Better Know an ACC Opponent: Georgia Tech

FIGHT SONG OWNERSHIP CONTROVERSY!!!

A yellow jacket behind the wheel of a car is definitely on my list of fears

In case you’ve blissfully forgotten, the Pac-12 is dead and Cal is now in a conference named after the other side of the country. If you’re reading this, it means that this new reality is not a deal breaker for you. Over the rest of the off-season, we’ll profile each and every member of this conference that Cal has joined, that will definitely 100% exist it its current form for years if not decades.

Previously: Boston College; Clemson; Duke; Florida State

Give me the basics

In 1885, Georgia passed legislation to fund a new technical institute to help the rural, agrarian south catch up to the more industrialized north. Founded it what was at the time North Atlanta, Georgia Tech is now right smack dab in the middle of metropolitan Atlanta.

Georgia Tech has a more progressive history than other deep south institutions, voluntarily integrating by vote in 1959, and they have continued to be perhaps the premier public institution of the deep south. Though engineering is still a primary focus, they have a liberal arts school as well. They boast a particularly large post graduate population.

Do they have any relevant history with Cal?

Yes, but it’s all deep cuts for history buffs.

Cal and Georgia Tech have played each other seven times in football, making Georgia Tech the most common ACC football opponent for Cal (other than, duh, Stanford). The problem is that they have only played each other once since 1940. That one game came in 1978, when a mediocre Cal team under Roger Theder travelled to Atlanta and beat a mediocre Georgia Tech team, 34-22.

But the early history is pretty significant, and includes one of the most famous plays in the early history of college football. It was the 1929 Rose Bowl between Cal and Georgia Tech that featured the play that gave Roy “wrong way” Riegels his infamous nickname. Cal and Georgia Tech would play five more times between 1931 and 1940, with Cal taking three out of the five to even the all time record.

On the basketball side, the women’s teams have never played, but Cal MBB is 3-0 against Georgia Tech, with two of those games coming on back to back games in December of 1950. Presumably Tech was going to get their money’s worth for going all the way to Berkeley in the 50s.

But there’s a bit of off-field controversy - Georgia Tech’s primary fight song, Up with the White and Gold, is functionally identical to one of Cal’s (many) secondary fight songs, The Stanford Jonah. Both songs have origins in the 1910s, and it’s very likely that one school adapted the lyrics from the original written by the other. But which was first! Way back in 2010 both TwistNHook and Georgia Tech’s SBNation blog “From the Rumble Seat” did some investigating and the consensus seems to be that Cal’s Ted Haley probably was the originator in 1913, but there is no definitive conclusion.

But to answer your most pressing question: Yes, Georgia Tech has singers doing embarrassingly earnest a capella performances of this song too.

You may remember me from such Pac-12 teams as:

Hmm, a gold-tinged public school with significant nerd bona fides in a major metropolitan area with some illustrious ancient history but a modern history full of struggles and ups and downs?

The ACC may already have a Cal!

I want to get on their good side. I should agree with them about:

How utterly obnoxious Georgia fans are with their incessant barking. Why, I bet most of their fans didn’t even ATTEND Georgia!

I want to troll them incessantly. I should make fun of them for:

Georgia having a 19-3 advantage in the last 22 “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate” match-ups, while also winning a couple of national titles in the timeframe?

You could also joke about how they’re a bunch of nerds who don’t really care about athletics . . . but that would be calling the kettle black, wouldn’t it?

What should I know about their current coaches?

Brent Key played as a guard for Tech in the late 90s and spent time as the line coach at Alabama before becoming Tech’s Associated Head Coach, then finally just Head Coach starting last season. True to his background, he helped develop a strong running game for the Yellow Jackets last year.

Arizona alum Damon Stoudamire is certainly a name familiar to Cal fans, and I admit that hiring a guy who didn’t really have any success in a stint at UOP seems risky. But Stoudamire was an assistant with the Celtics and UOP is a pretty tough job, so who knows? It won’t be hard for Stoudamire to do better than predecessor Josh Pastner.

Tech brought on WBB lifer Nell Fortner in 2019 to turn around their women’s program. While the resume is impressive (stints with USA basketball, Purdue, Indiana Fever, Auburn, and ESPN commentary), the on-court track record has been mixed at all of her stops.

Which alumni keep them stuck in the past?

I bet that Tech fans talk about Calvin Johnson the same way that Cal fans talk about Keenan Allen - an overwhelming WR talent hamstrung by the talent and system around him.

Stephon Marbury had a hell of a single year in college, average 19 points/game and leading Tech to the Sweet 16 in their only NCAA tournament appearance in a seven year span in the 90s.

John Heisman: Not an alum, but when you have a coach who won a national title AND has the most prestigious individual award named after him, it might be kinda a big deal.

Jimmy Carter might keep you stuck in the past if you’re nostalgic for politicians who are wholeheartedly devoted to the concept of selfless public service.

Which alumni will they pretend they’ve forgotten?

I have to admit, I struggled to identify embarrassing and/or infamous people associated with Georgia Tech. It’s mostly a bunch of benign engineers, professors, and astronauts, plus the one president that everybody still likes cause he builds houses for the poor.

Like, Jeff Foxworthy is a kinda hacky comedian who didn’t even finish his degree at Georgia Tech and that’s about as much as I found.

What’s their school tradition that they take way too seriously?

A have to admit, the Ramblin’ Reck is both unique AND relevant to Tech’s engineering focus, so even though I’m decidedly NOT a car guy, I get why it’s endured all these years.

What non-revenue sport do they care about most?

Probably baseball? Georgia Tech only offers 15 NCAA sports, and their only team NCAA title came in women’s tennis. And while the baseball team has struggled to consistently advance in post season play, they’re a perennial tournament team, missing the postseason just six times since 1985. Former Yellow Jacket baseball players who developed into prominent pros include Jason Varitek, Nomar Garciaparra, Kevin Brown, Mark Teixeira, Charlie Blackmon, Matt Wieters, and Joey Bart. Is ‘Catcher U’ a thing? If it is, Tech has a claim.

Should I go see Cal play a game there?

If you prefer big cities to small college towns, Atlanta’s got to be near the top of your list, right? The cultural heart of the American south, Atlanta is dripping with history and culture. You’ve got the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, the College Football Hall of Fame (see Gary Tyrell’s trombone!), the Olympic Park, a great civil rights museum . . . it’s a city that probably demands more than just a weekend spin through town.

Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium has a relatively small capacity of 51,913, but it’s pretty historic as the venue has, in one form or another, held games since 1905. Yes, including the infamous 222-0 game. Wikipedia calls it the “oldest continuously used on-campus site for college football in the Southern United States,” which is a sentence with lots of qualifiers but is still something.

Is Cal better than them at sports right now?

Maybe!

Georgia Tech was solid in ACC play last year, going 5-3, but were hurt by having to play two top 10 teams out of conference (Ole Miss and Georgia) and by an utterly inexplicable blowout loss to Bowling Green. Haynes King is maybe the best dual threat QB in the conference and Jamal Haynes is an excellent RB, and the offense should be both good and lots of fun. But the defense wasn’t very good last year and lost a lot of production, and that will probably lower Tech’s ceiling. But if you’re trying to get in ACC football, they will probably be involved in lots of high scoring fun games and they’re not on Cal’s schedule this year, so you can root for them to win some shootouts.

Tech’s men’s and women’s basketball teams were both well below average and I’m not finding anything to indicate that the outlook for 2024-25 is meaningfully different. The men’s team hasn’t won an NCAA tournament game since 2010 and the women have only made two appearances since 2014.