Mailbag 6/6

Baseball changes, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and some superstition

Frodo Swagginz: Battman did a great job of righting the sinking ship of GT Athletics. He has left big shoes to fill. I’m unsure if you guys have thought about writing an article on this, but who is on your short list to replace him?

Jack: We addressed it on the most recent Scions, but it’s hard to create any “good” shortlist considering how many options are out there, and that many front office people aren’t folks we come into usual contact with while watching/covering college sports.

I saw all of that, and you may know we did mention one name on the podcast: Graham Neff. While he’s currently Clemson’s AD, he is a double Jacket and would follow in the mold of Batt in a lot of ways if we thought we had a chance to pull him. Odds are can’t pay as much as Clemson though, so I wouldn’t exactly call Neff the betting favorite for the job, but he checks a lot of boxes when it comes to being in the ACC, fundraising, and knowing Tech intimately.

DressHerInWhiteAndGold: Not getting political, but what impacts do you see on GT if fewer foreign born students are able to attend/choose to bring their academic game to The Flats in the future?

Chris: It’s probably not good at all. For easy starters, they’re a good source of income because they are paying full tuition (this is also one reason why out-of-state students are desirable). Second, they’re a big part of how Tech has built its brand as a world leader in engineering – you need to be an international school if you want to have international prestige. Would you rather have the reputation of “best and brightest” or “best and brighter *from only one country”? A lot of the international students are also the graduate students that are very directly involved in Tech’s academic “output” – I don’t think it’s necessarily safe to say that one fewer international grad student equals one more domestic grad student (subjects tend to be more niche, specific previous experience matters more when applying, etc.), so I think it’s reasonable to expect that the volume of published research would dip and we’d get way less of the “Researchers at Georgia Tech Have Discovered Very Cool Thing” publicity that we currently enjoy.

Jack: Thanks for asking this as it’s a very important piece to the health and success of Georiga Tech. It basically has no positive impacts. Chris is right in that the tuition money is nice, which comes from about 40% of the student population (out of state + international). Tech’s whole thing right now under Cabrera is about expanding access to the Institute, both in the state of Georgia (which I was lucky enough to work on some last year) and beyond. There are more people in the world who can succeed at Georgia Tech than we can accept and educate. Our admit rate continues to decrease as our application numbers continue to break records every year. We are an extremely popular destination for basically anyone who wants to study engineering (and even other majors). The government going out of their way to make life harder for international students to come to Georgia Tech is directly opposite to our mission of progress and service locally and abroad.

jabsterjacket: I saw where COFH at the Benz has been named “The Invesco QQQ Gridiron Classic”. I hope we got some money out of those naming rights…did we?

Jack: Nothing changes on Tech’s end. It’s merely a branding thing on the MBS side. We still are fulfilling our end of our contract with AMBSE to play a game at MBS. Next year, the UGA/UF game will have the same branding when it’s at MBS.

Chris: Yup, we already got the money regardless of the naming.

Pkaltman1: What do you think is the most superstitious sport? Hockey with the playoff beards, baseball with each player’s pre-at bat routine, some other sport I’m not thinking of?

Chris: I’d probably say baseball. Almost every aspect of the sport carries some kind of superstition and there’s just so much time to overthink everything.

Jack: There’s a balancing point between superstition and process. Being a golfer and former pitcher, yeah, I have a lot of process I try to stick to in order to be in the best possible spot to make my pitch or shot. I wouldn’t call that superstition, that’s just a unique way to get mentally prepared.

Now, doing stuff like never changing socks or wearing the same undershirt (a la Freddie Freeman), that’s superstition. Baseball wins by a mile.

Skiles85: Nice to see James Ramsey get the baseball head coaching position. What does this mean for the future of the team? Will he target pitching in the portal? Will he alter the coaching staff? Who will be the 3rd base coach? Will the Jackets finally win a regional next year?

Jack: I’ll start here with Kendall Rogers’ tweet:

So, not much coaching changes happening. Outside of the slide in Oxford, Tech was very happy with their team. Of the best offensively in the ACC. The pitching has been on the right growth trajectory over the last two seasons under Matt Taylor. With so many guys returning, I don’t think they want to shake the boat at all going into 2026.