DressHerInWhiteAndGold: When did the Yellow Jacket’s away uniforms in CBB become Grey/Green? I wasn’t sure I’d tuned in to the correct game Tuesday evening.
Are we jumping the shark, or has the world moved on from old geezers like me into a world of muted colors that drive kpi’s of forward looking, customer facing brand recognition thru matrix correlated ai driven ensemble selection/not selection bias? Ugh, they were flat ugly.
Ben: It’s definitely a bit weird. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more of a traditionalist when it comes to uniforms. I think alts can be nice, but it has to be something that is still in the color scheme and looks good. These look fine, but I don’t know that they fit in the color scheme very well.
Jack: They’ve been wearing grey as an alternate road uniform for the last few seasons at least. I certainly don’t think they’re necessary and only would allow 2 teams on campus to ever wear grey (baseball, softball), but they can do it and want to do it so they do. I would not call it “jumping the shark” though.
Jake: I don’t think they look great and I don’t know many (any?) that do. Though I don’t have any power to change them, they thankfully seem to only be an alternate, still, at least.
GTSMURF: Dalen Penson has been showing out at the Navy All-American Bowl preparation. He played both ways in HS and is the #2 athlete in the 2025 class.
Perhaps could he become our Travis Hunter equivalent?
Ben: I mean, that would be the absolute best-case scenario, but I certainly wouldn’t be mad. He’s a guy that I could definitely see playing early, and personally, I think it’d be fun to seem him play both ways. At least for this year, though, Georgia Tech is pretty solid at receiver, so I think he’s more likely to see the field at DB.
Logan: I like the optimism. I’d settle for just having a talented young DB, but who knows. He did pick us partially because we didn’t rule out the option of him playing both ways.
Yeller Bug: Since most of us are nerdy into statistics and metrics, are they changing recruiting class rankings and/or adding a new ranking category to include personnel brought in through the portal? Maybe the portal deserves a “Net” grade in that you subtract from the value of the incoming players the value of those you lost.
Ben: I know some of the ranking services have started adding transfer ratings, but it’s hard. Sure, sometimes, a great player transfers because they’re trying to move up or collect on a pay-day and they have plenty of film based on which they can be rated. But what about guys who have been back-ups for a year or two and get passed? They don’t have much on tape, so it’s tough to say how they have progressed since their high school rating. There’s no perfect way to do it, in my opinion, so I don’t think you’ll really ever see it combined with high school recruiting rankings. As far as a net grade, though, I think that’s something you could potentially do independent of individual player rankings (although the individual rankings would make it a whole lot easier).