Review the Rivalry: Notre Dame Fightin' Irish
by BirdGT on Aug 17, 2011 1:00 PM EDT
in Georgia Tech Football
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The second prominent series with Notre Dame was during Tech's secession from the SEC. Tech played Notre Dame 12 times over a 15 year span running from 1967-1981 and sadly Tech only won one bout with the Irish in those 12 sordid affairs. In the average Tech fan's mind, there are three famous games from this stretch: the Rudy game, the victory in 1976, and the 1980 tie. The Rudy game had a whole movie dedicated to it. I don't think we need to really go into its gory details. The 1976 game was the perfect payback for the 1975 disaster.
Regular starter Mike Jolly was injured so Gary Lanier got the start in 1976's homecoming game in front of 50,079 Georgia Tech fans. Tech hadn't lost a homecoming contest in 17 years and proceeded to show the Irish a thing or two about running the football. Tech only attempted one pass but ran the ball 50 times for 368 yards over the Fightin' Irish machine. Bob Bowen, Lucius Sanford, and Mike Blanton led the way for the Tech D as they stifled a typically potent Irish offense holding the little green men to 178 yards of total offense. Despite trailing 14-3 early in the game, the Ramblin' Wreck ended up defeating the Irish on the legs of Gary Lanier 23-14.
"I could live to be a thousand years old and never be prouder of a group of players than I am of these today..." - November 6, 1976... Pepper RogersWhat Makes the Series a Rivalry: Cultural clash. The Irish hail from a Northern, Catholic private institution. Georgia Tech is a Southern, public school. A majority of the games were played during a period where Southern pride was taken to sometimes extreme levels. The most public incident involved a Dan Devine/Joe Montana-led squad running up the score on Pepper Rogers. The 1978 Tech student section felt like throwing fish (per tradition) and the story hit the national press like a hot tamale.
Rudy. Mentioning the movie Rudy is a surefire way to get any good Tech fan riled up. A bumbling fool stumbled his way into a walk-on role and has been sapping the story ever since. Tech's Rudy Allen (the guy that gets sacked in the movie) has a much better story of rising from the ashes to be one of Tech's first African American starting QB's and eventually becoming a successful Georgia Tech graduate.
Personal Rivalry: Four words: Pretty boy Brady Quinn. The following line from the 2006 home opener stat sheet is why I cannot stand Notre Dame:
QUINN, B. rush for 3 yards to the GT15 (Wheeler, P), PENALTY GT personal foul (Wheeler, P) 8 yards to the GT7, 1ST DOWN UND.Notre Dame and the referees pulled a fast one on us. Little did we know that you aren't allowed to knock players out of bounds. This penalty setup the Irish game winning TD. Pat Nix and Reggie Ball ensured that GT's next three drives amounted to only 52 yards and zero points.
Anyone out there have any good stories from the old GT-ND games?
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FIRST
The Church of Paul Johnson - There's not much to it outside of whooping ass and giving haters the finger. To HELL With georgie!
1976 I was there
1980 I was there
1980>1976
by DressHerInWhiteAndGold on Aug 17, 2011 1:25 PM EDT reply actions
I thought all this
Was a clash of who gets to wear gold helmets. Somehow I truly feel the hate in this rivalry despite only seeing the home-and-away series a couple years ago and having no sense of the history of it. My most vivid memory was the 33-3 “Stomping in South Bend” when the Irish were so hyped going into that game. Or at least the Irish fans I knew were way overconfident. They got Phillip Wheeler’d hard! Lo and behold the Irish had a terrible season and weren’t really heard from again until…maybe sometime this season if new coach Brian Kelly can turn them into Cincy (except with a name and logo people have seen before.)
Agree
I agree with you on the personal rivalry…that was a BS call!!!
