Georgia Tech’s Geoff Collins: Experience outside of Power 5 football will help with restart

Two weeks ago, the NCAA took its first steps towards bringing athletics back by allowing some student-athletes to return to campus for preseason training. Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins is one of many coaches inventing new ways to hold practices under the first phase of the NCAA’s plan to resocialize collegiate sports.

The NCAA’s first phase calls for a two-week period of voluntary workouts consisting of no more than 25 athletes. Workouts must be properly sanitized and physically distanced with regular monitoring of the athletes’ health.

While these new rules certainly restrain some of the workouts Collins and his staff are used to running, he believes they can be creative enough to improve their players both mentally and physically throughout the resocialization process.

“We have a young, energetic coaching staff that is actively engaged in the workouts just so our guys know how invested we are,” Collins said. “I think we do a good job connecting with our guys and I’m just really excited to see them back.”

Collins, a former high school and Division III coach, is used to adaptation when it comes to offseason and preseason workout programs.

“I was blessed early in my career,” Collins said. “I’ve been around programs that I have not been a Power 5 coach my entire career. That gives me an edge to understand that there are other ways to run workouts.”

Once the first phase is completed two weeks later, Georgia Tech will be able to have many more players at their practices provided, the NCAA’s second phase. Collins sees this short first phase as a way to adapt his system to the NCAA’s rules for the larger second phase.

“We have an athletic department that is committed to making sure all of our student-athletes returning to campus that their health and safety is the first priority in every single thing we do,” Collins said. “Obviously, there will be challenges, but I think that the way we have our program lends us to be innovative and think outside of the box and find the best way for our players to have success. Our No. 1 thing is the safety and the care of our players.”