- 2 days ago
Georgia Tech head coach James Ramsey was just named ACC Coach of the Year and joins The Steakhouse to talk recruiting, the Yellow Jackets' season, and his journey.
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00:00And joining us, what a perfect timing.
00:03Sandra's been trying to get this guy in here for a while,
00:05and he's got this silly thing called a full-time job that prevents him.
00:09But it was worth the wait.
00:12James Ramsey's in here live, just named ACC Coach of the Year,
00:16along with five of his players named first-team All-ACC
00:20and the Defensive Player of the Year as well.
00:22So, Coach, thanks for being here this morning.
00:25Great to have you.
00:26So, congratulations on the individual honors and the team honors all year long.
00:32Yeah, Stakes, Andrew.
00:33You know, I talk about being a longtime listener to the show, being from Atlanta.
00:36It's an honor to be in the studio with you guys.
00:39No, it's a great year.
00:40We got, obviously, a little bit of some time off with our double bye,
00:43and then I'm headed from here to my six-year-old's kindergarten graduation.
00:47So, you're getting to go to some things based on winning.
00:50There are some things all around that you're excited to be a part of.
00:53But, no, fired up.
00:54Talk about this team.
00:55There's a lot to talk about this team.
00:57We want to do that.
00:58It's one of the more – by the way, it's the number one offensive college baseball team
01:04in terms of numbers since all time, right?
01:08Since the bats have changed in 2011.
01:10So, it's 15 years worth of –
01:11What did they do in 2011?
01:13So, they changed the bats, tried to make them less offensive.
01:16And, you know, that kind of now it's, you know, with the smaller strike zones,
01:19the bats are hotter.
01:20No, what this team did is just set records across all the triple crown categories
01:24and whatnot.
01:24So, it's been incredible.
01:26I ask coaches, you know, in the NFL or major league, we go to spring trainings
01:32and we go to camps.
01:33You know, we get tired because you always get hyped up of saying,
01:37but we do this every year.
01:38You know, we buy in.
01:39But, the question of watching these guys in this last offseason, right,
01:45and knowing some – we'll talk about some of the individual players.
01:48Did you have any sense – did you talk to some of your guys and say,
01:51dude, I think that this might be one of those teams.
01:55Like, did you see that, like, we may be not just good,
01:59we may be real, real good coming in.
02:01I mean, 25-5 in the league is spectacular, right,
02:04and the numbers you put up.
02:06But did you have a sense in the offseason how good this team could be?
02:09I think so.
02:10I mean, I think, you know, as a coach,
02:12you've got to be careful with setting expectations so far out.
02:15But, you know, kind of in the press conference of being named head coach,
02:17I kind of made the statement that I felt like it was –
02:19Georgia Tech baseball was in the best place it had been in for a really long time.
02:22And, once again, there was great tradition in the midst of that.
02:25And so, I think part of it goes down to you've got a guy like Drew Burris
02:28and you've got a guy like Vaughn Lackey that are potential top ten picks
02:31overall in the draft that are homegrown guys from the state of Georgia.
02:34You spent time recruiting them.
02:36They've stayed here through it.
02:37You have back-to-back ACC freshman of the year with Alex Hernandez and Burris.
02:41You have this core nucleus.
02:42And we kind of became the school that people – they go in the portal.
02:45They start to have the conversation like,
02:47we're getting first right of refusal of some really good players.
02:49And so, we only brought in five portal guys.
02:51It was kind of quality over quantity for us,
02:54kind of keeping our young core, which is, once again,
02:56going against the grain of what college baseball has done recently.
02:59But I think it goes down to the leadership quality of these guys too,
03:02of knowing that they weren't going to back away from any preseason expectations.
03:06They kind of wrote down their goals.
03:07And 25 ACC wins was one of those things that, you know,
03:10bringing the vision into action.
03:11They wrote it down.
03:12And it's a crazy record to chase.
03:14But they accomplished it.
03:15The background of you with seven years with Danny Hall,
03:18you've been in the program.
03:19You kind of cherry-picked and recruited the guys that you're coaching now.
03:24Talk about that a little bit and being able to say,
03:27oh, I know exactly what I have in the refrigerator for my meal.
03:30Yeah, yeah.
03:31I think the coolest part is I love recruiting because it's relationships.
03:34It's digging into the living rooms with families.
03:35It's getting to know what kids are made of.
03:37I think you can go out to a ballpark and just through college
03:40and pro playing experience, you know what a good player looks like.
03:42But I think as you're trying to do it, I think at the beginning,
03:45you know, you're begging guys to come.
