We've been meaning to write about this for a while now, but all this blogpolling and internet brawling kept us from it. Stewart Mandel, the first person to publish us, internet-style, in one of his mailbags, fills the void of the summer doldrums with a list of his best and worst coaches. We skipped right past the best to go straight to the worst, thinking to ourselves: damn, Gailey's got to be there, or Mandel's writing this from a Guadalajara detox clinic with a morphine drip in his arm.
Gailey, pointing aimlessly.
Boom! The only number one Georgia Tech's gonna earn this year hit us right in the face: Mandel placed Gailey at number one for his worst coaches, complete with a hilarious picture of Gailey gamely trying to celebrate something.
(Reggie Ball completing more than fifty percent of his passes in a game? Hanging on this long? Calling a game that makes Jeff Bowden guffaw with contempt?) We're glad someone else said it, since the AJC seems content to let Gailey have a free pass while the Ramblin' Wreck starts to drop parts in the middle of the 75/85 connector.
While Gailey's gomer act seduces the media here in town into a stupor, but the damage he's doing to the Tech football program can't really be underestimated. He continually loses players to academic violations, forfeits games due to horrid mental errors on the part of the players and coaching staff, and has drained any of the residual electricity and energy of the O'Leary era away. Like a redneck Nero, he fiddles while Tech burns, with only the heroic efforts of John Tenuta, once of the nation's best defensive coordinators, and their good recruiting saving Tech from total collapse. No moment summed up the Gailey Way more than Tech playing UGA tight last year, driving with the ball in Georgia's red zone with seconds on the clock, and scrambling on fourth down Reggie Ball heaves the ball...into the sidelines.
Atlanta media blame the quarterback. We blame the doofus coach.
Talking heads here went apeshit clobbering Ball for his decision-making, but the brain-freeze at Tech starts at the top with their coach. Gailey can't develop his talent, can't coach it on Game Day, and he can't keep it from flunking out or getting a hundred pounds of marijuana delivered to them on campus.
It'll all add up in Gailey's retirement account nicely. Good for him--we'd take the money if someone were willing to pay us to do a job we'd fail at for three or four years. If Dave Braine has a clue, he'll stop the charity work on North Avenue soon. Tech will simply be the worst 7-5 team in America again if Gailey is allowed to continue his slow puttering toward mediocrity.