatches and and getting the ball to you guys and that's what Zach piran is Zach piran's not a guy that's going to tuck in and run it 20 times a game he's a he can he's Shifty but he's not fast like he's not neither is Hanes King so like they're gonna be more of a traditional offense with those two guys and the one spot on the offense that is a little more consistent and should be improved is offensive line so I think that sort of bodes well they have a decent stable of running backs so I think they they have a chance it's just going to come down to the receiver position it's not been a real strength other than the slot guys um really since Paul Johnson left which is so weird to think about in retrospect there's a the triple option and I put all these guys in the NFL wide receiver that are making a ton of money yeah yeah it's just um yeah you know what's Nikki I really hope it will never happen but if I Was northwestern I would hire Paul Johnson yesterday you know what's weird is they've outlawed so much the blocking now yeah because Mom can be doing it anymore an army yeah Monken Bohannon at Kennesaw State they've had to really tweak what they do because they've allowed all the cut blocking rules and so that that sort of negates and that's part of you to be honest with you is something that Paul Johnson and I discussed quite a bit is later years he was getting more and more frustrated because he had to keep redesigning what they were doing and blocking because of these rule changes for player safety and and at our level watching it every week I never really saw anyone get the only guy I ever saw get seriously hurt was a dude who pulled himself into a cut Block in the bowl game against Kentucky and 2016 on like New Year's Eve this defensive lineman did something really stupid and like pulled pulled a guy in to basically cut him and they chop blocked him because when he pulled the guy it created a chop block and got hurt and that was like his own doing and it was inside which is still legal so you know like I just never saw what they were talking about and everyone was still doing it with their screens and everything else and it was just kind of a weird fixation of uh some rules rules guys but obviously I think now um you know I think maybe it's the Mike Leach offense is that your version of what the triple option is now and and if you're a team that cannot recruit enough talent to consistently win or you don't feel like you can is that the way you go or it doesn't seem very well really like what Jamie Chad was doing it's probably so that's Jamie's offense is the evolution of it right like um that was who I wanted Tech to hire I you know to me like it's interesting going back on it like he was if Paul Johnson left tomorrow if he had just retired that would have made a ton of sense right like yeah when Paul retired the guy actually wanted them to hire which was ironic at the time was Willie Fritz yeah Fritz had experience doing that he was a guy that was willing to go hire whatever kind of offense according he was not married to any kind of office did he run it at Southern yeah so they ran he ran the transition out of it they started into the pistol and and they adapted from um from what they were running with him and with the I think I guess it was after Monken left um to go to Army and he was just a guy had experience doing it if you were going to transition away it made more sense to hire a guy that successfully done that versus hiring you know a guy who's going to bring in a offensive coordinator is not P5 guy that was his buddy yeah um man just the whole like there's all kinds of what ifs going down so many different colors I mean what if they hire a real defensive coordinator when Paul Johnson got hired they cheaped out and hired the cheapest defensive coordinator they could find and then fired him and then hired the cheapest defensive coordinator to be fine and now grow because he was getting an offset from Virginia and that everyone thought that was a great move instead of hiring the guy that Paul wanted and um it's a there's a ton of these like situations historically with your special Georgia Tech like you know like what if they do this what if they do that the same thing with men's basketball there they had an opportunity to hire Jamie Dixon when Paul Hewitt got fired and chose Brian Gregory who's getting run out of date and like there's a lot of uh and you can go through any school and find that in a lot of places I mean I mean just obviously you know Tennessee [Music] I don't know what you mean I don't know what you mean everything's been smooth sailing over here I don't uh I don't know what you mean sir it's been we've had a bunch of normal uh they had since former um uh Kevin Dooley Butch Pruitt and now hypel yeah so that was a long way to go around and and basically like what 12 years or something like that yeah wait so what is that something like that 15 yeah so about 15 yeah yeah it took you that took them that long to figure it out I mean all right this is not a roast for the Tennessee Volunteers honey because like all these people are always excited to see you know it's like they want to run a coach off or whatever yeah one thing I kept telling everyone when people started to get a little weary of Coach Johnson and what he was