July 7, 2006
TO: Fans, Friends, and Supporters of Georgia Tech Athletics
FROM: Dan Radakovich, Georgia Tech Director of Athletics
The start of football season is less than two months away! Thanks to the very popular three-game flex packs, the Notre Dame and Miami games are now sold out. As you know, we had a tremendous response from our season ticket holders during the month of June, and the few remaining Notre Dame tickets sold out in a matter of hours after they were opened up to the public. We do have a very limited number of full season ticket packages, including those two games, available. That is now the only way to purchase tickets for the Notre Dame and Miami games, and we expect those to sell quickly (Tell your friends it’s much better than E-Bay!). Overall, we are well over 1,000 season tickets ahead of our sales for all of last season, and the club seats are 90 percent sold.
FOOTBALL GAMES TIMES
I’d like to take this opportunity to announce the kickoff times for our September home games. The Samford game on Sept. 9 will kick off at 3:30 p.m. at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Historic Grant Field, while the Sept. 16 game against Troy will begin at 1:30 p.m. With Notre Dame (8 p.m./ABC) and Virginia (7:30 p.m./ESPN) set for prime time television, we now have times for the first four games. All subsequent game times will be determined by television and will be announced 12 days prior, per Atlantic Coast Conference policy. With four different game times in September, I look forward to your feedback so we can develop policies for setting times for future non-televised games.
The Samford game will be our annual Band Day, in which a number of high school bands from all over Metro Atlanta get to attend the game with their families and perform on the field with the Georgia Tech Band. This event continues to grow and has proven to be an effective way to expose Tech football to new customers. We are working on similar kinds of initiatives for the Troy game the following week.
You may ask why the Troy game will kick off at 1:30 p.m.? Please keep in mind that our team has a short turnaround with an extremely important game against Virginia – our ACC opener – the following Thursday, so we felt it was important to play that game in the early afternoon.
GTAA ANNUAL REPORT
Alexander-Tharpe Fund contributors have become accustomed to receiving a printed copy of the Georgia Tech Athletic Association Annual Report over the summer. The GTAA will still produce an annual report, but in the interest of cost-saving and allocating our resources wisely, we have elected to produce this in an electronic, rather than printed, format. The annual report for 2005-06 will be available on-line by Aug. 1.
GEORGIA TECH SPORTS HALL OF FAME
I would like to congratulate Coach Bobby Cremins on his return to college basketball as head coach at the College of Charleston! Coach Cremins is one of eight former Yellow Jackets who were recently announced as the members of the Class of 2006 for the Georgia Tech Sports Hall of Fame, along with Travis Best (men’s basketball), Kent Hill (football), Cris Omiecinski Leone (volleyball), Brad Rigby (baseball), Karen Lounsbury Russell (women’s basketball), Octavius Terry (men’s track & field) and Gus Georgeton (football manager). I am looking forward to attending my first Hall of Fame banquet this fall. The event is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 6 in conjunction with our Maryland football weekend, and I encourage you to participate in this celebration of Tech heroes and history. Georgia Tech has done a great job of honoring its past, and it’s important that we continue to do so.
FOLLOW-UP ON FINANCIAL INFORMATION
Many of you commented on the revenue and expense charts that were linked in my last edition. We are compiling more financial data to share with you in future editions. The most frequently asked questions last week concerned the revenue and expense figures relative to the fact that we do not offer as many sports as others in the ACC. The fact that our sport sponsorship is a bit lower would cause our operational to be lower. However, on the revenue side, the sports that we are not offering would add very little to the operational revenue total. Thank you for your questions, and look for more information as we wrap up our fiscal year 2005-06.
Again, thank you for your positive response to “The Good Word.” We welcome your feedback at goodword@athletics.gatech.edu While I cannot guarantee a personal response to every email that we receive, please know that they will all be read, so I do encourage your continued participation in this process. Some of your questions could become topics for future issues of The Good Word.
I also encourage you to share this letter with any Tech fan who may not have access to the Internet. Our goal is to inform and engage as many Yellow Jacket supporters as we possibly can.
I want to personally thank you for your continued support of Georgia Tech Athletics as we move forward with our vision for excellence.
Go Jackets!
