What could have been

Three years ago, Will Muschamp was all but hired as Georgia Tech's 12th head football coach when he was rejected at the eleventh hour by Tech's athletic board for being a UGA alumnus. Last night, the Texas defensive coordinator and "head coach in waiting" was announced as the new head football coach at the University of Florida. And there don't appear to be any concerns regarding his ties to the Bulldogs.


People ask me all the time, if Georgia Tech were to fire Coach Johnson, who could it get that is better? Well it could have had one of the nation's top coaching prospects in Muschamp. You would figure at least that if he was good enough for Florida and Texas, arguably the two top collegiate coaching destinations in the country, then he must be pretty hot stuff.

Of course the Kool-Aid Brigade will claim that part of what makes Coach Johnson "perfect" is the very idea that Tech is unlikely to lose him to another school. What they blissfully ignore however is that having top programs interested in your coach is a sign of great success. Certainly between Johnson's mediocre recruiting, his declining on-field results, and his soporific offensive philosophy, one can rest assured that football blue-bloods like Florida won't be pursuing him any time soon.

Further, some have posited that had Tech hired Muschamp instead of Johnson, it would have lost him to Florida last night anyway. That may or may not be the case. But surely if he'd done a job worthy of such reward, Georgia Tech football would be on a sounder footing today than upon the slippery slope of service academy methodology on which it finds itself in his stead.