doing I was like watch like it could be 10 times worse and they found the guy that would literally did the worst possible job with it yeah managing that transition and managing expectations and managing a roster and then he had a perfect storm of stuff go wrong with with the program he had two kids die I mean it was literally like as bad as it could get it was like they were cursed and you know Brett key is now going to try to spin out of it it's the only way Brett key could have become the head coach at Georgia Tech without going somewhere and being a head coach somewhere else before so it's it's a super weird situation and and obviously um you should never know I mean obviously you know anything we just talked about Fulmer right it worked out he was in a weird situation where he took over his interim coach and and I think Lane would have worked out long term but Lane can't help himself that's Lane's problem you know like Lane's always I think looking at the next move and I think he would have taken I don't I don't know maybe he did I I don't know I think he's he's chilling man his kids are growing up he's I don't know I think he's I don't know I like Lane I I think Lane is a great offense of mine yeah um what is uh we'll end here uh okay Kelly when we look at recruiting Because like one of the things obviously with Tennessee like we're fighting for our lives to stay in the top ten in the uh on three cycle and 247 Rivals and everywhere else where I'm just I refresh every day where i'm looking and I'm keeping up and like you and I were both in the weeds for different programs but um one of the things that is common is I'm looking at Tech and I'm like oh hey they got a four-star receiver hey they're doing this hey they're they're doing this because I think a lot of people are wondering about like what print key would do on the recruiting Trail how he would handle things I like their staff I like how they're going about it I like who they're targeting and looking at their group um do you think this is going to be a top 25 class once the 2024 cycle is complete where do you fit do you think that's a sustainable range somewhere in that 15 to 25 in this modern nil era for Tech or do you think this is just a slight bump like where where is Tech going to be over the next couple years in Iowa Sprint Key and Company so I think it just depends on how many kids it take this is a cycle they have a huge group of seniors and then they have like 28 Juniors and like half of those kids are going to be kids that have graduated because of covet or just of you know Richard or whatever and and the ones who aren't playing are going to move along some are going to go to the NFL in that group too so they're able to take a huge class of cycle so that's changing a little bit um I you know I think it's between 20 and 35 this should be the goal and it should be you know there's going to be some years where it's a little off balance because you're not going to take 20 guys and so it's the formula or the average stars or however you want to look at it and then also you know how much they use the portal and trying to backfill a few spots here and there so I think that's where the I think that's the range you want to be in in the combined rankings um you know if you can be in 20 to 35 I think you're in good company there I think that puts you in the top half of the ACC and should have you competitive to to go to Charlotte and play for championships um on a semi-regular basis again as long as this yeah you know from what 20 from 2006 to 2016 they were pretty consistently yeah either winning their division or in second place right and so the roadmaps there it's been there through multiple coaches so I think you know they get into what what's going to happen with the ACC I have my own theories about all this that are way different than what everyone else is saying because I'm looking at the business side of everything and what's going on with the networks and I kind of know some things that I've heard from people at work at certain four letter networks and there's no money to expand right the SEC just stayed at eight games because their television Partners refuse to pay more money for another game and why are they going to pay for Clemson and Florida State when they already have Clemson and Florida State locked up yeah in the ACC till 2036. there's zero incentive for ESPN to move that and they lose inventory if they move that we have all these teams tied into lower paying deals if you had four ACC teams move to say the SEC or whatever like North Carolina Virginia um Clemson Florida State that the difference in what they would have to pay them and just bumping up the ACC a little bit is huge right because you're talking about 400 half a billion half a billion dollars instead of paying maybe 250 million more over you know four or five years to an entire conference you know what I do way more games what would you do I I saw this like I guess it was a month or two ago while we were waiting for the Pac-12 to announce a TV deal I would I love because geography doesn't matter anymore I would combine the Pac-12 in the ACC if I was a joke about that too yeah it would be great because it's not like you have to people like oh the travel it's like no you can break it up where the one side of