Tim Peeler: Looking back at NC State's history against Georgia Tech

It’s been a few years since NC State and Georgia Tech have faced each other on the football field, something that will change Thursday night at Grant Field in Atlanta.

The last meeting in this start-and-stop rivalry was on Dec. 5, 2020, at Carter-Finley Stadium, a 23-13 Wolfpack win during the pandemic-affected season.

For the last three years, however, they have been pried apart by the unbalanced schedule that continues after divisional play ended prior to 2023. Since divisional play began in 2005, the two teams have met just eight times in 19 seasons. Before then, they met 24 straight years, with the Yellow Jackets winning 16 times.

And, while the teams didn’t meet from 2007-09, 2012-13, 2015-18 and 2021-23, none of those gaps are nearly as long as the 61 seasons between a 17-0 Georgia Tech win in Atlanta in 1922 and a 20-10 Yellow Jacket win in Raleigh in 1983.

Truthfully, the two football programs had little in common for most of the 20^th century, other than both being coached by Raleigh-native John McKee, who coached at State in 1899-1900 and at Tech in 1901. McKee was fired following a successful 4-0-1 season at Tech after he helped rival Georgia prepare for its annual game against Auburn.

The Jackets were a national powerhouse when it hosted the inaugural game in the rivalry, a Nov. 10, 1918, contest in Atlanta when coach John Heisman’s team handed NC State the worst loss in school history, a 128-0 outcome that came just after the school reopened and restarted extracurricular activities following the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Coach Tal Stafford’s team was so eager to play against Tech’s defending national champion Golden Tornado, the players didn’t care how much they were overmatched — until Tech scored on every single possession of the game and never let State cross midfield. The next installment, just four years later, was much closer, when the two teams met for the only time as members of the Southern Conference.

The schools went their separate ways for the next six decades. Georgia Tech joined the Southeastern Conference from 1932-64, and NC State joined the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1953.

From 1964-79, Tech was a football independent, without the same kind of national reputation it enjoyed earlier in the century and without the binding ties of conference affiliation. During that time, only legendary Bobby Dodd had an overall coaching record more than three games above .500 at Tech.

When the program was invited to join the Atlantic Coast Conference for all sports in 1979, it took a while for the football team to become a full member, not competing for the championship until 1983.

After losing its first four games that season to Alabama, Furman, Clemson and North Carolina, the Yellow Jackets of third-year coach Bill Curry came to Raleigh’s Carter-Finley Stadium to face first-year coach Tom Reed’s Wolfpack.

In one of many games where an abundance of mistakes worked against Reed’s Pack, State twice drew within a field goal of tying the game, but a fumble led to a Tech touchdown late in the third quarter, and State’s final three possessions of the game ended because of penalties, a missed fourth-down conversion and an interception.

The Jackets recorded ACC wins over Virginia and Wake Forest, while the Pack’s only league win that season came the week before against Wake Forest.

It was a weird time for the ACC. The Jackets hoped to fill in as a possible bowl team in place of two-time ACC champion Clemson, which was serving a two-year postseason and television ban from the NCAA for recruiting violations. That didn’t happen, with Georgia Tech struggling to finish 3-8 in their inaugural ACC season, the same record as Reed’s Wolfpack.

Reed was let go after three seasons with the Wolfpack in 1985, while Curry left for Alabama a year later after compiling a 31-43-4 record over seven seasons.

Curry won just one bowl game during his tenure at Tech, but did manage to secure his alma mater’s first ever ACC victory by beating the Wolfpack in 1983.

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].