Georgia Tech vs. Miami
|Battle of the Largest Metros in the Southeast - Atlanta and Miami
This weekend the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets will travel from Atlanta to Miami Gardens to take on the University of Miami Hurricanes. The matchup features teams from the two largest metros in the Southeast, one of the fastest growing regions in the country. Atlanta has long been the economic center of the Southeast, while Miami has been a key international gateway and the economic and financial hub of Latin America. Today both cities are highly global. The large universities they host have two of the most decorated and historic football programs, with nine national championships between them.
Since 1926, the Miami Hurricanes have won five national titles—1983, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 2001. Despite their long history, it was not until coach Howard Schnellenberger, who had been offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins under head coach Don Shula during their undefeated 1972 season, arrived in 1979 that the Canes emerged as a major power on the national stage. Schnellenberger aimed to lock down the local South Florida talent and garnered a national following by scheduling intriguing matchups just as college football coverage was expanding dramatically. The school’s independent status at the time made this possible. In 1983 he fulfilled his promise to win a national title within five years, and the program ascended to further glory under the leadership of coaches Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. The Canes eventually moved to the Big East, competing from 1991-2003, before joining the ACC in 2004.
The Miami program has been a veritable NFL draft pick factory. It produced six first round selections in 2004—the fourth year in a row it had the most first round picks—and had players selected in the first round for a record 14 consecutive years. Known as “the U”—which originated out of a desire for a distinctive hand gesture like the chop of Florida State and the chomp of Florida—Miami also popularized the concept of the “Turnover Chain,” an ostentatiously large medallion presented to any player who forces a turnover. The Canes play their home games in Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, a 22-mile bus ride from their campus in Coral Gables. They used to play in the Orange Bowl, in the Little Havana neighborhood, from 1937 to 2007, during which they went on an NCAA record 58-game home win streak from 1985 to 1994.
Georgia Tech football has recorded over 700 victories and four national titles—1917, 1928, 1952 and 1990—since beginning play in 1892. John Heisman, forever memorialized in the trophy bearing his name, led the program as coach from 1904 to 1919, and secured their first national title in 1917. His Yellow Jackets were responsible for the most uneven football outcome in history, a 222-0 walloping of Cumberland College in 1916. Neither team recorded a single first down that day—Cumberland because of their ineptitude and Georgia Tech because of their efficiency (almost every single play they ran was a touchdown). By 1944, the team had become the first to play in all four of the major bowl games at that time—the Rose, Orange, Cotton and Sugar Bowls.
Georgia Tech competed in the SEC until 1963, when the program’s all-time winningest coach Bobby Dodd—for whom the current stadium is named—had grown increasingly frustrated with what he viewed as over-recruitment by other SEC teams. He also got into a spat with legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant over his failure to discipline one of his players who maliciously hit a Georgia Tech player who had called for a fair catch—the final straw in his decision to withdraw the program from the SEC. They competed as an independent from 1964 to 1982, when they joined the ACC.
Georgia Tech’s stadium is a uniquely urban setting, with a clear view of the Midtown and Downtown Atlanta skylines. It first hosted football in 1905, making it the oldest stadium in the FBS and the third oldest in all of Division I, after Penn and Harvard’s facilities. Before that, the team used to play in Piedmont Park. Beginning in 2020, they will play one game a year in Mercedes-Benz stadium, which replaced the Georgia Dome in 2017.
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