the country plays them they play their the the other side of the country plays on that side and then they just meet in the conference title game and you maybe do one or two cross like country games that solves so many problems for both schools and both both conferences the great the games would be great the fans would enjoy that I would do that yesterday if I'm Jim Phillips I am thinking big picture and I'm like that would be so much so much fun I think the Big 12 is not going anywhere and then we have like a power four like that's that would be awesome I would do that today that is my favorite expansion idea is combining those two I mean I would enjoy it I enjoy going to the West Coast I enjoy watching some of those teams I like watching it would be more interesting for me to watch those games right when you get home late at night um to sit and watch you know Washington State I would love a weird Tech in Pullman on a Saturday night that'd be fun yeah like yeah and then also like you would want to watch some of those games like I have no interest in watching you know Cal and and Utah like yeah am I gonna really you know I might put it on in the background while I'm doing other stuff on a Saturday night but if it was an ACC game yeah I'd probably watch it I mean I watch SEC and ACC games all the time that I don't care that much about yeah um it would probably suck more people on the East Coast into it where football is a bigger deal and if you can make the money work that's what will make as much as Clemson and Florida State and some of those teams would like to jump it's all about money right and yeah if you get a chance to be the kings of their thiefdom and the ACC they would be happy to stay if the money works I don't think and I think Texas will be the great litmus test for all this I grew up my parents went to UT the Texas the oh the UT Austin not UK I didn't know what you meant by the UT because I I only know one real UT so you gotta specify so they so my parents went to school graduate school there and my dad taught there and as he spent a lot of Summers there and so I followed that program for many years they are in for the rudest of Awakenings walking into the SEC like like and then Oklahoma made a huge mistake in my opinion like I think okay going into morbid Awakening than Texas Oklahoma's going to get crushed early on I don't think it's going to go well when they make the move I mean even if shark does a great job you're still in that they couldn't they were not winning that League the league was not there this is it by the way this is a huge cfp year like it's wide open the big 12 is on a silver platter for them like they should be a cfp like contender in late November like if they don't do it this year they blew it because it's gonna be insanely difficult next year in the next couple years yeah and so you start looking at all that look at 8am that's the road map right A M was winning yeah in the Big 12 and then they go to SEC and they've had two Good Seasons like an SEC and that's it and they would have with some of the teams that they've seen that last year would have probably won pretty big in the in the big 12. so yeah I'm fascinated by all this I think that I hate that we've gone away from this I wish the conferences would shrink down to what they were 20 years ago like and it's just not happening it's not going to happen because of the money not yet anyways I do think if TV Trends and all that stuff continues to go the same way we may see a a contraction of things versus maybe even the Super League because again no one wants to watch Minor League Sports so like if you turn into a Super League I think you're defeating what makes college football so awesome and you know I mean people want to watch you know Tennessee fans want to play Vanderbilt they want to play South Carolina they don't want to play you want to play Vanderbilt we don't really enjoy that Wisconsin yeah yeah well you don't want to play Vanderbilt when you lose to them but I mean yeah you get fired you lose a vanilla you get fired but no one really goes into that game looking for it it's like oh Vanderbilt could be ball eligible and like her curves are given that it's like 56 nothing on that Saturday like it's just not it's not a real thing it's not a it's not a game we really look forward to I can go or Kentucky or whatever like all of those well this game start going away man like it's that's what kills it because that's what people love man yeah you don't want to go to college station and watch them play or wherever they don't care about that there's no you know going to Norman once would be cool no one's going to want to go to Norman every other year if you're a ball fan no Kelly this has been great I appreciate you making the time tonight to talk all thanks to our Tech go check out jackets online.com if you have not already done so go join the Rival site and keep up with tech who might be a top 25 team this year and might be fun and there's party Legends Galore and all kinds of Jordan connection so it's gonna listen to my guide show him calling it like it's it's all good the The Vibes are good at Georgia Tech right now no music but Vibes are good Kelly thank you so much and we'll have to do this again soon well done nephew Chase Thomas podcast hell yeah [Music]