How would Gailey have fared?

The classic argument of your average Paul Johnson fanboy is that Johnson did three things Chan Gailey never could... Beat UGA, finish in the top 25, and win the ACC Championship.  The problems are however that Chan Gailey is hardly the gold standard of what a Georgia Tech coach should be, and that the cupboard was left far from empty upon Johnson's arrival.

These Johnson slurpers overlook the fact that Gailey never had the opportunity to reap the rewards of the greatest recruiting class in modern GT history.  How would Tech have fared in 2009 with a stout Tenuta-coached defense with stars like Morgan Burnett and Derrick Morgan, a Josh Nesbitt groomed to take advantage of the QB's prerogative to both run AND pass, Dwyer at RB, four-star wide outs such as DJ Donley and Willie White to complement Demaryius Thomas, and an All-conference tight end like Colin Peek?  Perhaps Chan would even have been able to get that UGA monkey off his back playing at home against a poor 6-5 team with no AJ Green and the Ginger Ninja at QB. In fact, considering Johnson lost the two most important games of the year, it is not difficult to argue that Tech might have had a better season with Chan at the helm.

Paul Johnson likes to hem and haw now about Gailey's complicity in the dearth of quality senior talent on his 2010 squad, while at the same time taking full credit for the successes of 2008, built upon one of the most talented defensive lines in the country, and of 2009, built upon the most prolific NFL-bound foursome GT has fielded in modern history.  At some point, three years into a regime, it becomes the current coach's responsibility for the lack of talent development, or "nastiness" and discipline in his players.

Is it Gailey's fault that he recruited four players so talented that they declared for the draft as Juniors? Is it Gailey's fault necessarily that Johnson has not been able to groom adequate replacements? Gailey-bred players sure seemed to win a lot of ball games for Johnson his first two seasons. In fact it would seem that the farther from Gailey that Tech's players get, the less disciplined, motivated, and effective they become.

With the bowl against a substandard opponent, or potentially Boise State, looming, Johnson has the opportunity to accomplish something else Gailey never did-- lose his seventh game of the season.  Johnson slurpers quite enjoy making the argument that Johnson has "won everywhere he's been."  Well he's not winning now, three years in.  Mr. Fish Fry was also supposedly "money" in rivalry games, but now that he's playing with the big boys, we've seen how that's turned out.