Sept. 28 of next year will be an interesting Saturday in Philadelphia. Georgia Tech and new coach Geoff Collins will play its first-ever game against Temple.
The game was scheduled in September 2017, a two-game series in which the Owls will come to Atlanta for the return game in 2025. When the game was announced, the Tech news release noted Collins’ ties to the institute.
Given the itinerant nature of the profession, it’s not unheard of for a coach to face a former employer. Coach Paul Johnson faced Georgia Southern, which he led to two Division I-AA (now FCS) national championships, in 2014 and 2015, but that was 13 years and two jobs after he had left Statesboro.
But this a meeting of a different sort. Much of the Owls’ roster will be made up of players who were recruited to Temple by Collins.
It should be part of an intriguing start to Collins’ time at Tech. The Yellow Jackets’ first game will be at Clemson, this season’s ACC champion and a College Football Playoff participant, followed by South Florida (a team that is in Temple’s division in the American Athletic Conference, as well as a team that gave the Jackets a staggering loss this past season), the Citadel (a team with an option offense similar to Johnson’s scheme), a second ACC game (unless it’s an open date) and then the trip to Temple.
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