2015 GEORGIA TECH SCHEDULE
Sept. 3 (Thu.) vs. Alcorn State
Sept. 12 vs. Tulane
Sept. 19 at Notre Dame
Sept. 26 at Duke
Oct. 3 vs. North Carolina
Oct. 10 at Clemson
Oct. 17 vs. Pitt
Oct. 24 vs. Florida State
Oct. 31 at Virginia
Nov. 12 (Thu.) vs. Virginia Tech
Nov. 21 at Miami
Nov. 28 vs. Georgia
For a second consecutive year, Georgia Tech and its fans will have to find something else to gripe about other than the football schedule. The ACC treated the Yellow Jackets largely well when it released the full league schedule Thursday.
The schedule has balance, avoids back-to-back conference road games and has a first for coach Paul Johnson’s seven-year tenure — no opponent will have an advantageous amount of time to rest and prepare for the Jackets.
“It was good, favorable,” said senior associate athletic director Ryan Bamford, who coordinates football scheduling. “Everything was laid out pretty well.”
The response was far different in 2013, when Bamford and coach Paul Johnson made clear their frustration with the schedule to the league, believing Tech was not treated fairly.
From the perspective of the Tech ticket office and some fans, the one flaw is that Tech will play a Thursday night home game against Virginia Tech, an ESPN game Nov. 12. The school made a request of the ACC that if it were assigned a Thursday night game, it not be Virginia Tech or Florida State, as that game likely would be a better draw on a Saturday than a Thursday night.
However, ESPN is keen on the matchup. This will be the fifth time in six seasons that the Jackets and Hokies will meet on a weeknight. It will be Tech’s 26th appearance on an ESPN Thursday night game — second most in the country behind Virginia Tech at 29 — and its 20th at Bobby Dodd Stadium, which is the most home games of any team in the country.
“It’s a little bit of a feather in our cap that they like that,” Bamford said of ESPN executives. “We’ll take it.”
Last year, the school’s request not to have any weeknight games was granted, ending a run of having at least one Thursday night or Monday night ESPN game every year, dating to 1993.
The Thursday night game against Virginia Tech, which is preceded by the only open date of the season, also means that the Jackets will have two extra days of rest in advance of the game at Miami on Nov. 21. The Hurricanes play Nov. 14 at North Carolina.
Where Tech played three or more Coastal Division games to start ACC play each of the past three seasons, the Jackets will start with a road game at Duke on Sept. 26 and a home game against North Carolina on Oct. 3, but then go to cross-division rival Clemson on Oct. 10. That date was another granted request for Tech, to either have an open date or a road game during the school’s fall break.
The Jackets will have a tough closing stretch of Virginia Tech, Miami and Georgia in consecutive weeks.
The last time that Tech had an ACC schedule in which no opponents gained an advantage with an open date was 2007, coach Chan Gailey’s final season. Virginia Tech will have an open date before its game with the Jackets, but so will Georgia Tech.
Wake Forest will face three ACC teams coming off their open dates, and Virginia Tech will play two, not counting Georgia Tech.
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