The walk to Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium takes you past fraternity houses with courtyard couches, dorms with spray-painted sheets and academic buildings filled with knowledge-hungry students even on football Saturdays. (It's Georgia Tech, after all.) Sure, you'll have to tread lightly; the sidewalk is often cracked, there are beer cans everywhere and there are always random chicken wing bones to avoid. (It's Atlanta, after all.) But once you reach the century-plus-old concrete behemoth, you'll be in full college football mood. And if it's the last Saturday in November, you're filled with pure, old-fashioned hatred.
By contrast, the path to nearby Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta is wide and clean, carefully designed and masterfully constructed, and the sidewalks are pristine enough to eat chicken wings off of them – though not that you can see them. There is a tastefully planned and organized Tailgating Zone – sponsored, of course, by an Atlanta home improvement company – and the whole experience is like entering a cathedral, almost overwhelming in its size.
Next year, Mercedes-Benz will host “Clean Old-Fashioned Hate,” the annual Georgia-Georgia Tech rivalry — the first time since 1912 that half of the rivalry hosted by Georgia Tech will not be played at Bobby Dodd. It's the latest example of college football's growing integration into the NFL, and unfortunately, it's also completely understandable given college football's new financial realities. Playing a competitive game at an NFL stadium will deliver “transformational revenue growth” – and in the wild new world of college football, tradition is a piece of cake and revenue is a breeze.
It is true that old stadiums, even modernized ones, are not as aesthetic as modern creations. Aluminum benches are not as friendly to graduate students' butts as padded club chairs. The Saturday afternoon sun is much more bearable on the air-conditioned monolith than on the concrete grandstand. Parking is a nightmare, traffic is apocalyptic on “Walking Dead” levels, and good luck trying to eat something post-game in a college town.
But so what? Spend an afternoon playing a competitive game – Iron Bowl, The Game, Egg Bowl, Clean Old-Fashioned Hate, or any of a hundred others – and you will understand it on a primal level. The sun shines a little brighter, the popcorn and hot dogs taste a little better, and the band sounds a little better much better at the university stadium.
During a competitive game, alumni can point to the area of the stadium where they sat when they were students. Current students can reunite with their high school friends who chose the opposition. Friends, co-workers and customers all gather in tents and tailgates before and after the game, and when everyone takes a side, everyone wins.
There is no doubt that Mercedes-Benz is one of the best stadiums in the world and a unique environment for great football matches. It has hosted one Super Bowl – a Patriots-over-Rams snoozer in 2019, but that's not the stadium's fault – and will host another in 2028. It's the site where Alabama won its famous 2nd and 26th championships in 2018 country over Georgia and will host the college football title game this season. Each year, MBS hosts the SEC Championship, Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic and Peach Bowl, as well as at least one Georgia Tech home game, including this year's matchup with Notre Dame on Saturday.
All of these games are spectacular, often transcendent experiences. And none of them are competitive games steeped in glorious, messy, transcendent tradition.
Georgia and Georgia Tech have been playing for so long that there was no one alive in the world when this series started. It's true that this series hasn't been very close lately – Georgia has won the last six and 12 of the last 14 – but the rivalry isn't solely about the results on the field. (Georgia Tech fans have plenty of stress-management jokes at the ready — “What does a Georgia Tech alum call a Georgia Tech alum?” “Boss” is the only one we can print.) The Kirby Smart era in Georgia has tilted the rivalry decidedly eastward , towards Athens.
That's partly behind Georgia Tech's decision to move the game. AMB Sports Enterprises — the umbrella organization of Falcons owner Arthur Blank — will pay Georgia Tech $10 million to play just one portion of the contest at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Ten million for one match is a hell of a payday to move the match a mile south. You can count how many athletic directors who would reject this deal without any deal.
In Batt, he outlined the expenses facing Georgia Tech as it tries to return to the national championship level, starting with the financial realities of the upcoming House of Representatives settlement on student-athlete compensation.
“To compete for championships at the highest level in the post-House era, athletics programs will need to make additional financial investments of at least $20-22 million annually to participate in student-athlete revenue sharing at the maximum level that is necessary compete with our peers,” Batt wrote. “At the same time, we will receive approximately $1 million less in annual payments from ACC, which will go towards our share of the $3 billion in back compensation.”
Suddenly, a $10 million check to play one game now makes a lot more sense, if not from a financial standpoint, then from a historical standpoint. Whether you view revenue sharing as overdue or a betrayal of the core ethos of college football is no longer the issue; either way, the bill became due.
In his letter to Yellow Jacket fans, Batt committed to giving Bobby Dodd back the game against Georgia in 2027 – but not in 2029, 2031 or beyond. Perhaps this was an oversight, or perhaps it was simply a matter of keeping the options open for future transformational revenue increases. Nothing is off limits in the college football universe at this point.
The 2025 Georgia-Georgia Tech game will be another feisty event on the field, and pregame discussion forums, podcasts, and sports talk radio will shine in the same way. But when you start cashing in on nostalgia and turning tradition into a commodity, you lose something ineffable but essential. “Sterile, climate-controlled hate” just doesn't seem right, does it?
