I've never liked it when coaches and athletes talk about giving "110 per cent." I understand what they mean, but it's a non sequitur, which bugs me. However, this is one of those rare occasions when I will use it, because I am 110 per cent in favor of this idea.

Paul Westerdawg is absolutely right that fans of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets will howl if this even receives serious consideration. Those fellows at the Georgia Institute of Technology know themselves some mathematics, so they get that more seats at the in-state showdown means more fans of the Georgia Bulldogs sitting in the stands wearing red and black while barking.

The idea is worth pursuing, though, for three reasons:

If Georgia and Georgia Tech are opening the season in the Georgia Dome, eleven other SEC teams and eleven other ACC teams aren't. Nick Saban signed up to have the Alabama Crimson Tide kick off the campaign in Atlanta because such games give 'Bama a recruiting beachhead in a fertile recruiting ground. (Playing a neutral site game in Jacksonville does the same thing for the 'Dawgs, but that's a separate conversation.) If the Red and Black can keep rival SEC teams out without having to give up a home game or allow another ACC interloper to get a toehold in North Georgia, that's a win-win-win from our perspective.

Mark Richt's teams do well when opening the season against tough opponents in our own region. Admittedly, I had to add the latter caveat because of the Bulldogs' poor performance in the season opener against the Oklahoma St. Cowboys, but how often is your starting quarterback going to get the flu before a big game against a team whose best player may have been ineligible? The results of starting the fall against the Clemson Tigers in Sanford Stadium in 2002, against Clemson in Memorial Stadium in 2003, against the Boise St. Broncos between the hedges in 2005, and against Oklahoma State in Athens in 2007 speak for themselves.

It goes ahead and gets that dadgum game out of the way. I don't like playing Georgia Tech at the end of the year. I never have. It assigns to the Engineers a level of importance I simply don't think they warrant. They're not an SEC rival any longer; Bobby Dodd is the name on the stadium, not the coach on the sidelines; they've been reduced from rolling up eight-game winning streaks over us to snapping our seven-game winning streaks over them. We're 29-12 against them in my lifetime, and that's giving them credit for the three games in the late 1990s featuring multiple ineligible athletes and two egregiously blown officiating calls on late fumbles. Much like their insect mascot, they're more of an annoyance than an actual threat. They ain't that big a deal.

The Ramblin' Wreck never once occupied the final spot on the Georgia slate before 1927, more than a third of a century after the Red and Black began playing football, and the Golden Tornado did not become a permanent fixture at the end of the schedule until 1953, the year after the Classic City Canines celebrated the 60th anniversary of the founding of our football program. Georgia Tech is not Georgia's traditional season-ending rival---Auburn is---and it's high time we dispensed with the Yellow Jackets early and moved on to more important rivals. Frankly, we have bigger fish to fry.

Paul Westerdawg is right that this move will not happen . . . but it should.

Go 'Dawgs!