Why Did Georgia Tech Football Leave the SEC?

today we know Georgia Tech as a middle to top-tier team in the Atlantic Coast Conference but what a lot of modern-day college football fans don't know is that Georgia Tech used to be an SEC powerhouse back before they left the conference in the mid 1960s why did they leave that conference and go independent and ultimately end up in the ACC well that's what I'm gonna talk about in this video hi my name is Dustin thank you for clicking on this video and before we talk about why Georgia Tech actually left the SEC let's talk about a little bit of the history of the Southeastern Conference leading up to 1964 so the Southeastern Conference was founded in 1932 with 13 original teams those teams being Alabama Auburn Florida Georgia Georgia Tech Kentucky LSU Mississippi State Ole Miss Suwannee Tennessee Tulane and Vanderbilt now Suwannee the University of the South actually de-emphasized athletics in 1940 withdrawing from the SEC and leaving the Southeastern Conference with 12 teams meaning that if they knew then what we know now they could have just started the conference championship in 1940 actually they could have done it at their inception in 1932 but with uneven divisions now by the mid-1960s Georgia Tech football was in a very good spot from 1951 to 1963 Georgia Tech went 135 and won the one of course being the tie back then and they had winning records over every single team in the SEC over Alabama Florida Georgia all of them save a 6 6 & 1 tie with Auburn their big rival at the time as well as Georgia and a Mississippi State team that somehow the Yellow Jackets were in the same conference with for 31 years and never actually played a conference game against them which is weird during that same 13-year period Georgia Tech only played Ole Miss in bowl games never in a conference game and they only played Vanderbilt three times this will unfortunately become pretty relevant later on that 13 year window leading up to the 1964 SEC Winter Meetings also yielded one of them impressive six years runs in college football history as Georgia Tech from 1951 to 1956 finished five seven and three yielded two SEC championships back at a time where those were a lot harder to come by you could argue based on the level of performance around the entire conference they had won national championship and they went to and won six straight bowl games including five we now refer to as new year six bowls now even though the NCAA was officially founded in 1910 it certainly did not have the power that it does today a lot of powers were relegated to the conference's in the same way that in the early days of America the federal government had limited power and the states had more power that's kind of flipped on its head now and I think in a lot of ways in college football it's the same way the NCAA has a lot more weight now than it did even 50 years ago and in the mid-1960s the SEC had what they called the 140 role now what the 140 rule was is between the football and basketball programs arguably the two biggest programs at most universities especially in the FBS ranks the total number of scholarships between those two programs could equal 140 and they could limit 45 scholarships per year so for instance if LSU wanted to give five basketball scholarships that year that means they could give forty to the football team they wanted to give eight they can only give 37 to the football team and as long as the total number of athletes that have a scholarship between the football and basketball programs did not exceed a hundred and forty total they could do this year after year after year now unlike how a lot of recruiting classes work nowadays where maybe one year a school gets a bigger recruiting class maybe 25 26 27 players the next year maybe to get with 21 22 depending on how transfers work and all that back then coaches did not care especially in the SEC so what they would do is every year if there was a couple of players that underperformed and they found a player coming in high school that was more highly recruited they would just cut the underperforming player and they would fill their spot on the roster with these brand-new freshmen the sophomores that were coming in and cut the scholarship out from under these kids to his credit Georgia Tech head coach Bobby Dodd yes the same one that the stadium is now named after who was also the athletic director at the time said that if a student-athlete underperformed under his watch it was his fault and the Georgia Tech coaching staffs fault for miss evaluating him he wanted his kids to get degrees so he refused to cut underperforming players in order to sign more highly touted prospects coming out a year or two after they get on campus other coaches weren't as scrupulous as that scrupulous scrupulous other coaches didn't care about that as much now Bobby Dodd didn't just want to abolish the 1:40 rule out of the purity and goodness of his heart it did also really put Georgia Tech in an incredible recruiting disadvantage you had these teams like Alabama and Auburn and Georgia and Florida and Tennessee who could just continuously pour in five what we would now consider five and four-star recruits while Georgia Tech may have players that underdeveloped or underperformed and they refuse to cut them Bobby Dodd saw that as a real realistic problem as did Georgia Tech president Edwin Harrison at the time they proposed an end to the 1:40 rule at the 1962 SEC Winter Meetings and it didn't even come up to a vote the following year in 1963 they proposed a vote and it failed to pass at least six to six tie after the 1963 Winter Meetings the two decided mutually that if this one 40 rule did not pass if they did not eliminate it the next year at the 1964 meetings they would withdraw Georgia Tech from the Southeastern Conference now some in the media namely the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution yes they were two different papers during that time period began writing articles and headlines that implied that Tech and Dodd really just wanted to go independent regardless of whether the 140 vote passed or not and they were just using this as an excuse to backpedal out