GEORGIA VS GEORGIA TECH

Gridiron Grudge Since 1893
John Chandler Griffin | Author

• $34.95 NOW $17.50 hardcover
  
• 352 pages with over 1000 photographs
• 1-892514-96-6
• Sports | Football

Your 50-yard-line seat to the best gridiron games, the most thrilling plays, and the pivotal TD's defining the clean, old-fashioned rivalry between the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Georgia bulldogs spanning over 100 years.

“Extremely well done.”—Vince Dooley

the book

It's been said that football is the secular religion of the South. If so, then the gridiron grudge between the University of Georgia and the Georgia Institute of Technology is nothing less than the genesis myth, the creation of good and evil. John Chandler Griffin, one of the South's leading writers of sports histories, gives us a play-by-play in the annual brawl between these SEC and ACC powerhouses in his definitive Georgia vs. Georgia Tech: Gridiron Grudge since 1893.

Coincidentally and with no malice aforethought, both schools fielded their first teams in 1892—the fledgling Georgia team called themselves the Wildcats and the players of Georgia Tech were known as the Blacksmiths. When the Wildcats were bested on their own Herty Field in Athens in 1893 by those they derisively called the Teckity-Techs, a grudge, which has lessened not a bit in more than a century, was underway.

Griffin presents a colorful roster of players and coaches from both teams including the pigskin-helmeted Iron Men (so named because they were required to play 60 uninterrupted minutes per game) of the earliest games, turn-of-the-century legend John Heisman, famous UGA coach Pop Warner, and the phenomenal Herschel Walker. Although styles of play have changed from the time when players wore rubber noseguards (but no helmets!), to the instituting of the Unlimited Substitution Rule in 1965, and the game of today, Georgia Tech and Georgia have always had the necessary roughness and trash-talking to make the game exciting. Griffin's book is equal parts history book and play book, and is as meticulously researched (with the unprecedented cooperation of the sport information offices and library archives of both institutions) as it is fun to read. It includes over 1,000 rare photographs, as well as complete lists of lettermen and scores from every game ever played by both these eternal arch rivals.

the author

John Chandler Griffin serves as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of South Carolina at Lancaster. In addition to several sports histories, he has written the award-winning biography of novelist Thomas Wolfe, Memories of Thomas Wolfe. Among his other exploits is his invention, in 1984, of those little car flags one sees flying on cars on their way to football games on Saturday afternoons.

the praise

"Georgia vs. Georgia Tech is extremely well done."—Vince Dooley, Athletic Director, University of Georgia

also of interest:  Alabama vs. Auburn