Georgia Tech has announced a home and home series with the University of South Florida set for the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Georgia Tech will play host to USF on Sept. 11, 2021, with USF hosting Tech the following year on Sept. 10.
Georgia Tech AD Mike Bobinski had this to say via RamblinWreck.com: "Adding USF gives us good regional games against a historically strong program. It continues to solidify our scheduling model of playing quality non-conference opponents, in addition to our eight-game ACC schedule."
I'm really excited for this series for one reason, that by the time these games occur, probably will have zero effect on the game. That is their head coach.
Willie Taggart is one of my favorite head coaches in all of college football right now. After graduating from Western Kentucky, Taggart continued to coach there for a few more years in a few different capacities. In his time at a coach there, he met an up-and-coming coach that most of y'all have probably heard of: Jim Harbaugh
The two seemed to work well enough together that, in 2007 when Harbaugh took the head coaching job at Stanford, he brought Taggart in to be the RB coach.
In his three years at Stanford, I suppose one could come to the conclusion that Taggart did pretty well there. His biggest accomplishment at Stanford was his development of Doak Walker Award winner and Heisman runner-up Toby Gerhart.
After his time at Stanford, Taggart accepted the head coaching job at his alma mater. In just his second season, Taggart led the Hilltoppers to a 7-1 conference record, but lost all of his OOC games. The next year, Taggart acquired a marquee win over in-state rival Kentucky which put Taggart on the map as one of the up-and-coming head coaches.
The following year, Taggart accepted the head coaching job at USF. His tenure there has been a little bit rockier than that at WKU. In his total two years at USF, Taggart has only managed to accumulate five wins. There are definitely a lot of highs and lows in his tenure. The lowest came in his first game, though, when he lost to FCS McNeese State 21-53.
One of the higher moments came earlier this season in USF's homecoming game against ECU. The Bulls kept it very interesting for the first half of that game, but the Pirates shut them out in the second half, winning by a final score of 28-17.
He still has a long way to go before he is ready to take on a major head coaching job, but I believe he can definitely make it one day.
Now, whether or not he'll still be at USF when they come to the Flats in 2021 is still up for discussion, but regardless of that, this should still be an excellent opportunity for Tech to showcase itself to south Florida high schools.
How do y'all feel about this matchup in a few years?