This was the rivalry that fired my imagination as a child
First there were the games that relatives told me about that occurred either before I was born or when I was a toddler. In 1953 Notre Dame snapped Tech’s several season winning streak by winning in South Bend 27-14. Tech hung in there until a bad snap into the end zone on a Tech punt turned the tide. Notre Dame’s coach had a heart attack and Tech faithful said Notre Dame should have played the 1952 undefeated Tech National Champions -in Atlanta.
Next came the 1959 game, again played in South Bend, which Tech won 14-10. A friend of my father’s, who attended that game, described what it was like to stand up and cheer in a sea of Irish Catholics when Tech scored on a run in which “the line opened up a hole so big you could have driven a truck through it.”
As a child my first experience with Notre Dame was in 1969, the next time the two teams played. Unfortunately, Tech had lost its star running back, Lenny Snow, the previous week against Miami.
(big side note comes here. Lenny Snow was one of Tech’s greatest running backs, and I believe he could play
today. With Tech playing even with Miami in the first half, he received a vicious hit on a kick off, that today is against the rules, and suffered a broken leg. Even though he was a draft choice of Minnesota he never played football again due to the leg injury. Tech went through a succession of second and third string backs before playing
Notre Dame the next week)
Even as Tech was being slaughtered by Notre Dame I was inspired by the shear storied tradition that was bound up on the field that day, including hearing the two most famous fight songs in college football. Some running back, a fourth stringer, broke off a 50 yard run and I was proud.
I saw the 1969 game in which Tech was way over matched but ended up letting Notre Dame know they were not going down easy. A defensive back named Ford returned an interception 102 yards for a touchdown as Tech began to fight back. Though losing 38-20, Tech held Notre Dame to 7 points in the second half. I have never been so proud of a team in a losing effort as I was in that game.
Then there were the games Tech should have won if not for “The Luck of The Irish.” Kind of reminds me of something a Miami coach once said about Notre Dame to his team after a hard loss. “Don’t ever leave a game with Notre Dame up to the refs.”
In my mind the following close losses to Notre Dame fit that description: 1979, 1997, 2006
by Atlanta's original team on Aug 17, 2011 2:27 PM EDT reply actions
That 1979 game really hurt
Joe Montana was finally gone. I listened to that one on the radio. With Joe Montana finally gone we had a good shot, and we really should have won that one.
+1
For Lenny Snow remembrance….
by DressHerInWhiteAndGold on Aug 17, 2011 7:27 PM EDT up reply actions
SI, 9/12/65
To hear bass fisherman and sometimes Coach Bobby Dodd tell it, sophomore Tailback Lenny Snow of Georgia Tech may be the best thing to hit the South since TVA. Snow is so good that the normally loquacious Dodd has had to force himself to keep his mouth shut. He has not always succeeded. One man Snow reminds Dodd of is Frank Sinkwich, Georgia’s alltime All-America. “I don’t say he’s another Sinkwich yet,” says Dodd, who plainly thinks Snow could be more. “Let’s just say he does some things that remind me of Sinkwich.” Other coaches who watched Snow in spring practice games, where he rushed 494 yards in 82 carries for seven touchdowns, usually against Tech’s No. 1 and No. 2 defenses, say simply that Snow is the best running back in the South today. A 6-foot-1 183-pounder from Daytona Beach, Fla., Snow played fullback on the Yellow Jackets’ freshman team and averaged 5.7 yards a carry in four games. Since Tech switched to a winged-T, flip-flop offense this season, Snow will be the starting tailback and will handle the ball in 75% to 80% of Tech’s running plays. Speedy (he ran the 100 in 9.9 in high school), aggressive and spectacular in the open field, Snow is that rare man among runners: he does everything—block, catch passes and play defense (he starred as a corner linebacker in the Florida high school All-Star game his senior year). “Snow’s strongest point as a runner,” says Tech Assistant Coach John Bell, “is his ability to find a soft spot in the defense. He has such fine reflexes, he can fall into the slightest gap and still manage to keep his balance and drive. If a hole is closed, he can slide to either side.”