of the conference whether that was true or not it doesn't seem to have been true but I guess there's no real way to know the SEC certainly did not want Toulouse Georgia Tech and Bobby Dodd and Edwin Harrison pretty much gambled on that that the SEC would rather have Georgia Tech than the 1:40 rule but these articles started to have some murmurings behind the scenes that maybe they would rule they would vote in favor of keeping the 1:40 rule just to teach dodd and georgia tech a lesson that he couldn't just take his ball and go home if he didn't get every single thing he wanted now Dodd and tech also were not exactly making any friends within the conference namely the Western schools who Dodd refused to play like the Mississippi schools I named earlier Dodd just didn't want to go out west and play those teams didn't see it as a recruiting advantage he didn't like the travel he would rather stay in home in the the Greater Atlanta area go in the Gainesville in Athens and Knoxville and Tuscaloosa and Auburn then to go to Baton Rouge or Ted you know Nashville or you know anywhere in Mississippi at all apparently a lot of programs in the conference also didn't particularly like the way Georgia Tech was branding themselves they viewed themselves kind of as the Notre Dame of the south you know they were in the big city of Atlanta they focused on academics over athletics more than the other schools they like to brag about you know a hell of an engineer and and being better than all the other schools because they were in the metropolis of Atlanta and a lot of the more rules were rural schools did not exactly like that case being made that somehow Georgia Tech was more elite than them in some way also Dodd in Georgia Tech were given these programs and the conference and ultimatum and who doesn't just love getting old tomatoes Tex increasing rivalry with arguably the biggest SEC program of all time and Alabama and head coach Bear Bryant also did them no favors in 1961 Alabama allegedly purposely knocked out a Georgia Tech player and what is now referred to as the whole training incident and that player ultimately had to forego his entire playing career it ended his career basically on a cheap shot in response to this Dada Georgia Tech cancelled the conference series which is crazy I didn't know you could just do that against you against Alabama rather and that Cirie's have been played almost annually since the turn of the century for over 60 years they played almost every single year and head coach Bear Bryant was not thrilled about this at all being in Atlanta being neighbors and states great recruiting game good rivalry but despite all this Bear Bryant and Alabama still wanted Georgia Tech to stay in the SEC the 1964 SEC Winter Meetings officially got underway on the evening of Wednesday January 22nd 1964 this was more of a formality where everybody got together had a couple of drinks between coaches and athletic directors and just kind of caught up and was chummy before the real talks began on Thursday going into these meetings Dodd and Harrison felt fairly confident that the 1:40 rule would pass it would be abolished and Georgia Tech would remain in the SEC they wanted it to apparently the fan base was pretty sure it was gonna happen media reports coming out Thursday what early dawn that that everything seemed to be going to plan but as Thursday morning turned into Thursday afternoon which turned into Thursday night and evening the talks seemed to turn to calling the Bluff of seeing what would happen if they push back against Dodd and Harrison and actually voted to keep the SEC 140 rule in place it is important to note here that head coach Bear Bryant for Alabama who wanted to abolish the 1:40 rule if it meant keeping Georgia Tech in the conference was not in the SEC winter meetings but Alabama President Frank Rose was he wanted to keep the 1:40 rule and he did not care if Georgia Tech left the conference or not by the end of Thursday night it had become pretty clear to Edwin Harrison and Bobby Dodd that the 1:40 rule was going to stay put on the morning of Friday January 24 1964 Georgia Tech University president Edwin Harrison announced to the entire room of SEC athletic directors and ad coaches that effective June 30th 1964 roughly six months later Georgia Tech would be leaving the Southeastern Conference and on July 1st 1964 the Yellow Jackets began life independent after this announcement the other 11 SEC institutions officially voted on the SEC 140 rule and they voted 11 to nothing to keep it immediately after this announcement and the vote it appeared parties within the SEC officials and coaches were shocked that SEC had lost Georgia Tech that they had decided to defect from the conference that even at that time was built as one of the strongest in the entire country and they were doing so well in the SEC at the time and there was fears about losing the city of Atlanta and what it would mean for such an integral team a founding member that's Georgia Tech this is not Suwannee we're talking about this is not Tulane who would leave two years later this is Georgia Tech they are a flag bearer of the conference at the time and they left and the conference was shocked Georgia Tech fan base and alumni on the other hand were pretty pleased with the move and loved the idea of dodd taking the reins and putting Georgia Tech's future you know on his back and and showing them what for and a lot of his supporters were citing the phrase in Dodd We Trust so how does this move look 55 years later well I think we can all safely say the SEC is doing just fine in the 55 football season since the 1963 season Georgia Tech's last in the conference there have been multiple national championships because that's the way things worked before the BCS but SEC schools have claimed at least a share of 29 of those 55 national championships and the schools involved claim 20 of those 29 as for Georgia Tech it's arguably the worst athletic mistake that's been made in college football ever maybe the ramblin wreck would go on to be independent in football for 19 seasons and their last 19 seasons as an SEC program they finished 142 56 and 7 overall 19 years as an