Notable quotes from Thursday 680 The Fan GT interviews with Key, Alpert
The Georgia Tech flagship station 680 The Fan was on site Thursday on The Flats as the midday show “Cellini & Dimino” had several Jackets’ voices on the air for interviews as the team continues to get ready for it’s Pop-Tarts Bowl matchup vs. BYU on Dec. 27.
Among those to answer questions on the show were Georgia Tech head coach Brent Key, athletic director Ryan Alpert and veteran players Haynes King (QB, RS-Sr.) and Ahmari Harvey (CB, RS-Sr.).
Here are a few highlights from each of the interviews:
Head coach Brent Key…
Key, who recently signed a contract extension that will keep him leading the GT program through 2030, was first on the mic and started his interview by joking about a play sheet he was holding that the Jackets’ offense would be “throwing the ball 75 times” against BYU at the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
When asked about how the team looked at practice on Thursday and bowl prep overall…
“It was good…good energy,” said Key. “I love this time because you’re preparing to play in the game, we all know that, but you’re also taking an opportunity to develop a lot of young guys, get guys better. You get 15 practices now before even the next offseason gets here so you have to work a lot of guys in different spots. You develop depth for the next year. You try out combinations at different spots, different places. It’s exciting. I love this time.”
When asked about staff changes, player movement and everything else going on and having to have a Plan B…
“It’s not even Plan B, it’s Plan A,” said Key. “That’s what college football is now. You sit back and think you’re immune to it, and it’s not going to happen…you’re living in a hole if you think that. It’s part of it, and that’s what we manage and deal with. With success comes that. I don’t think people are plucking people off a 4-win team.”
On direction of program with so much change going on…
“I know exactly what I want the program to look like, and I know exactly the right fits for the staffing and player acquisition which is part of it,” said Key. “My job as the head coach is to improve the talent on the roster and improve the talent in the coaching staff every year.”
“If you stay the same, you’re going backwards,” added Key. “Everybody’s working to improve, to get better. You look at the Heisman Trophy…what was it six or seven out of the (top) ten finalists were transfers? I mean that’s the world we live in. You can sit there and complain about it and live in a bunker and go ‘woe is me.’ That’s so stupid. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard because that’s what this is. If you sit there and take time today and you’re not planning on what you’re doing moving forward…we’ve been planning on this the last four months for these things.”
On how much interest he has gotten from coaches wanting to be a part of the staff…
“I’ve been blown away,” said Key. “I really have at the people that have inquired and reached out and wanted to be a part of the staff. You can’t hire everybody, and you’ve got to pare it down to the best fit and what you have to do to improve your staff.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea of what this thing is going to look like next year,” added Key.
Key was asked about how important references are in coaching searches, and he said the best indicator for coaches is guys you have worked with before. He went on to say that Tim Salem, now the special teams coach at GT, told him long ago while they worked together at UCF to never hire anyone you haven’t worked with before or you would trust your kids with.
On if there will be changes to how the quarterback operates the offense next season at Georgia Tech, whoever it may be at that position…
“All schemes are personnel driven. All schemes are personnel driven,” Key said. “You’re not going to put a quarterback that’s a pure pocket passer and try to run quarterback counter with them. You’re not going to do that. We’re going to build the offense around the personnel we have. I think we’ll have a really, really strong offensive line next year, a really strong stable of running backs. We’re going to have a strong group of receivers. We’ve got to add to some of the spots at the tight end position. And we’ll have the best quarterback out there that makes sense for us and what we want to do. We want to be able to be explosive and push the ball down the field, control the line of scrimmage. The identity of this football team is not changing. That doesn’t mean you run it 70 times or throw it 70 times. There’s an identity that we’ve worked our asses off to build the last going on four years now. Somebody’s not going to come in and bring their own identity in here. That ain’t changing, guys. They’re going to be the person that fits this and can elevate us schematically, gameplan wise, adjustment-wise during the game so we can elevate this entire program.”
On Haynes King saying during his media session on Wednesday that he wanted to “finish this thing out with his brothers…
Key said someone showed him that on Thursday morning, and he wasn’t very surprised by it.
“With Haynes that’s just who he is, and I don’t think it surprises anybody here,” said Key. “This day in age to have a young man that is not afraid of what other people think about him, that truly speaks his mind…that is what leadership is. You get labeled as a leader only when people follow you, when you have the ability to affect others. You’re not a leader just because you say you are. There has to be proof that people are going to follow you, and he has three years of that.”
On Chris Weinke‘s ability to evaluate quarterbacks and pick the right guy that will fit…
“We’re going to put our heads together always on those things. I make the final decision on who we bring in, but I respect him as a quarterback evaluator and a quarterback developer,” said Key. “I say this all the time. There’s two positions that really irks me when people want to say something to them. No. 1 is the center spot…if you’ve never had your hand on the football and had a 300-pounder six inches from your face, barreling down you, then don’t say anything about the center when the snap’s off. If you’ve never done that, you don’t know. Same thing goes now (for QB). If you’ve never had that ball in your hand on 3rd-and-8 and had that same 300-pounder barreling down on you, hey don’t say anything about the quarterback. Those are two positions that I believe whole-heartedly that you have to have experienced that and lived it (to be able to coach it). Chris has done that at the highest level. He’s developed some of the greatest quarterbacks that have played in the NFL in the last 10 to 15 years, trained them, coached them, developed those guys. So his vision of what we want in a quarterback, we’re 100-percent aligned in that.”
