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BH 16 | Community Facebook.com/TheReporterNewspapers ■ twitter.com/Reporter_News At Georgia Tech, football is an education business, athletic director says in Buckhead appearance BY KEVIN C. MADIGAN As a 10-year-old, Todd Stansbury al ready had his sights set on getting a foot ball scholarship to the Georgia Institute of Technology. Never mind that he was a hockey player in faraway Oakville, Ontar io, who was only 5-foot-2 and weighed 127 pounds. “Me going to Georgia Tech on a foot ball scholarship was pretty far-fetched and was only topped by the fact that I’m now the athletic director,” Stansbury, 59, said during a talk at a Rotary Club of Buckhead meeting held at Maggiano’s Little Italy on Jan. 27. Having switched to football when he got to high school, he enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1980, starting as a linebacker and graduating in 1984. Four years later, after a stint in banking, he came back to Tech as academic advisor for the football program, and from 1991 to ’95, he was the assistant athletics director for academics. Thereafter, Stansbury was employed in a similar capacity at universi ties in Houston, Tennessee and Florida. His last job was with Oregon State, which sued him for breach of contract when he accept ed the position of athletic director in Atlan ta in late 2016. “It’s been an incredible journey,” he said. “I was the first in my family to go to col lege. Neither of my parents graduated high school, so the opportunity to come to Geor gia Tech on a scholarship really changed the whole trajectory of my life.” Stansbury’s first impression upon re turning to his alma mater left him non plussed. “Those football players were on spring break. There was not a book in sight. I was incredibly impressed with their abil ity to ride tricycles off the high dive and throw beach chairs into the pool and sun dry other things,” he joked. Things have changed a lot since then. Nine Yellow Jackets teams under Stans bury’s direction have earned Directors’ Cup points based on National Collegiate Athletic Association standards; Tech has a multiyear Academic Progress Rate high er than the national average in every sport; and its graduation rate stands at 89 per cent, according to figures published by the institute. “I look at intercollegiate athletics as just a vehicle to develop young people,” Stans bury told attendees at the luncheon. “We are in a unique situation in higher educa tion in that we still have a carrot and stick. Most kids will do anything you ask him to do just because they want to play a game and so it’s up to us to ask them.” He added, “That’s the other thing about intercollegiate athlet ics. In this country it’s probably the most mis understood enterprise. Most people think we are in the entertain ment business, which we are not. We are in the education busi ness, and it just so hap pens that we can use the entertainment val ue of a couple of our sports that will pay for the entire enterprise.” Stansbury touted innovation programs such as a GPS unit worn by all footballers during every prac tice and game that tracks effort, distance, heart rate, and whether they are being overtrained. “It’s a lot different from when we played, that’s for sure.” Georgia Tech is different because it’s an engineering school, Stansbury said. “Peo ple want us to be MIT during the week and Alabama during the weekends, but I believe that it can be done,” he said. We can compete at the highest level in every thing that we do. The Georgia Tech brand is about excellence and it means we can’t just pick our spots — we’ve got to be on top of SPECIAL Todd Stansbury, Georgia Tech’s director of athletics, speaks at the Rotary Club of Buckhead meeting on Jan. 27. everything.” The rigor of the institute continues to be an issue “but we need to embrace who we are,” he said. “It’s a tough place to go to try to be a student-athlete because you have to do a year of calculus or whatever, but I don’t know anybody who goes to college and thinks it’s going to be easy.” “In fact, when you’re the only institu tion in the country in which every sport is above the national average in every ac ademic category and you're graduating 89 percent of your student-athletes whose av erage GPA is 3.0, to me that’s not surviving, that’s thriving.” Atlanta, DeKalb transit master plan moves ahead, would need Presenting or local high sch MIedictorjans “lirtatorians GDOT chief: ‘Benefits of express lanes are proven ORCHARD 15 Georgia Press awards Local City Council members sign anti-toll lanes petition -LSdevnlnnn Is this the gun that killed Buckhead's namesake deer? 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