independent 104 105 that means they lost an average of two more games per year as an independent than their last almost two decades as a conference member in the era of Independence Georgia Tech only went to six and finished in the final AP poll only three times remember they had won six straight bowl games from 51 to 56 five of which we now consider new year six and now in those 19 years they only went to three or six bowl games and only we're in the final AP poll three times that is quite a drop-off and coach Bobby Dodd was still a part of this team into the independent run but more importantly they lost one of their biggest rivals yes they still played the Georgia Bulldogs every single year but the rivalry with Auburn at the time was right up there believe it or not with the rivalry with Georgia Auburn even had a an annual event called the rec tech parade and though they still played into the 80s that rivalry certainly lost its luster and they haven't played very often since there's also a monetary loss that Tech took for leaving the SEC for instance in 1963 their last season as a conference member Georgia Tech averaged about 47,000 500 people in attendance for each home game last season in 2018 it was nearly 4,500 less I'm not very smart when it comes to economics but I'm assuming that if you regularly had teams like Alabama and LSU and Tennessee and Florida coming to your home Stadium versus Duke in Pittsburgh and Virginia pretty sure that would help the attendance out a lot Georgia Tech probably could have even expanded their stadium by now a lot bigger than what it is now but I actually think the biggest loss for Georgia Tech in this entire thing is their loss of control and influence in the city of Atlanta the irony being that they left because they thought they would be fine on their own because of where they were they ended up losing a lot of the influence in that city now I've been to Atlanta dozens and dozens of times for sporting events for Georgia Tech football games for concerts my best friend lives there so I go down there all the time and I feel like I see Auburn Flags Alabama Flags Georgia flags all the time on cars stickers decals I don't feel like I see that many Georgia Tech thing I just don't see that much influence in the city because they don't have as much alumni as some of the state schools and you have transplants not only from around the South but around the country as Atlanta has continued to grow and grow and grow and become the first true southern metropolis since the 1960s when Georgia Tech last had their big rainin influence in the SEC tech leaving the SEC in 1964 also could not have come at a worse time for them because two years later in 1966 the Braves and Falcons both became franchises in Atlanta as well and pretty much dominated the entire area as far as sports goes this is all while the SEC continues to have an unavoidable impact in the Atlanta area the conference championship game has been there since 1994 they consistently have the Peach Bowl there that has an SEC tie-in they have had the SEC you know chick-fil-a kickoff has been an SEC team I think every single year since they've been there Georgia's there always and that's now canceled Ennis considered their home turf more than Georgia Tech's home turf which is very weird because you can like it Georgia Tech is on North Avenue it's in Atlanta and shirred Georgia Tech has once again kind of risen to national prominence kind of in peaks and valleys at times and they've picked up a couple of really great rivals in Clemson which they've played even back when they were SEC opponents or when Georgia Tech was in the SEC and Virginia Tech and both of those are good solid rivalries since Georgia Tech joined as the eighth member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1983 but it certainly doesn't replace Auburn or Alabama or Tennessee that they used to have big rivalries with and since joining the ACC sure Georgia Tech won the 1990 UPI national championship and three ACC titles and have been in some really important games and bowl games but imagine if they were still in the SEC what their influence would be what they would be able to have provided to that conference the money they would have gotten from the SEC network and from the bowl tie-ins and maybe a couple of playoff appearances if they would have continued to build on the success and the traditions from the 50s and 60s and moved onward were games against Auburn and Florida and Georgia and Alabama and LSU if these teams have risen to prominence over the years iron sharpens iron and I think Georgia Tech would have just been better and now that we know about the 85 scholarship limit in the NC double-a the move out of the SEC over the 1:40 rule seems pretty short-sighted so that's my take on Georgia Tech leaving the SEC in 1964 let me know down in the comments section do you believe it was a mistake maybe you think Georgia Tech staying in the SE SEC would have had you know maybe they would have been buried under the avalanche of teams that we've seen over the last two decades maybe they would have risen with them maybe the ACC was better let me know your thoughts down below and did you know that Georgia Tech used to be in the SEC maybe you did maybe it didn't I thought this was an interesting story about college football to tell so let me know your thoughts down below in the comment section thank you so much for watching hope you enjoyed the video if you did give it a thumbs up you can click the circle right there in order to subscribe or check out other videos over there to the right the YouTube has suggested for you thank you so much for watching and as always until next time

Channel: College Football Chronicle

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Keywords: College football, cfb lifer, College football lifer, ncaa football, espn, conference, football, college football analysis, bowl games, college football playoff, cfb chronicle, college football chronicle, why did gt leave sec, georgia tech football, why did georgia tech leave sec, georgia tech yellow jackets, college football traditions

Id: TcfB19kh1iY

Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 01 2020