By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

The Geoff Collins era at Georgia Tech has ended. Athletic director Todd Stansbury was also fired.

Collins was in his fourth season as the head coach in Atlanta. He has a record of 10 – 28, with no better than three wins in the previous seasons. This is the lowest winning percentage (.263) of the team’s 13 full-time coaches. Stansbury’s tenure as the department’s ninth athletic director is complete after six years.

The Yellow Jackets are off to a 1 – 3 start this season. They lost Saturday at Central Florida, 27 – 10. Tech played well enough to win but made enough mistakes to lose.

“I just think that critical situations, have to make sure we’re getting points on the board, and we’re not doing it, and obviously that falls on me as the head football coach,” Collins said.

They got in the red zone five times and did not score on any of those possessions. Tech missed two field-goal attempts, fumbled the ball away twice and turned it over once on downs.

The Yellow Jackets averaged 7.2 yards per play against UCF. Since the start of the 2000 season, before Saturday, ACC teams had averaged at least 7.2 yards per play 438 times, according to sports-reference.com. None had ever scored fewer than 17 points.

“Outgained them by over 100 yards, but when the other series of events happen, it’s hard to win games against a really good football team. Obviously, credit to UCF, but not the result we wanted,” Collins said.

The head football coach and the athletic director being relieved of their duties on the same day with more than half the season remaining is a highly unusual scenario for Tech.

Collins had several shortcomings that caught up with him. In his 38-game tenure, the Jackets lost six games by 40 points or more. Previously, Georgia Tech had lost by 40 points or more six times over 42 seasons.

Tech allowed four blocked punts in the first four games, all of which led to touchdowns. Ironically for Collins, he oversaw the punt unit and was not able to fix the issue.

Stansbury is a Tech grad that also played football for the Yellow Jackets. He’s the first Tech AD to not leave the post on his own accord. He was hired in 2016 from Oregon State. He hired Collins in December 2018 from Temple to succeed Paul Johnson.

I thought Collins was a bad hire from the beginning. He was only 15 – 10 in his two seasons at Temple. He pitched his idea to Stansbury that he would use branding and culture to land top recruits. He’s from Rockdale County and he worked under former coaches George O’Leary and Chan Gaily.

Collins is contractually due the full amount remaining on his final three years, $10.5 million.

I saw some of the candidates for the job and honestly, I do not think they can land them. Deion Sanders is at the top of the list. Coach Prime is at FCS Jackson State and he has landed several four and five star recruits. That includes the top recruit in the class of 2022, Travis Hunter, who is from Metro Atlanta.

Sanders played for the Falcons and Braves. After a 4-3 record in his first COVID-19 shortened season with the Tigers, he led JSU to an 11-2 record (9-0 SWAC) in his second campaign. The Tigers are 4-0 to start 2022 while outscoring opponents 190-37.

Shawn Clark, Appalachian State’s head coach is also a candidate. Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken should also be considered.