This may sound familiar – Georgia Tech scrambling to add a game because of a cancellation. The Yellow Jackets coach trading verbal jabs with a coach from Pennsylvania. An offense not feeling a great compulsion to put the ball in the air.
They’ve been part of the story of the 2017 Jackets, who are 3-1 and going into their open date. Remarkably, they were elements of the Jackets’ season 100 years ago. No matter how this season turns out, though, there is at least one way that it won’t be able to live up to the achievements of its predecessor from 1917 – those Jackets lifted football in the South to a height it had never reached.
In an era that in some ways would be unrecognizable to modern players, coaches and fans but in others would be quite familiar, coach John Heisman’s 1917 Jackets – also known as the Golden Tornado – became the first team outside the East to be widely recognized as a national champion. With a roster largely made up of in-state players, Tech earned the approval of the game’s most influential opinion makers and gave credence to the quality of football away from its base in the Northeast.
The estimation of Walter Camp, a player, coach and writer recognized as the father of American football, said it all in his official guide published for the following season.
“No team of past years has ever made such a general public impression upon the country as that of Georgia Tech, coached by J.W. Heisman, last season,” Camp wrote.
The season’s seminal matchup was played 100 years ago Friday on Grant Field, a 41-0 blowout of powerhouse Penn.
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