October 4, 2002

1. I don’t know if there was a job to be saved, but I would certainly give Gailey credit for one of the all-time great coaching performances at the Flats. Tech was hurting from the loss of Greg Gathers and Tony Hollings, the booing of A. J. Suggs, the inconsistent performance of the offense, and the dumb mistakes that cost it the game against Clemson. The ingredients were all there for a world-class meltdown against UNC that could have started the team on an ugly downward spiral.

   But that didn’t happen, and I give Gailey much of the credit. It seems to me that he kept the team and the coaching staff pulling together and focused on the task of beating the Tar Heels – which they did. I thought he made the right call to pull A. J. Suggs and substitute Damarius Bilbo at quarterback in the first quarter – and I think he also made the right call to put Suggs back in the game when Bilbo threw that interception. Suggs’ brief vacation on the sidelines seemed to give him a better read on the defense when he went back into action. I think it’s clear by now that when Suggs is playing at his best, he’s adequate. When he’s not playing at his best, we get results like the Clemson game. At least we know that when Suggs is not playing at his best, there’s an alternative. Gailey is smart enough to go to that alternative, as he did with Bilbo against the Tar Heels.

   I also want to say another word in defense of this year’s recruiting class, which some Tech fans have decided "sucks bad." Ace Eziemefe is part of that class, and he rumbled for 136 yards against North Carolina (after scoring an important touchdown the week before against Brigham Young). Ace is not as fast as Tony Hollings (who is?), but he runs tough inside the tackles and I like the way he keeps going after the initial hit. On the touchdown he scored against North Carolina, Ace was hit in midair short of the goal line and could easily have been stopped – but he kept swimming and churning forward until he fell into the end zone for the score. Lekeldrick Bridges, another member of this year’s recruiting class, has several catches at wide receiver and made a key 19-yard grab against UNC. Venice Gilliam and Chris Reis, two more members of this year’s maligned class, are already making a contribution on special teams. I hope the rest of the class sucks as bad as these guys do.

1. Not since Ron Jeremy sprained his left scrotal sac while filming "Gang Bang Whores Part 2" has there been so much interest in an injury to that particular region of a person’s anatomy. I don’t know if Luke will be able to kick against Wake Forest this week, but he’s a tough kid and I’m sure he has the cojones to get back into action if he’s really needed. The Tech coaches obviously are in a tight squeeze because of Luke’s injury, but I’m sure they will look long and hard before putting him in the Wake Forest game. When Luke does go in, he’ll be facing the stiffest test of his young career.

1. The strength of Tech’s defense all season has been the speed of its linebacking corps. Reco Wimbush, Key Fox and Daryl Smith are three of the best there are in college football, and Ather Brown is not far behind on the second unit. They will get their toughest test of the season on Saturday. Wake Forest has a one-dimensional offense, but that one dimension is very hard to stop. The Deacs have five or six running backs they can plug in to their option offense, and all of them run the ball effectively. Can Wimbush-Fox-Smith fly to the ball this Saturday as they have done in other games this year? I think so, and I think they’re the key to a victory.

1. Nate was supposedly ready to play against North Carolina but was held out. Maybe he’ll be ready to go against Wake Forest. When he does get back into action, alas, history tells us that he probably won’t be the same speed demon he was as a freshman in 2000.

   Skill position players who are knocked out for an entire season because of traumatic knee or foot injuries never seem to come back at 100 percent of what they were before they were injured. I think back to Robert Edwards in 1995, when Georgia moved him to running back and he started the season looking like a reincarnation of Gale Sayers. Edwards broke his foot in the second or third game of that season, however, and was medically redshirted. Although he came back and played in 1996 and 1997, he never put up the kind of numbers he did before he was injured in 1995. He never looked like quite the same player, either.

   Ditto for Charles Wiley, who started the 1996 season at Tech blowing through the opposing defenses before he went down with a bad knee. Charlie missed most of the 1996 season and when he returned in 1997, he seemed a step slower and a little more hesitant to me. The same goes for Derrick Steagall. He missed the entire 1996 season with a knee injury, and when he came back in 1997 he started off very slowly and didn’t seem to have the same dash and speed he had in those seasons before the bad knee (although late in the 1997 season he did have one great game when he set a record for receiving yardage against Virginia).

   I fervently hope that Nate Curry is able to come back with the speed and agility we saw two years ago. I have the same hopes for Tony Hollings when he returns to the playing field next year. But history is a cruel teacher, and her lesson is that they probably will come back with diminished skills. That’s a damn shame.

1. Three weeks? Are you kidding me? Fuhgeddaboutit! I’ve got an answer for you right here – but I’m writing this on Wednesday, which means our benevolent webmaster may or may not be able to get it posted before kickoff on Thursday. Anyway, here goes: as I noted in one of my columns last month, FSU came into this season very much overrated by the sportswriters. It was obvious in their opener against Iowa State, which they were very lucky to win, and it was proven last Thursday when a 2-2 Louisville team gave them a foaming pork enema in a driving rain in overtime. That wasn’t a fluke victory, either; Louisville went out there and kicked them in the gonads.

   It looks like the Bobby Bowden era is slowly winding down in Tallahassee. As they said of George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election, Bobby is old, tired and out of ideas. And he’s still got to play Miami, Notre Dame, N.C. State, Florida and, yes, Georgia Tech this season. That said, I figure FSU will have a little bit of a bounce-back from last week’s disaster and beat the Tiggers – but without covering the 14 points. This prediction is made on Wednesday, but by the time it’s posted we may already know the score of Thursday night’s game, which means the whole world will know instantly whether I’m an idiot or a genius. (Of course, my spouse tells me the world is already well aware of what I am.)

1. Given the way that Pat Dye mumbles when he speaks (he sounds like someone trying to chew on a cowpie and talk at the same time), there’s still some question as to what he actually said in that radio interview. For all we know, he could have said, "I don’t think they’ve violated the Mann Act enough down in Tuscaloosa." But we’ll assume for the sake of argument that he really made that "slur" about the testicular fortitude of the trembling chihuahuas. Let’s stop and think for a minute -- as a former Auburn coach, Dye has no love for Alabama (and if he’s like most Auburn fans, he has no teeth either). He’s also a Georgia alumnus. I suspect that ol’ Pat’s trying to get his alma mater fired up to come out on the field and kick some Bammer butt. Who knew that old mush-mouth could be so subtle?

   The larger question here is why a team not even ranked in one of the polls is a four-point favorite over a team ranked either sixth or seventh in the nation? Could there indeed be some toughness issues here that the oddsmakers are taking into consideration? Musa Smith has been known to call for the stretcher when a player from Northwestern Agnes Scott even breathes on him. Let’s see how he reacts when he’s tackled by a real defensive line -- which is what Alabama assuredly has.