Few schedules in college football appear more treacherous than Georgia Tech’s.
Tech’s three toughest games – at Clemson, at Notre Dame and home against Georgia – might not take a backseat to anyone in FBS.
Clemson and Georgia figure to start the season in the top five, and Notre Dame could be in the top 10.
Coach Geoff Collins, forever seeking to frame anything in the most advantageous light possible, doesn’t cast aside the topic with banalities such as “taking it one game at a time.” Rather, he has communicated to his players that it’s a part of being the elite team that he envisions the Yellow Jackets becoming.
“I think college football is trending to wanting those bigger matchups, tougher schedules, all those things,” Collins said at the ACC Kickoff last week in Charlotte, N.C. “I think that’s the trend in college football as a whole. We’re already there. We just embrace it.”
Tech is one of two teams in the ACC scheduled to play both Clemson, the six-time defending conference champion, and Notre Dame, which finished fifth in the AP poll last season after making the College Football Playoff. Florida State, the other team, has the fortune of playing at least one of those games – against Notre Dame – at home. Tech will be on the road for both.
“If you’re a competitor, you love those type of things,” linebacker Ayinde Eley said. “There’s going to be countless times we go out there, and we’re going to be going against some of the best competition. Competition is king, as we say. We’re going to go out there, and we’re going to compete with anybody that shows up out there.”
But that’s hardly it for Tech. The Jackets play two more teams that ended last season in the Top 25 – North Carolina and Miami – and figure to start there, too. For good measure, the layout of the schedule doesn’t help the Jackets, either. Of those five games, two are back-to-back – Clemson and North Carolina in September – and the remaining three will be played out over a four-game stretch in November.
Even Tech’s lone FCS opponent will be no walkover. Behind coach Brian Bohannon, Kennesaw State has developed into a powerhouse, reaching the FCS playoffs in 2017-19.
As Collins begins his third season with the belief that his team is ready to take the next step after back-to-back three-win seasons, he also has tried to position the difficulty of the schedule in aspirational terms.
“We want to be one of those teams that elevates somebody else’s strength of schedule,” he said. “Badge of honor, whatever, it is what it is. We’ve just got to put the ball down and play.”
The remaining non-conference game is against Northern Illinois. The other league opponents are Pittsburgh, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Boston College. Tech is 1-6 against those five teams in Collins’ tenure.
Renowned college football analyst Phil Steele rated the schedule as the third toughest in FBS. USA Today ranked Tech’s non-conference schedule the second toughest among power-conference teams after Stanford.
Safety Juanyeh Thomas can be counted among those believing that the Jackets will be fulfilling Collins’ objective of raising opponents’ schedule strength sooner than most expect. Thomas said that Tech, which was picked to finish sixth in the seven-team Coastal Division, is an underrated commodity.
“We know what we have,” he said. “But at the end of the day, it doesn’t even matter. We have to show what we are and what we feel like we should be when we step on the field. This year should be a great year. This is the year to make some noise.”
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