Day trip for Tech’s 2nd consecutive bowl game
As confirmed by the Atlantic Coast Conference, Georgia Tech’s 2024 season finale will take place at the Birmingham Bowl on Friday, December 27 against Vanderbilt at 3:30pm EST on ESPN.
As bowl announcements came out from the ACC, it followed expectations that Tech was likely going to Birmingham or Boston, eventually getting Birmingham.
This will be Tech’s first matchup against Vanderbilt in a postseason setting after 38 previous meetings. Tech has not lost to Vanderbilt since 1941, going 12-0-1 in the last 13 matchups. Most recently, the sides played in 2016, a 38-7 win for the Jackets. All time, Tech is 20-15-3 against Vanderbilt in football, the first game taking place in 1892 when the Institute wasn’t even five years old.
Of note, the teams play for a cowbell trophy, originated by Ed Cavaleri back in 1924, one of the few rivalry trophies the Jackets have history with. According to Tech radio announcer Andy Demetra, the trophy’s whereabouts recently were unknown until Jackson Mathews, a facilities manager, recovered it while searching for printer toner back in 2016 in the now demolished Edge building. It ain’t often a bowl game coincides as a trophy rivalry game!
Considering Tech was squarely out of consideration for the Peach Bowl via not making the College Football Playoff, the Birmingham Bowl is geographically the closest location Tech could’ve played in relative to campus. Even if this isn’t the preferred bowl (as multiple players took to Twitter to express), this is still one of the better locations we could’ve drawn to get plenty of alumni in the building.
In terms of personnel, the bowl game does not count against games played when burning or not burning a redshirt, so it is possible we could see backup quarterback Aaron Philo take some snaps in the case Haynes King still isn’t 100% healthy. That said, this is what Brent Key had to say about King in bowl game announcement press conference:
Brent Key on his QB Haynes King:
“I think the update on Haynes King from a medical standpoint is the last time we asked him how he was doing it was ‘everything but my shoulder hurts.’
That sounds like a solid update to me.— Maria Martin (@Ria_Martin) December 8, 2024
We will not see Zach Pyron as he has entered the transfer portal.
If Tech were to win, this would be their first 8-win season since 2016.
Staff Reactions
Chris: It’s…fine I guess? Probably a 6/10 for me. It’s not particularly exciting, but it is a good location for the fanbase and Vandy’s a team that got a lot of attention this season so a potential win over them would be good for the brand. Ultimately the location and opponent aren’t super important; what matters is that we come away with a convincing win.
Ben: I said earlier that I really didn’t care who we ended up playing as long as the players and coaches have a good time. I stand by that. I think Birmingham also works out because it’s a drivable distance for both fan bases. Vandy’s QB has made some noise this season, so I’m excited to see how Tech handles him. I’m excited, and I hope you are too.
Logan: I think it’s awesome. Plenty of good storylines. Nerd bowl, renewal of a rivalry, Two unique offenses facing off, two teams that get big upset wins. Not everyone thinks the world of Vandy, but they’ve had a good year and should be a challenge. I’m glad we got a good opponent in the bowl. I wish it was a more fun location, but it is a good location for fans to get to, so that helps. I hope we get a good turnout.
Jack: I’m all for this. Sure, Birmingham isn’t the sexiest destination to play our bowl game in, but the game is in UAB’s brand new stadium, thousands of alumni are in driving distance, and we get a historic rivalry matchup to boot. Plus, we get a decent TV slot in that part of the holiday season where people kind of forget what day of the week it is and just leave the TV on all day. It hits the boxes we want hit. Everything was gravy for me once we got to win #7. I’m also not that sure even if we got to an 8th win if we’d end up moving to a different bowl, so this feels like the natural spot for us this season. I know this team will be ready to play, so I’m mainly just excited to get another day with this Georgia Tech Football team, who we all have come to love dearly.
Nishant: I can’t say I’m terribly enthused. It’s nice to have a bowl against an SEC team, and I enjoyed our home-and-home with Vandy in 2009 and 2016. And getting to see Diego Pavia will be fun. All that said, this as a postseason game just feels… anticlimactic. It’s a team I have clear memories of us playing, which dents the most fun aspect of bowl season for me—playing teams you’d never see otherwise. But it’s also just another reminder that despite how dramatic this season was, this was a 7-5 team that (like every other 6-6 or 7-5 GT team ever) bowl selectors could safely ignore in the middle of the ACC pack. The good news is that Birmingham is an easy day trip from Metro Atlanta, so for the first time in a decade I might actually get to go see Tech’s bowl game. So in the end I can’t be too mad.
Carter: This matchup was grown in a lab to be the least exciting bowl matchup Georgia Tech has had since playing in the Independence Bowl fourteen years ago. The nightmare bowl scenario is playing in an uninteresting bowl versus an uninteresting opponent. Georgia Tech got both. Vanderbilt is a team four hours away from Atlanta that Tech already played a home-and-home with in recent memory. Meanwhile, six win Virginia Tech gets to play in Charlotte.
Jake: I fall somewhere in the Jack/Chris/Ben range of opinion, having had the benefit of reading everyone else’s responses. I knew going into this that I would be likely unable to attend, and I am confident that the players will be treated well regardless of where they wound up,so I wanted mostly a game fans could reasonably access in a decent stadium destination, and certainly hoped for a better date and time than we have received in the past two bowl assignments Tech received. Having myself made the trip to Detroit the day after Christmas in 2018 and having had important family commitments last year since it was the Friday night before Christmas weekend last year, I feel I can speak with authority those were truly awful timings. A nicely timed afternoon game with another day of space between the back side of Christmas (at a reasonable driving distance for a fanbase that is notoriously poor at traveling) and it being in a brand-new stadium are all definitely positive. Were it against a G5 team, I might have other mitigating opinions, but it being an SEC matchup against the other school we have a historic rivalry trophy with that also scored a few notable, talked-about historic upsets this season leads me to believe it will garner a good amount of attention and storyline buzz in the run-up to the game. Call it the Cinderella Bowl, or something. It’s not perfect, but a decently-timed, drivable bowl against a Power 4 opponent with historical and current narrative storylines of interest is about as perfect a set up as a 7-5 team can ask for. It’s a win.
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