Floridians bemoaning the fact that Snow was spirited out of state to play college ball will find some solace in watching Dick Trapp, a Bradenton native, catch passes for the University of Florida this season. Trapp, a 6-foot-1 186-pounder with good hands, exceptional speed (he has run the 100 in 9.8) and silky moves, just about earned a spot as the starting split end or flanker back in Coach Ray Graves’ pro-type offense with his play in last spring’s intrasquad game. He caught five passes, the last a one-hander for a 56-yard touchdown.
The top sophomore lineman in the South could well be North Carolina State’s homegrown Dennis Byrd. Six-foot-5, 240 pounds and still growing (he gained an inch and 10 pounds last year), Byrd played linebacker on defense and tackle on offense for his championship Lincolnton ( N.C.) High School team but will start at defensive tackle this season at State.
by DressHerInWhiteAndGold on Aug 17, 2011 7:31 PM EDT up reply actions
I also remember reading the Dodd quotes about Snow.
by Atlanta's original team on Aug 18, 2011 7:46 AM EDT up reply actions
Like Auburn...
…this isn’t a rivalry to me just because I wasn’t around for the games of yesteryear and GT plays Notre Dame only rarely these days.
by Dive Keep and Pitch on Aug 17, 2011 4:24 PM EDT reply actions
1980
After the losses to Duke and Tulane it was pretty obvious that Tech football had fallen on hard times (although it would take another half season before we realized that the Jacket’s had entered the darkest period in their history).
The one thing Bill Curry and his staff could do well was prepare for whatever a team was doing when they arrived. Tech often made it a game through the first half. What he and his staff couldn’t do was counter the changes the other teams made during the break.
And they did this with Notre Dame, who was undefeated and number one in the nation when they visited Grant Field.
Curry and company found a “tell” while watching film. From this they could tell exactly what Notre Dame was going to do.
The Fighting Irish had been averaging almost thirty points coming into this game. After this game they were lucky to score ten.
Tech dominating their offense in the first half. The score was 3-0 Tech at the break, and we were delirious with joy. I was in the band, and we went out on the field before the Notre Dame football players had left the sideline. We were stupidly taunting them, pointing at the scoreboard. We were lucky no one got hurt.
That field goal in the first half was all that Tech could manage (Notre Dame’s defense was still awesome. Notre Dame didn’t adjust, and they couldn’t move the ball. They finally got a field goal to tie, and that’s the way it ended.
Everybody watched film of this game, and Notre Dame’s offensive was dead. They had been averaging almost thirty points coming into this game. After this game they were lucky to score ten.
To add insult to injury we probably showed Georgia how to shut them down. The “Dawgs” beat Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl to win the national championship.
(The next year started with an exciting win over Alabama in Birmingham, which convinced us that 1980 had been a fluke. For a week or two. Loses to Florida and Memphis state made it clear that the Notre Dame and Alabama games had been the flukes.)
Yeah, that was Grizzard's "God is a bulldog" game...
Grizzard wrote a column saying that God is a bulldog because Tech knocked ND out of #1, helping georgie, but didn’t get a win out of it.
Side question: What was worse—Curry’s first few years or B—- L——’s reign?
Curry, Definitely
Lewis got fired half-way through his one-win season. Curry started off with two one-win seasons and would still be the Tech coach if Alabama hadn’t hired him away.
That’s why I no longer hate Alabama.
Also, let us not forget (old what’s his name) who was a tight end pressed into service as quarterback for that game. Wasn’t it Ken Wisenhunt?
by Atlanta's original team on Aug 18, 2011 7:49 AM EDT up reply actions
Speaking of Tulane...
…that would make for a good rivalry story, considering we both left the $EC at about the same time, had a long-running series until ACC scheduling demands killed it, and have the two home-and-homes coming up the next few years.
The best thing about maintaining the Tulane series
was the trips to New Orleans every other year. The games sucked, but New Orleans was awesome.
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