On Saturday afternoon, Notre Dame will square off with Georgia Tech at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the state-of-the-art home of the SEC Championship game, Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl and the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons. The Irish and Yellow Jackets have never collided in this venue, but they are familiar foes. Here’s a look back at the highlights of Notre Dame’s 37-game matchup history with Georgia Tech, which the Irish lead 30-6 with one tie.
Notre Dame-Georgia Tech through the years
Interestingly enough, the Notre Dame-Georgia Tech series is older than several of Notre Dame’s rivalries with opponents like Navy, Stanford and USC. The first matchup took place in 1922, when Knute Rockne’s Fighting Irish claimed a 13-3 victory at Grant Stadium, which was renamed to Bobby Dodd Stadium as Georgia Tech’s current home in 1988. The series continued yearly through the end of the 1920s, as Notre Dame won seven of the first eight contests, defeating Georgia Tech en route to national titles in 1924 and 1929. Georgia Tech carried a strong program at this time as well, winning it all in 1917 and 1928, the first season in which it beat the Irish.
The yearly series would return from 1938 to 1945, cutting off as Georgia Tech legend Bobby Dodd became the Ramblin’ Wreck’s head coach. Notre Dame once again dominated this stretch of play, winning seven out of eight times and dropping 55 points on the Yellow Jackets en route to a 1943 national championship.
After a brief hiatus post-World War II, the matchup returned in grand fashion during Notre Dame’s 9-0-1 season in 1953. At this point, the Irish were ranked No. 1 in the nation, while Georgia Tech held the No. 4 spot as the defending national champion. With Frank Leahy at the helm and eventual Heisman-winning halfback Johnny Lattner at his disposal, the Irish picked up a 27-14 victory. Georgia Tech would take down the Irish in 1959, only for Notre Dame to rattle off six straight wins through 1975, the year Rudy Ruettiger famously sacked the Yellow Jackets’ quarterback at the end of a 24-3 win.
Georgia Tech, which largely struggled through the 70s and 80s, managed to beat the Irish once more in 1976. However, Notre Dame again responded by claiming five of the next six matchups, scoring 69 points in 1977 as Joe Montana and the national championship team dismantled the Yellow Jackets. The series would go on a 16-year break toward the end of the millennium and return in 1997 after Notre Dame and Georgia Tech had claimed respective national titles in 1988 and 1990. Two years later, the Irish and Yellow Jackets met for the first time in a location not named South Bend or Atlanta. They got together in the Gator Bowl at the conclusion of the 1998 season, playing an entertaining game that Georgia Tech won 35-28.
Since that lone bowl meeting, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech have squared off only five times in the 21st century. They opened the season against one another to start the 2006 and 2007 seasons, with both teams winning on the other’s home field. Georgia Tech kicked off Notre Dame’s ugly 2007 campaign with a 33-3 shellacking of the Irish in South Bend. Notre Dame, however, has won three straight matchups since then, downing Georgia Tech in a top-15 contest at Notre Dame Stadium in 2015. In that game, Irish quarterback DeShone Kizer’s first career start, running back C.J. Prosise ran for 198 yards and three scores, including a game-sealing 91-yarder.
Most recently, the Irish toppled Georgia Tech in both 2020 and 2021. The former year featured the series’ only conference matchup, as Notre Dame had joined the ACC due to the COVID-19 pandemic and beat the Yellow Jackets 31-13 in Atlanta. A year later, independent Notre Dame steamrolled Georgia Tech on Senior Day in South Bend, winning 55-0 with 45 first-half points and two defensive touchdowns.
Randomly selected game: Nov. 15, 1969
In year six of Ara Parseghian’s coaching tenure, No. 9 Notre Dame rolled into Atlanta with a record of 6-1-1. Georgia Tech, meanwhile, was reeling under Bud Carson, having lost at Tulane a week earlier to fall to 3-5 on the year. Notre Dame’s defense helped the Irish take control of the game early, recovering multiple fumbles and picking off four passes in the first half alone. Three of the turnover returns went for 50-plus yards, including a 70-yard interception return for a touchdown by Clarence Ellis. At halftime, Notre Dame led 31-6 as Joe Theismann had contributed two touchdowns – one through the air and another on the ground.
Theismann would add another passing score as Notre Dame cruised through the second half. The players on the Irish sideline, however, might not have felt so comfortable. According to The Scholastic’s 1969 football review, Georgia Tech students “hurled unopened cans of Coke, whisky bottles, cardboard squares, dead fish and tightly packed cups of ice” at the Notre Dame bench. The ill will would continue as the 38-20 Irish win went final, as Notre Dame allegedly played its first unit, threw passes and burned timeouts on the final drive up 18 points.