03:47You're trying to convince guys to come.
03:48And then naturally that life cycle is gravitated towards now
03:51of we're having to say no to guys more than we're having to get them to come here.
03:55And you recruit the right type of guys in the state of Georgia
03:57with the tradition you have.
03:59It's high school coaches, travel coaches.
04:00I kind of think for me it was like biblical one by one.
04:02But it's like you treat one guy well,
04:04that next guy that's coming through the high school pipeline,
04:06like Pope High School is a great example.
04:08If we've had some, you know, absolute studs from there,
04:10you're going to continue to get into Cobb County.
04:12You go into Gwinnett County and North Fulton.
04:14You start doing really well by those guys.
04:16Maybe they go somewhere else for their first year of college.
04:19They're looking at Georgia Tech saying that's a place where I want to be.
04:22How many kids stayed at Georgia on the roster?
04:25I think we're at like 28 or so of our 36,
04:30which is one of the highest ratios we've ever been.
04:33And to your point, I think that was one thing that when I got the job,
04:36we didn't have as high of a ratio.
04:37And you look at the other schools across the top 10,
04:40they were coming into the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia and getting guys.
04:44I think we kind of put the fence down around the state and said,
04:46hey, we're going to identify the best kids from the high school level.
04:49We're going to grow with them.
04:50You know, we were talking before we got on here about there's some risk involved
04:53with playing guys young, and we knew that going in.
04:56But we were able to win while we played young.
04:58And when you can do that, the sky's the limit.
05:00I want to talk to the dads out there because I, you know,
05:04I am a dad of a high school kid, not a D1 athlete.
05:08But I hear a lot of the dads talk about, you know, the state of college recruiting
05:13and that most coaches only want portal kids and what's the best way to get noticed.
05:17I want to do all that.
05:18But talk about being a local kid here because your journey is a fascinating one
05:25from the years of Florida State.
05:27So you grew up in Gwinnett, right?
05:30Alpharetta, yeah.
05:31Went to school at Wesleyan over there.
05:33All right.
05:33So you play baseball at Wesleyan, and who comes calling?
05:37How many schools were recruiting you?
05:39Obviously, player of the year a few years later in the ACC at Florida State,
05:44which is spectacular.
05:44But talk about your own experiences recruiting and whatnot.
05:47Yeah, I was a multi-sport athlete that, you know, you play as many as you could play.
05:51I played baseball, played basketball, played football, and played tennis at Wesleyan,
05:55which, you know, we were in AA winning state titles across the board.
05:58And part of it was I just loved to compete.
06:00So my mom played tennis at Florida State.
06:02My dad played baseball for the legendary Mike Martin.
06:04And then when it started happening for me late, definitely picked up a lot of offers
06:08of kind of the in-state schools and some of the other schools, ACC, SEC, around.
06:12But I always felt like I had a chip on my shoulder because I was playing on some of the
06:14most
06:15talented teams.
06:15I was winning MVPs over at East Cobb.
06:18But, you know, the perfect game rankings weren't lining up.
06:21So speaking to the dad.
06:22Because why?
06:23I think it was probably some of the measurables, and I was off the circuit.
06:26I was playing football during fall ball.
06:28I was playing basketball.
06:29By the way, were you playing?
06:30In a corner?
06:31So a mixer.
06:33I probably was best at wide receiver.
06:34We had some injuries, and that was when Tebow was getting big.
06:37So we had a Tebow set for me to go behind center in football.
06:41Oh, James, okay.
06:41Yeah, no doubt.
06:42So you play a little bit of that.
06:43You play a little bit in the secondary, and then you move around.
06:45Then basketball, you know, there's two first-round picks on our high school team at Wesleyan.
06:50Al Farouk Aminu and Trey Tompkins.
06:52You know, Trey went up to Georgia.
06:53Al Farouk was at Wake Forest.
06:55Both those guys, NBA first-rounders.
06:57Tanner Smith, lifelong friend of mine.
06:58Now the head coach at West Florida.
07:00So I just catch Yatla Pass and let those guys play.
07:02So, you know, I take no credit for any of that success.
07:04But, no, we had a core group of athletes at Wesleyan that then you get into the college level.
07:09So for me, it was always a dream to play at Florida State.
07:1230 years after my dad was the captain of Mike Martin's team that played in Rosenblatt Stadium,
07:16I'm playing in the same stadium.
07:17And in the final season, storybook.
07:19Got to bring the trucker hat from 1980 that he wore up there.
07:23You know, so it really was.
07:25Then all of a sudden, you go back senior year.
07:26You get to go play in the new stadium.
