Studying can wait: football frenzy at Georgia Tech

"Since Paul Johnson has been here, it's been totally different," Engineer said of Tech's matter-of-fact coach. "And now, Tech has become a national contender."

And now, many students are psyched about football almost as much as aerospace engineering, international affairs and architecture, the high-brow studies that attract the world's best and brightest. One student's enthusiasm spilled over as the Jackets players passed through campus this week, says Dean Buchan, assistant athletic director for media relations.

“The other day when players walked to practice, one of the students just stopped and yelled: ‘Great win Saturday, keep it up. Good luck this weekend!' ” he recalled. “It’s unusual for someone to stop and say that.”

Because again, this is Tech. Not Georgia, where football players are campus celebrities. Just imagine the shock when management major Rachel Beauchamp, 20, and her peers broke out in applause when fellow Jackets entered their classroom in the days following the Virginia Tech win.

Than Hunter, a 2008 aerospace engineering grad, has felt the surge of excitement, too.

“I think the campus is a little more energized. There were several years we were mediocre and the stadiums weren't filled," says Hunter, 23, from South Carolina. “[But] the goalpost hasn’t come down since my freshman year against Auburn in 2003.”

Indeed, if ticket sales, media calls, goalpost-destruction and outbursts from otherwise education-engrossed students are any indication, all eyes are on Tech as a major player in the ACC and the BCS. .

Wayne Hogan, associate athletic director for public relations, says ticket sales are up, especially among students. More than half of the student population is attending each football game, Hogan says. Directors are now allotting 9,000 tickets for students alone, up from the 8,500 usually set aside.

Hogan says Jacket fever is also buzzing beyond campus.

"I have seen a tremendous amount of interest throughout the City of Atlanta. Now you've got people talking about Georgia Tech football in shopping malls and grocery stores,” Hogan said. “Paul Johnson has certainly captured the attention of the city."

That may be part of the reason Buchan is fielding more calls from national media. Buchan says while Tech, ranked 12th in the BCS, has the same 6-1 record it had mid-season last year, optimism has soared in Johnson’s second year as coach with the team playing a tougher schedule.

“Right now Georgia Tech is considered one of the hot teams,” Buchan says. “But that can change in an instant.”

He’s right. A loss Saturday against Virginia could dash the team’s hope of playing for the ACC championship. And the Jackets haven’t won in Charlottesville since 1990.

Tech will be favored to defeat Virginia and Vanderbilt the following weekend before returning home on Nov. 7 against Wake Forest. But don’t look for a goalpost to come down again unless the Jackets defeat Georgia Thanksgiving weekend.

Beauchamp, from Dacula, was among the throng of students and alumni who descended upon the field following the Virginia Tech victory. The combination of Homecoming and the Jackets defeating a top-five team at home for the first time since 1962 got the better of her, she said, and she joined countless of her classmates who pulled down the goalpost and carried it to Tech President Dr. G.P. "Bud" Peterson’s house.

“That was the most excited people have been about football at Tech,” says A-back Roddy Jones, a redshirt sophomore. “I’ve had a number of different people tell me that storming the field and carrying the goalpost to the president’s house was one of the best experiences they’ve had at Georgia Tech.”

Former player Will Glover, who played for the Jackets from 1999-2003, says he senses the difference at games this year than in the past. He took Saturday's goalpost decimation as a sign students are eager to go berserk for their team.

"They are die-hard fans," he says. "Even though we've got a lot further to go in the season and Virginia Tech isn't our rival, they tore down the goalpost."

He hopes maybe it will change the make-up of Tech fans, composed largely of students, alumni and parents and not people without affiliation to the university. Dwarfed by Georgia in enrollment -- 20,545 students at Tech, compared to 34,885 in Athens -- Tech for decades has been unable to tap into the city's unaligned sports market.

"Living around the area, I could never understand why Georgia Tech was in Atlanta, but everybody around here has a Georgia hat," said Glover, who is from Florida. "It's not a school where everybody roots for them just because they're in the city."

But this autumn offers such a possibility. The Yellow Jackets’ next four opponents  have a combined record of 12-14. And a struggling Georgia team looms as the season finale at Bobby Dodd Stadium. A strong finish could boost Georgia Tech into a top-10 BCS ranking and a berth in the ACC championship game.

Ben Wedekind, a 22-year-old international affairs major from Florida, can't help that his mind wanders to Nov. 28 and the annual altercation the Bulldogs.

“That’s part of why people are so excited, because we appear to be so much better than Georgia this year,” he says with determination. “We’re gonna win. Oh, yeah.”

Not that Johnson allows himself the luxury foresight. The shambling man of few words is directing his team to not get caught up in the hype. But Johnson concedes that Jacket spirit is likely on the rise, even if he's too focused to sense it.

“I think when you have something to rally around, it brings people together," he said after practice this week. “Anytime you have success is more fun than the alternative.”

- Staff writer Doug Roberson contributed to this article.