Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate is about to get another chapter written this Friday night. For the first time in over two decades, both No. 4 Georgia and No. 23 Georgia Tech are ranked when they meet in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. UGA comes in as the heavy favorite, but the Bulldogs know better than to take this rivalry lightly, especially after last year’s absolute thriller that needed eight overtimes to settle. 

This year, two Heisman candidates, Georgia’s Gunner Stockton and Georgia Tech’s Haynes King, will lead their teams. The Bulldogs will look to extend their streak to eight consecutive wins in the rivalry. Meanwhile, the Yellow Jackets will try to recover from last week’s 42-28 home loss to Pittsburgh. The stakes are high, the emotions are raw, and the history between these two programs runs deeper and stranger than most fans realize.​

Fact 1 – The rivalry was born from heckling, and it spawned one of college football’s most defiant fight songs

You can trace the roots of Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate all the way back to November 4, 1893. Georgia Tech traveled to Athens for the first meeting between the schools. Led by Leonard Wood, Georgia Tech won that inaugural matchup 28-6, but what happened after the game might have been more important than the score itself. 

According to school lore, both teams accused the other of using “ringers,” professional players mixed in with students to win the game. Georgia fans harassed and heckled the visiting Tech supporters so mercilessly throughout the game that it left a lasting impression. Georgia fans allegedly chased the Tech team back to their train after the loss. Tech fans were so incensed by the treatment they received that it directly inspired the creation of Georgia Tech’s fight song, “Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech,” which includes the now-famous battle cry: “To hell with Georgia!”

The song was originally written around 1893 and first appeared in print in Tech’s 1908 yearbook, the Blue Print, though certain words like “hell” and “helluva” were initially censored as being “too hot to print”. By 1910, band leader Mike Greenblatt had formalized the arrangement that included the lyric: “If I had a son, sir, I tell you what he’d do. He would yell to hell with Georgia like his daddy used to do.”

Fact 2 – Last year’s eight-overtime marathon was the second-longest game in FBS history

If you thought rivalry games couldn’t get more dramatic than a last-second field goal, last year’s Georgia-Georgia Tech matchup would like a word. On November 29, 2024, these two teams played an epic that won’t be forgotten anytime soon. It was a 44-42 Georgia victory that required eight overtimes to decide. 

Georgia Tech dominated most of the game, leading 27-13 with just 5:37 remaining in regulation. And it looked like the Yellow Jackets were finally going to break their losing streak against the Bulldogs. But Georgia scored two touchdowns in those final minutes to force overtime, and then the real madness began. Both teams scored touchdowns in the first and second overtime periods, which sent the game into the new two-point conversion format starting in the third OT. 

Neither team converted in the third or fourth overtime. Both scored in the fifth. Neither scored in the sixth or seventh. Finally, in the eighth overtime, Georgia Tech failed to convert, but Georgia did. The eight-overtime contest stands as the second-longest game in NCAA Division I FBS history. They trail only Illinois’ nine-overtime win over Penn State in 2021. 

Fact 3 – Georgia Tech left the SEC in 1964 because of a principle. And it changed everything

Georgia Tech used to be in the SEC, competing alongside Alabama, Auburn, and, yes, their in-state rival, Georgia. But on January 24, 1964, Georgia Tech announced it was leaving the conference over what might be the most principled stand in college football history. 

At the heart of the split was something called the “140 Rule.” This rule allowed SEC schools to hand out 140 total scholarships for football and men’s basketball. Football programs were able to sign as many as 45 recruits per season. Tech’s legendary coach Bobby Dodd believed other schools were overrecruiting. He thought they were signing way more players than they needed and then pushing aside underperforming athletes to clear scholarship space for new recruits. 

Dodd refused to do that. He famously told players that if they went to class and did the work, he’d get them a degree, no matter how much they played. Bill Curry, who played under Dodd and later coached at Tech, recalled: “I didn’t play very much my first two seasons. I was one of those he could have run off.”

Dodd fought hard to change the 140 Rule at the 1963 SEC winter meetings and almost succeeded. But Alabama president Frank Rose voted to keep it, effectively breaking a potential compromise. 

Rather than compromise his principles, Dodd and Tech president Edwin Harrison made the stunning decision to leave the conference entirely. They made Georgia Tech go independent in 1964. The move had massive long-term consequences. Tech’s national prestige never fully recovered. And the program struggled for decades to match its SEC-era success. 

It wasn’t until Georgia Tech joined the ACC in 1983 that they found a permanent conference home again. Today, Georgia sits comfortably in the powerhouse SEC, and Tech competes in the ACC. But that 1964 decision feels like a sliding door moment that fundamentally altered both programs’ trajectories. This was all because Bobby Dodd valued his players’ education and dignity more than winning at any cost.​