07:29But, no, speaking, going back to that whole recruiting point, like, wasn't always the biggest, fastest, strongest.
07:33All the guys that had coached me said, hey, it was the intangibles.
07:36It was the work ethic.
07:37And then you start putting yourself in conversations of winning national player of the year in 2012,
07:41being a first-round pick and getting to have a long, successful pro career.
07:44I mean, that's kind of what it's all about.
07:45You were the national player of the year, I apologize for saying it.
07:49I mean, national player in college baseball.
07:52And worth mentioning, Rhodes Scholar candidate, you won all the academic awards,
07:57not only in the ACC, but nationally, like a whole other level.
08:00See, they used to go to school back.
08:02Well, they did at Florida State.
08:03That's why they call us the Harvard of the South, right?
08:05Am I speaking the truth?
08:07I mean, I don't know why Vanderbilt even gets discussed when it comes to academics in the South.
08:11Go ahead.
08:11I just wanted to mention that because you're way more than just the baseball guy.
08:15So you're, I mean, both your folks, tremendous athletes, right?
08:21Academics was a big part of also growing up around all that.
08:25I mean, just talk about from a values perspective, and I'm sure your parents are incredibly proud.
08:30And then we'll talk about being a first-round pick and how the major league career, how that plays out.
08:34But what do you say about the impact they had, separate of giving you some really good frigging genes, right?
08:40Yeah, yeah, no doubt.
08:41I think it was all about reaching your God-given potential.
08:43And for me, you know, I remember having an opportunity to go on an official visit to Yale with Coach
08:48Stupor,
08:48who actually was at Boston College last weekend because one of our assistants, Josh Shulman, coached with him at Yale.
08:54And for me, as a 17-year-old kid, looking at the opportunity to get an Ivy League education was
08:59something that a lot of guys nowadays say,
09:01oh, high academic schools are recruiting me, but they don't see the 40-year impact of that.
09:04So now being the head coach at Georgia Tech, one of the best schools in the country,
09:08I feel super fortunate to be able to say, hey, you can have the best of both worlds.
09:11You can come here, kind of like the NCAA tagline, you're going pro in sports, or you're going pro in
09:16something else.
09:16I mean, the alumni we have that are playing at the major league level, obviously we want to talk about
09:20them
09:20because they're kind of at the forefront of things publicly.
09:23But it's the guys that are going to medical school, the guys that are running Fortune 5s,
09:26the guys that are going into private equity.
09:27I think the Georgia Tech baseball alumni network is something that's really strong
09:31and goes back to the whole city of Atlanta and what it can do for you, making connections for life.
09:35Yeah, you've got a powerful message.
09:38I look at college rankings, having two girls in college as well,
09:41where Georgia Tech is sitting on a national perspective.
09:45Just forget about where they're placing kids and the amount of money kids are making at a young age,
09:50but the reputation.
09:52And then, oh, yeah, you can play baseball here.
09:55And Rusty and I always talk about it, Rusty Manziel, is what are you doing the next 50 years?
09:59We know what you're doing until you're 23 or 24.
10:01For some kids, it may be 22, you know, the average NFL career.
10:04I don't know.
10:06Being a tech baseball alum and graduating from Georgia Tech sounds like a pretty good way to set yourself up
10:12for life.
10:12It is.
10:13And I think you go to these endowment dinners, you go to donor events we have,
10:16you have alumni back for alumni weekend, and you're pushing guys.
10:20Because at 19 years old, you're not always thinking you're uniquely positioned to have a career in a certain field,
10:25but it's more about just getting guys around, and then all of a sudden you have that brotherhood
10:29where alumni want to take care of the guys that are in their shoes, that they used to play.
10:33And so I think that's the thing we talk about them is, hey, do a great job while you're here.
10:36You're going to work tirelessly.
10:37You look at the CEOs, the percentage of them that were college athletes,
10:41and just balancing the lifestyle of being excellent in sports and in the classroom.
10:44But, no, we feel really fortunate about the foundation we're continuing to build
10:48and building off of it in the future.
10:50Just going back to your career, so you are National Player of the Year,
10:53first-round pick of the Cardinals, correct?
10:55Correct.
10:56So what do you learn about Major League Baseball, and what do you learn about disappointments,
11:00and what do you learn about successes?
11:02It's obviously not the same success at the pro level, so talk about that a little bit.
11:07Yeah, get traded in the Futures game and getting asked by Peter Gammons and J.P. Morosi
11:12and all those guys by, hey, getting traded.
11:15And I'm like, man, I'm one of the top prospects in the organization.
11:17I don't know.
