Mike Fortier played in the Orange Bowl almost 50 years ago, but the memories are still vivid. Speaking Tuesday by phone from his home in Moravian Falls, N.C.., the former Georgia Tech wide receiver recalled the game-changing play, a 94-yard touchdown run by Florida running back Larry Smith in the Gators’ 27-12 win in the 1967 Orange Bowl.
“The defense blitzed and he got through the line and went the whole way,” said Fortier, 70, retired after a career in commercial real estate. “Really, that was the whole game.”
Fortier’s memories of his time at Tech playing for coach Bobby Dodd are largely fond. The Orange Bowl loss, in the final game of his career – played in his hometown, no less – still evinces feelings of regret, however.
Said Fortier, “If I were to speak to the team, (the message) would be, ‘Play your heart out like you’ve never played before, because this is not a bowl game you want to play wishing you had won the rest of your life.’”
For No. 12 Tech, the 2014 season will be considered special no matter what happens Wednesday night in its Orange Bowl matchup with No. 7 Mississippi State. But, as Fortier would note, it still matters.
“I think it just takes the season to another level,” quarterbacks and B-backs coach Bryan Cook said. “I think to come to a game like this, and to win the Orange Bowl, it’s something not a lot of Georgia Tech teams can say. That would put a stamp on this season that everybody would be real proud of.”
A win over the Bulldogs would complete the season at 11-3 and, historically speaking, set this team apart in a number of ways. It would be just the fifth 11-win season in team history. (The Jackets played their first 11-game season in 1936. By winning percentage, an 11-3 record would tie for the fourth-best since Dodd’s retirement following the aforementioned 1967 Orange Bowl loss.)
It would be the first win in a major bowl since the 1956 Sugar Bowl and just the fifth time since 1956 that the Jackets finished the season with a win over Georgia followed by a bowl victory, and first since 1998.
The present-day significance carries its own weight.
With an 11-win season to go with the 11-3 season in 2009, Tech could join elite company in the following regard. The following power conference teams have had at least two 11-win seasons in the past six years: Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, LSU, Michigan State, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Oregon, South Carolina, Stanford, Virginia Tech and Wisconsin. Nary a pretender in the group.
A win over the Bulldogs would give the Jackets’ season added heft. Mississippi State spent five weeks as the top-ranked team in the Associated Press poll and, of course, hail from the vaunted SEC. Coach Paul Johnson’s mission to poke holes in the perception of the SEC as an unrivaled league would get a boost with a takedown of Mississippi State.
With no other bowl games in the time slot, the Jackets, identified so tightly with their spread-option offense, can perhaps gain converts and fans to the unorthodox style while at the same time demonstrate that there is more to the team than its ground game.
It will be a chance to make an impression upon casual observers in metro Atlanta, people who might be influenced to become fans with an entertaining win. Dismissing Tech as an also-ran in a second-rate league that doesn’t win bowl games would be a more difficult endeavor with wins over Georgia, Clemson and an Orange Bowl title over Mississippi State. All three could finish in the top 15, pending Georgia’s result in Tuesday’s Belk Bowl.
Tech will take a financial hit because it has sold only about 5,000 tickets out of its 15,000-ticket allotment, a shortfall caused in part by a soft re-sale market in which tickets were going for less than $4 online Tuesday. However, athletic director Mike Bobinski said he expected that the game could draw viewership similar to the ACC Championship game, watched by 10.2 million.
“That’s pretty good stuff for Georgia Tech, for our program,” Bobinski said. “There’s some benefits to being here that don’t show up on the financial statement, but I think they’re real and they really matter.”
From a recruiting standpoint, Tech’s season has undoubtedly firmed the plans of players committed to the 2015 class and caught the attention of younger players.
“If you can get a good string of things going for a couple years, that’s when you kind of feel the residual effects of it,” wide receivers coach Buzz Preston said.
Wednesday, the Jackets can start assembling their string.
However, the meaning of Wednesday’s game may be felt most deeply just before the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve in Tech’s locker room in Sun Life Stadium, as the 2014 Jackets remove their pads for the last time, some of them for good. It will be the final memory to take from the season, one that, as Fortier will attest, will remain for decades.
“It would mean everything,” B-back Zach Laskey said. “It would be a signature win to end a career. Something that a lot of people can’t say is you went out a winner. That’s what it would mean to me.”
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