re: I feel sorry for the Old SEC members

quote:

---

Every Saturday was Christmas this year.

---

quote:

---

On the morning of the rule-change debate, Dodd was quoted in The Atlanta Journal. “If the Southeastern does not throw out the 140 Rule, then I will recommend to our president and to our athletic board that we get out of the conference. This is not an ultimatum or anything resembling an ultimatum. The fact is that this is a bad rule, and we cannot live with it any longer.”

---

quote:

---

Sports columnist Outlar quoted an SEC delegate as saying, “I know some athletic directors consider Tech’s position as a challenge. If we had voted a few weeks ago, there’s no doubt that the rule would have been rescinded. Now I’m truly convinced that the league won’t change the rule. I know some schools have changed their votes in the last few weeks.”

---

quote:

---

Some wondered if Tech was just looking for an excuse to leave the conference. Benny Marshall’s column in The Birmingham News reported that one observer said, “What it sounds like to me is that somebody is saying, ‘If you don’t play like I want to play, I’ll pick up my marbles and go home.’” Marshall quoted another, “Coach Dodd wants out. Dodd might figure that the hostility he can arouse with this approach gives him ammunition for doing what he badly wants to do, go independent.”

---

quote:

---

But Dodd did have his enemies. The western schools in the conference resented Dodd for refusing to play them. Alabama had no love for Dodd or Georgia Tech. The Alabama series had recently been canceled because of the Holt-Graning incident. Most sources agree that Tech’s Chick Graning had been a victim of a deliberate cheap shot in the ’61 game, resulting in a broken jaw, the end of his playing days and a lot of bad blood between Tech and ’Bama.

Of the other 11 SEC schools, Tech was currently only scheduling home and away games with five of them. This was by Dodd’s design. Many competitors viewed Georgia Tech and Dodd as elitists. The Birmingham News’ Alf Van Hoose wrote, “Since Georgia Tech hasn’t been the chummiest sort recently in the fraternity, spiteful human nature reared its ugly head.”

An earlier Atlanta Constitution column by Outlar reinforced this opinion. “It’s no secret that some of the brethren resent Georgia Tech’s ultimatum. And Bobby Dodd and the Engineers haven’t conducted their campaign in a diplomatic manner,” he wrote.

The Atlanta Constitution concurred, “It’s common talk that some of the league’s western members hold no fondness for Georgia Tech. There are reports of ‘alignment’ voting rather than at all times votes on the basis of issue.”

---

quote:

---

We recruited Darwin Holt when I was still at A&M. He was just a skinny little old linebacker then. When he dropped out of A&M after we'd gone to Alabama he wrote and asked if he could come, too. He had to make up some grades at a junior college and he got sick, and when he came in he was down to about 145 pounds and looked like a hant. We took him anyway, and his first year he played very little, but in his senior year, when we won the national championship, he was terrific and helped win a lot of ball games.

Well, I know I've said it a jillion times, that you have to outmean people, and Darwin was certainly aggressive, but he knew what I thought about penalties. There's no doubt he fouled Chick Graning and the officials should have penalized us, which they didn't, and I probably would have disciplined him my own way if those Atlanta sportswriters hadn't set out to crucify him. After that I wouldn't have done anything if they had burned the university down.

Bobby Dodd might have made an effort to stop it if he had known how it was going to be blown out of proportion. He told me two or three times before that if we didn't stop beating him he was going to quit playing us, and I can understand that. The Holt-Graning incident gave him the out,and I think he would tell you so. Maybe he would have had a problem dropping us from the schedule if this had not happened, because Georgia Tech-Alabama was a big game.

---

quote:

---

Well, you talk about irony. What Holt did to Graning was child's play next to what that big No. 88 did to our All-America guard, Wayne Freeman, in our game with Tech two years later. You want to see something vicious, you look at the films of that game. It was the same year Tech's other end resigned from the team after kicking that Auburn boy in the head. The game is over, we've got it won 27-11 and on the last play we have the ball and this guy comes running several yards and hits Freeman with an elbow. Freeman is just standing there relaxed, and I guarantee you I was afraid he had killed him. My coaches wanted to blast them on it, but I said no.

---

quote:

---

nd, as you know, they ended the series after the 1964 game, which our boys won 24-7,

---

quote:

---

It's just as well, too, because sooner or later I was going to get killed by a flying whiskey bottle in Grant Field. The visiting team sits right in front of the students, and on four or five occasions whiskey bottles were thrown at me. I was hit twice, and one bottle went right by my ear, right out on the field, and nobody did a thing about it. In 1964, when we went down there for the last time, just for the psychology of it I wore a helmet onto the field before the game. Tonto Coleman asked me what the helmet was for, and I told him about those whiskey bottles. And he was very upset about it.

---

quote:

---

Every Saturday was Christmas this year.

---

quote:

---

However, in 1975, there appeared to be a making up of sorts between Coach Bryant and Coach Dodd. Bryant told Dodd that Alabama would personally sponsor Georgia Tech getting back into the SEC. While Dodd was grateful, he stated that the Mississippi schools would never allow Tech back into the SEC. Why the Mississippi schools, you ask? Well that begins another interesting chapter in this story ( I told you it was twisted! ).

Apparently, during this period in SEC history, teams were not required by the conference to play certain schools like they are now. During the 30 years that Georgia Tech was in the SEC, let's look at their history with the Mississippi schools.

Ole Miss and Georgia Tech played in 1946, in Atlanta, and in 1953, in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl. Against Mississippi State? Between 1933 and 1963, the Bulldogs and the Yellow Jackets never played a game against each other. According to legend, Dodd felt that Georgia Tech was too good to have to travel to places like Oxford and Starkville to play football games, so he never would agree to play Mississippi schools.

From the history that has been presented above, it now becomes obvious why the Mississippi schools would block Georgia Tech, even when Bear Bryant was willing to give in. Finally, in 2008, Georgia Tech and Mississippi State squared off, ironically enough in Atlanta, with Georgia Tech winning the game 38-7 in the first meeting between the schools since 1929. In 2009, Georgia Tech Ground out a 42 - 31 win in Starkville. This was the Jackets first ever football trip to the state of Mississippi. There are no future plans to play Mississippi State again at this time.

What about Ole Miss and Georgia Tech? They haven't played since a 41-18 Rebel win in the 1971 Peach Bowl and are not listed on each other's future schedules at this point.

---