11:18You get traded for an MLB All-Star opening day starter.
11:21You go to Cleveland.
11:22You're on the 40-man roster.
11:23You're on the 40-man roster with the Dodgers sitting behind the payroll of the guys
11:27that were ahead of me.
11:27I'm like, I got no shot getting to the big leagues with these guys
11:30because of the guys that were currently up there, all still, most of them playing in the big leagues.
11:34You get traded to Seattle.
11:35You fracture your elbow.
11:36You miss a year.
11:37You sign with Minnesota as a free agent.
11:39I collected a ton of hats along the way that was kind of frustrating, to be honest,
11:42because you're the pro guy that knows you're good enough to make a career in the big leagues.
11:46But now as a coach, it's served me so well because you look at all the mentors I've had in
11:50coaching.
11:50You look at all the MLB All-Stars, the franchise guys.
11:53You hit beside Lindor, Francisco Lindor, for two years.
11:56You get traded other places.
11:58I remember being in spring training.
11:59It was Nelson Cruz and Robbie Cano and all those guys every day.
12:02You get to watch the way guys do things.
12:04And so now as a coach, I'm like, man, I'm super thankful for the way it played out
12:08because I have so many connections now, whether it's in the scouting community,
12:11the pro coaching community.
12:12You just learn so much good information from guys, and I think it's served me well.
12:16What do you do mindset-wise when you're bouncing to that many different cities
12:19and trying to decide?
12:21Because obviously coaching was a gift that you have,
12:25and maybe you knew at a younger age.
12:26So how do you balance mentally?
12:29Like, how long do I hang in there?
12:31This isn't the life I...
12:32And you kind of walked away controversial.
12:34I mean, you were batting 300 in the minors, and you said I'm out.
12:37Yeah, Coach Martin was begging me, right?
12:39It was like he called me up, and he's like, hey,
12:41and everybody knows his storied career.
12:43It's like Coach Hall gets to the point where you're like, when are they leaving?
12:45When are they going to keep going?
12:46Because there's nothing really else you can do from a resume standpoint.
12:48Those guys have done it all.
12:49And so one of the first people I called was Coach Hall.
12:52I said, hey, I think I might hang it up and get into coaching.
12:55But that was an opportunity to be on Coach Martin's final staff, right?
12:58That a team ends up going to Omaha.
12:59I come mid-year to Georgia Tech.
13:01We had a great season.
13:02Coach Hall gets named Coach of the Year.
13:03We're the third national seed.
13:05You go into those type situations, and now being a part of Coach Hall's last season,
13:09where he's the Coach of the Year, you always are trying to honor those guys
13:12because they've poured into you.
13:13And so I think I've had a lot of great mentors along the way.
13:16I mean, for me, ACC Coach of the Year thing happens yesterday.
13:19It's surreal.
13:20It happens when you have really good players.
13:21But I've got a tremendous staff and support staff, like people that grind.
13:25They wake up early.
13:26They go to sleep late.
13:27They're pouring into our players.
13:28They do all the things that we talk about embodying with toughness, discipline, and together.
13:32And so I wouldn't be in this position without a group of people that are all very mission-minded together.
13:37Same competitive juices when you're sitting in the dugout as when you're out there,
13:41just in terms of what's a lot of folks say.
13:44That's why they stay in the game.
13:45Matt Ryan talked about it.
13:46He had the greatest job in the world, right?
13:49But there's nothing like game day when you're all vested.
13:53That's the stuff athletes miss.
13:54Yeah, the players will tell you, like one of the guys that are transferring, like,
13:57hey, talk about him.
13:58Like, he's a player.
13:58They're like, just the mindset, the intensity, all of the above.
14:02Like, you know, I think that's the fun part with guys is to be in the trenches with them.
14:05Yeah.
14:06That's what a lot of them said yesterday in those interviews.
14:09Five members of the Georgia Tech team are all ACC, which is, I think, a pretty good league, right?
14:16First team, all ACC.
14:17Is that considered a good league?
14:18I would say that's good.
14:19Virginia, Wake, Miami, Florida State, Boston College.
14:22I'll give them props.
14:22Cubs, UNC, right?
14:24Five of them from Tech and the Coach of the Year.
14:27We'll come back if you're a high school dad and love baseball or just in general.
14:30The world of porters, the world of dollars.
14:33Brand new building at Georgia Tech as well.
14:35Mr. Fanny did a nice job.
14:37Things are looking up, and he's two days away from the ACC tourney.
14:41Very nice of him to be here, James Ramsey, live in studio on Sports Radio 92.9 The Game.
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