The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yellow Jackets fans after bragging rights
‘They’ve got us outmanned with muscle, but I never say die. I think we’ve got a chance.’
Georgia Tech alumnus Bobby Joe Anderson doesn’t hold the highest hopes for today’s matchup with archrival Georgia, but he’ll be there for the annual in-state showdown. He is always there.
Anderson, who turned 90 earlier this year, has attended every Tech-Georgia game since 1945. This will be No. 74, which is 65 percent of every Tech-Georgia game that has been played since the rivalry began in 1893.
“I’m still hanging in there,” Anderson told the AJC. “Of course, my heart bleeds gold and white.”
Anderson, who lives in Atlanta, will attend the game at Sanford Stadium with his grandson, Luke Downs. Hopefully, his seats will be better than the 2016 game, which were high atop the upper deck.
“One more step, I’d been in heaven,” he said. “Anyway, of course, it was a great victory.”
Anderson said he has never enjoyed games more than the Yellow Jackets’ past two trips to Athens, the overtime “Kick and the Pick” thriller in 2014 and the come-from-behind win in 2016. He acknowledges this season’s contest with No. 5 UGA may turn out differently.
“They’ve got us outmanned with muscle, but I never say die,” he said. “I think we’ve got a chance.”
This season, Tech fans have thrilled at their team’s rally in the second half of the season with four consecutive wins going into the Georgia game. And while Tech fans will never turn down a win over their hated rivals, a win today might be almost too good for words. Not only could Tech deal Bulldogs fans a third consecutive loss to the Jackets between their beloved hedges, but a win would be disastrous for Georgia’s hopes to make the College Football Playoff.
In this rivalry, in which schadenfreude is as much a part of the series as the Governor’s Cup, it would be the most costly loss Georgia would have suffered at Tech’s hands since 1927, when the Bulldogs’ “Dream Georgia Tech alumnus
and Wonder” team suffered its only loss of the season to its in-state rival.
Among those hoping for Bulldogs tears is Anderson, a retired CEO and president of Puritan/Churchill Chemical Company and a former trustee of the Georgia Tech Foundation. He has many Georgia fans he counts as friends. Others are less sufferable.
“It wouldn’t bother me a bit if we knocked them off and it calmed them down a little bit,” he said.
Former Tech captain Roddy Jones acquired clear understanding of Tech fans’ aggravation with Georgia (and its fans) after he authored the signature play of the Jackets’ 2008 win in Athens in Johnson’s first season, which ended a seven-year losing streak to the Bulldogs.
“I had no idea what the response was going to be,” he said. “I was too young to know. But the frustration that people had, having lost seven in a row, I think you really saw that. I think we realized that when we got back to (Bobby Dodd Stadium). There were like, 1,000 people waiting for us on the plaza. The plaza was flooded with people by the time we got back.”
As a sideline analyst for ESPN, Jones is a visible Tech grad. He said Bulldogs fans who recognize him don’t give him a hard time, but “I think Georgia fans make sure you know there’s a hierarchy and that they’re at the top.”
Jones’ Bulldogs co-workers are more prominent than most, ESPN talents and former Georgia athletes David Pollack, Maria Taylor and D.J. Shockley.
“There’s not a lot of smack talking, but just to know you’ve got one up on them is always fun,” he said, “and it’s not quite as painful to see Georgia flags everywhere when you’ve got the win.”
Jones will catch the game from the production truck at the Pitt-Miami game, which kicks off at 3:30 p.m. He’ll have to cut viewing short around 2:45 p.m.
Said Jones, “Hopefully, we’re pulling away at that point, so I don’t feel bad.”