On if Weinke wants to be an OC…
“Yeah. We’ve talked a lot about that. Chris is a guy that he’s always going to try to be better,” said Key. “I love Chris. Chris is a guy that’s been by my side the whole time with this thing. I respect him because he’ll walk in and tell me what he believes and what he thinks, not what I want to hear. He knows the No. 1 quality in a quarterback is the mindset and makeup, the toughness that he leads with. And we’re on the same page with that.”
On what Key really enjoys about coaching…
“Fun is by chance. Enjoyment is by work. And I enjoy every minute of the build…the architecture of it,” said Key. “Whether it be the staff, the program, the roster, the gameplan during the week, that’s the most fun. The by-product that occurs on Saturdays, the game…that is a culmination of all the other pieces coming together. We can’t control what the outcome is, but I can control how we build it and put it together. That’s what’s fun for me.”
Athletic director Ryan Alpert…
Georgia Tech’s athletic director, Ryan Alpert, who has been on the job since this past summer, joined Cellini and Dimino for a quick chat. The first question for him was about the academics part of things and being proud of where the Jackets’ football team stands there.
“Yeah, when you talk about multiple years, multiple semesters of a 3.0 or higher GPA, and they came in yesterday over 3.1, at a place where academics matters, athletics matters…I think that’s what attracted me to this job,” said Alpert. “I think that’s what the president set out when he started here six years ago to build an athletic department that can compliment the high-level academics that we had here at Georgia Tech. There are a lot of places that have online programming. There’s a lot of places that are just focused on one thing and maybe that’s football or the sport they’re playing. Here it’s two. Our student-athletes come here with this is a 40-year decision no matter the new NIL and revenue-share world that exists that we have to compete in and we will compete in. But at the same time this is a 40-year decision so these athletes that come here and to accomplish what they do academically that sets them up for life after football is a critical component. It’s a big piece of our recruiting pitch.”
On how he approaches competing in this time in college athletics…
“I think my job is multi-faceted, right? I need to generate the revenue that it takes to invest in success from a college athletics standpoint,” said Alpert. “So that’s 1A for me is to be able to generate the resources that we need to invest in our programs to compete and win. But at the same time is 1B or 1C is we need the opportunity to have a vocal leader I think that articulates a vision, builds a plan, rallies support…I mean we’re not in a small college town. We’re in a very busy sports community. We’re in a very busy community as a whole. So we have great partnerships with our pro partners here in the marketplace, but it’s my job and our job to communicate and make sure the greater-Atlanta knows who Georgia Tech is. We have our alum base. You’ve heard me say before I want to be Atlanta’s hometown college football and college athletics program. So that takes being out there and communicating and rallying folks, and I think that’s what we showed with three 50,000-plus crowds and two sell-outs to end the year was that we want to be engaging. We want to bring people in, and we want to continue to grow our fan base.”
On major announcement for GT Athletics…
“So today we’ll make it public here in a little bit, but this will be the first time it’s made public is we had two anonymous families step forward and make individual $10 million gifts and investment in to the vision,” said Alpert. “We talked about investing in the future of Georgia Tech Athletics. Fourteen months ago we launched the ‘Full Steam Ahead’ campaign and a $500 million fundraising campaign to invest in what the future of winning looks like at Georgia Tech. We’re over $90 million on the way toward to that $500 million goal. But today we’ll announce formally that two families stepped up and have invested $10 million each so a total of $20 million. And again, success breeds success and I think that we don’t want this to be a one-year 9-3 and we want to continue to have comprehensive excellence. What does it take? It takes resources and building a plan, and we’re excited about our future.”
On the voice of athletic directors under ACC commissioner Jim Phillips to impact college football as a whole…
“Commissioner Phillips is extremely engaging from a standpoint of talking to the membership,” said Alpert. “Obviously we have 18 teams, 17 football teams playing in the ACC, and I’ll give you my personal opinion. I am one vote of 17 when it comes to football, and ultimately it’s the four commissioners that have that opportunity and discussing the pathway of the CFP moving forward. I think access to postseason, if you look at the TV ratings from this year, and I think multiple things went into why viewership was so high and why engagement was so high across the college football landscape, I’m going to go back to when the BCS was around. As soon as you took a loss in any league you were out of the hunt. You had to be undefeated, and you really had to be the best undefeated team if there were multiple to get access into the BCS. And when we expanded to the CFP to four and then 12, the more we can expand postseason, and you do have to look at championship games matter, how does the regular season work. The NFL has done a tremendous job of having almost 50 percent of their teams have access to postseason. When the wild card comes around the 7-6 teams are still fighting for access to the postseason, and I think college football can learn something from it. I think with NIL and revenue share, we’ve seen a disbursement of talent to the Power-4 teams because we’re being able to not one team or four team or six teams compiling all the talent on their rosters. We’re seeing a disbursement of talent across the landscape, and I think the more we look to expand the playoff and the access to it, it can really drive value back to our schools.”
On possibility of expanding CFP to 16 teams…
“I think more is better,” said Alpert. “It all ties together and I know there are a bunch of different models out there. I think more access creates more opportunity and more opportunity drives value. Whether that’s 16 or 20 or 24, I’ve not spent enough time to know how the access and how everything plugs in from automatic qualifiers…all that’s significantly important to it but yes, I believe the more access we can have in the postseason, it creates a higher value throughout the regular season. And fan bases are going to have to get used to teams with two or three losses playing well at the end of the year gets you access in. But again, what does that do to championship games and other postseason activities? There’s a lot of layers to it. That’s why it’s not as easy just to say let’s do this to the CFP. There’s a bunch of ripples that comes from it, but I think we’re having the right conversations and the four commissioners being aligned is important.”
