Even with a daunting schedule ahead, this year's Georgia Tech team could really make a difference in the program's future with a successful run.
As an Industrial Engineer, statistics was a large component of my education at the Institute. One of the basic concepts of statistics is the importance of sample size when drawing conclusions, and to trust long-term (or large-scale) results over short-term (or small-scale) results.
Below, you'll see an image of Georgia Tech football's final records since winning the National Championship in 1952, relative to a .500 record. That's over 60 seasons' worth of results -- which I'm comfortable calling "large-scale", and therefore reliable when drawing conclusions about long-term trends.