Notre Dame-Georgia Tech: Past Southern Discomfort
Among teams from the South, Georgia Tech is the most-faced opponent in Notre Dame’s football history. The series extends back to 1922, with the Irish holding a commanding 28-6-1 advantage.
The next nearest any southern team has faced the Fighting Irish is Miami, a series that began in 1955, with an 18-8-1 record posted against the Hurricanes.
However, the rivalry with Miami during the regular season — the two teams had played every year but one from 1971-90 — was called off for 22 years (not including the 2010 Sun Bowl) because of an enmity that developed, and particularly awful treatment Notre Dame administrators and fans received on their later visits to Miami, after the Hurricanes became a superpower.
It was similar with Georgia Tech, even though it never became a superpower during that time.
In the 15 years from 1967 through 1981, the Fighting Irish and Yellow Jackets played 12 times, with a three-year hiatus from 1971-73 the lone interruption. Unfortunately, the series became notorious for the lack of southern hospitality during Notre Dame’s visits in the 1960s and 1970s that included an anti-Catholic sentiment, plus the fact that southern schools didn’t begin to integrate their rosters with black players until after 1970.
Frequently on Notre Dame’s visits to Georgia Tech, dead fish (symbolizing the Catholic protocol to eat fish on Fridays) were hurled at the Irish sideline from the stands, and soon other trajectories such as liquor bottles, ice and even eggs became part of the ritual.
From 1974 through 1980, the series almost always had drama:
• In 1974, the two teams weren't supposed to meet until November, but a huge payout from ABC made this the first Monday night game in Fighting Irish history for the Sept. 9 opener — two days after head coach Ara Parseghian had his daughter's wedding. Defending national champion Notre Dame won, 31-7.
• A Hollywood movie was made about Notre Dame's rather blasé 24-3 victory over Georgia Tech in 1975. The central theme, though, was 27-year-old Fighting Irish walk-on Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, whose story truly did involve drama.
• In 1976, the Yellow Jackets shocked the Irish with a 23-14 victory — the last team to post a victory against Notre Dame without completing or attempting a pass. Afterwards, the Georgia Tech players mocked Notre Dame as overrated and out of shape, referring to them in southern terms as "hog mollies" and "mud womps."
• In the drive to the 1977 national title, the Notre Dame players remembered the comments from the year prior — and proceeded to lay a 69-14 slaughter on the Ramblin' Wreck.
Meanwhile, the head coaches, Notre Dame's Dan Devine and Georgia Tech's Pepper Rodgers, had some history and discord between them as well during their respective times as rivals at Missouri and Kansas,
"I gave him the peace sign and he flipped half of it back to me," said Rodgers of one Missouri-Kansas encounter in the 1960s.
It appeared the same occurred in 1977.
• During a 38-21 Irish victory at Georgia Tech in 1978, several miffed Notre Dame players in the fourth quarter were threatening to take vengeance in the stands before Devine took his team out to midfield — one in protest to avoid the debris getting thrown at them, and the other to remind the players that going into the stands would be poorly representing the school.
• In 1980, 7-0 and No. 1 Notre Dame traveled to Georgia Tech to take on a Yellow Jackets team that would win only one game that season. Yet the Irish needed a Harry Oliver field goal with just under five minutes remaining in the contest to salvage a 3-3 tie, one of the more stunning upsets of the year.
The series was halted after the 1981 game at Notre Dame. The two schools did not meet again in football until almost by accident in 1997. That was the year Notre Dame Stadium was expanded from a capacity of 59,075 to 80,225.
Originally scheduled that year to be the opener, and for the christening of the new building, was Miami (Ohio). However, the desire for a more glamorous or “name” opponent was needed, so Notre Dame paid off Miami (Ohio) to make a switch, and Georgia Tech — which had won a share of the national title in 1990 under head coach Bobby Ross — agreed to take its place in a one-time deal with no return game by the Fighting Irish to Atlanta.
Notre Dame had to rally late to defeat third-year head coach George O’Leary’s team 17-13, but the next year the Yellow Jackets defeated Notre Dame 35-28 in the Gator Bowl to finish 10-2 and No. 9 in the Associated Press poll.
Two years later, O’Leary was named the Bobby Dodd — the prominent head coach at Georgia Tech from 1945-66 — National Coach of the Year. So impressed was the University of Notre Dame with O’Leary’s program, they hired him in December 2001 as the successor to the deposed Bob Davie.
Four days later, O’Leary resigned when it was discovered that his résumé had false information on which he had not been transparent.
Notre Dame did have a two-game home-and-home series in openers again with Georgia Tech in 2006-07. The No. 2-ranked Irish survived a 14-10 scare in Atlanta in the former, and then suffered a 33-3 destruction at home in the latter to begin a 3-9 campaign.
The most recent meeting was in 2015 at Notre Dame, a 30-22 Irish victory in which quarterback DeShone Kizer made his first start for the Irish. Believe it or not, the Yellow Jackets — who would finish 3-9 — were favored in that game.
Today, both Georgia Tech and Miami join Notre Dame as 2020 members of the ACC, making them league rivals just as they had been regular rivals from days gone by.
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