This doesn’t happen often. Think solar eclipse, or four-leaf clovers, or a Sasquatch sighting.
Georgia Tech is center stage.
Georgia is under the stage.
“It’s kind of neat that somebody else is getting beat up instead of us for a change,” Paul Johnson said Wednesday.
The man never misses an opening. He’d be a fool not to observe this rare occasion.
Imagine going from the ignored program, the mocked program, the program dwarfed by anything and everything red and black and bulldog 24/7/365, and suddenly waking up one morning and it hits you: They’re out; we’re in.
Tech football has had some nice moments. But even as the school with the Atlanta campus, even as the program that has won a conference championship (2009) more recently than Georgia (2005), even as the place where a guy named Heisman coached, Tech is the afterthought on the local college football landscape. It’s the 32nd flavor in Baskin-Robbins.
And now … wait, was that six camera crews at Johnson’s news conference Tuesday? And ESPN, and USA Today?
Tech: Attention, praise, adoration.
Georgia: Attention, scorn, what the hell happened in Jacksonville?
Tech coaches: Preparing for a conference championship game.
Georgia coaches: Recruiting and skillfully avoiding raging infernos in social media and message boards and sports talk radio.
Tech: Look at us.
Georgia: Look away.
This isn’t the norm.
“There’s a point where you come to understand (the situation),” said Johnson in an introspective moment (yes, it happens). “Georgia Tech is a unique place and it’s a special place and it has so many great attributes. What I try to do is get our guys to embrace what we are rather than worry about what somebody else is. You’re not going to be them. It’s not set up the same. The school’s not the same. The fan base isn’t the same. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t compete with them and beat them. But you’re not them.”
Nothing Tech could accomplish realistically is going to change that. Georgia is Godzilla, even if Godzilla was punched in the face last week and run over for 399 yards rushing. Georgia is the SEC (which also means it’s ESPN). Georgia flattens Tech in revenue and numbers and tradition, at least this side of the 1960s.
But this is an important week for the Yellow Jackets. It’s opportunity week. More eyes are on them, locally and nationally.
“Yeah. This is the most coverage we’ve gotten in a while,” senior linebacker Quayshawn Nealy said, standing in a lobby of the team’s athletic facility, surrounded by media members.
Nealy is from central Florida, where he said retail merchandise in stores was “sort of even” between Florida and Florida State. He wasn’t prepared for the attention or fan-wear discrepancy between Tech and Georgia.
“I remember going to a Walmart on Howell Mill with my parents,” Nealy said. “We went there looking for a Tech T-shirt, but it was all Georgia stuff. I was like, ‘Where’s the Tech stuff? We’re two miles from the school!’ I bet they have more stuff this week though.”
This week’s relative anomaly doesn’t mean Tech is going to approach Georgia in season ticket sales. Quoting Johnson: “If having 92,000 at a game is a big deal (for a recruit), then you’re not going to come here.”
But it doesn’t mean Tech can’t capitalize on the exposure, both in perception and support.
“Especially when we’re having a season like this, the situation bothers you a little,” free safety Jamal Golden said. “But then you remind yourself to just control what you can control, and that’s your play on the field. It’s great to have all this attention now and be ranked. But you have to remember what it took to get you here when nobody was talking about you.”
Tech would have been the only team playing this week even if it had lost at Georgia last week. But the narrative wouldn’t be the same. Amazing what one overtime victory can do.
“My wife and I were talking Saturday night: What a difference a 53-yard (field goal) makes — in the whole outlook of everyone,” Johnson said.
Whether it’s perception or reality, it’s a rare situation Tech will enjoy while it lasts.
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