Did I Do That?: A Few Things Every Georgia Fan Should Know About Georgia Tech

(Note: This post is meant for people with a sense of humor .  If you do not have a sense of humor, please feel free to avoid this article altogether.  If you insist on reading it anyway and feel the need to complain in the comments, please identify yourself beforehand as someone with no sense of humor so the author and other blog readers may choose to ignore you accordingly. Addendum: I make no promises about the quality of the jokes, just that they are intended as such.)

This week, as the Georgia Bulldogs prepare to face off against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets,  I will yet again look at various aspects of our upcoming opponent with a little good-natured ribbing thrown in for good measure.  Please understand that I am only kidding...  sort of.

Georgia and Georgia Tech have a long history of not particularly liking one another.  As such, most Georgia fans have an existing knowledge base regarding the Yellow Jackets and their fans.  However, I'm guessing that there are several things which you may still not know about Georgia Tech and the average Jacket Fan.

The Average Jacket Fan

If you're game, hit the jump while I drop a little knowledge on ya...

Seriously.  Just ask any Tech fan.  They'll be happy to tell you about their amazing intellect and point out all your shortcomings.  In fact, I'm pretty sure there is an introductory course required as part of the core curriculum at Tech which teaches them to do just that.

Say, for instance, that you wanted to major in English, History, or Philosophy.  How about Political Science or Journalism? Well, naturally you'd choose to attend the University of Georgia over a school that doesn't offer those majors.  However, Tech fans will be quick to point out the obvious:  You couldn't get in to Georgia Tech. 

Tech's campus is more scenic.  Tech has a better nightlife.  Hell, if you man up and attend Tech, you might even get held up at gun point.  Athens simply can't compete.

Along with the clear and indisputable superiority of everything Georgia Tech has to offer, there are drawbacks.  Primarily that their football team can't seem to beat Georgia 80-90% of the time.  Logical and reasonable lot that they are, however, the Yellow Jacket faithful have a reason for this:  All the ghetto thugs that play for UGA couldn't get in to Georgia Tech.  Its academics are too rigorous and the admissions policy for athletes simply won't allow them to get the same quality of athlete as schools in the SEC. I mean, lets all forget for a minute that Tech offered Branden Smith, Alec Ogletree, Brandon Boykin, Tavarres King, Bacarri Rambo, etc., etc., and focus on how their stringent academic requirements are the ONLY reason they lose to Georgia. 

Meanwhile, if you'll look closely (and back me up on this Tech fans), I think you'll find that every single Georgia Tech player over the last decade has gone on to be an astronaut, a physicist, an architect, or an engineer.  Reggie Ball can't count to four, but last I saw he was running the research division of a large pharmaceutical company.  Just ask Tech fans.  They can't wait to tell you that they're better than you.

2) The Majestic Yellow Jacket

When most schools sit down to select a mascot, they generally look for qualities like fierceness, quickness, strength, or nobility.  Georgia Tech, however, chose an insect and a pest.  If you think about it, you'll agree that this shows a really clever self-awareness.  We should give the Jackets more credit for that sort of outside-the-box thinking. 

Yellow Jackets don't make honey and they don't carry pollen, so they're essentially useless.  Their only purpose is to bother, annoy, and pester.  They have not a single redeeming quality.  And they are incapable of solving simple problems the rest of us seem to handle effortlessly (like how to talk to girls or figuring out how to get out of a bottle with a poorly sealed lid).

The Yellow Jackets even have their own annoying insect mascot, Buzz, which brings me to...

3) Famous People Named Buzz That Should Serve As Georgia Tech's Mascot

The following are individuals who I believe should replace "Buzz" as the Georgia Tech mascot, along with my reasons for believing so:

• Buzz Aldrin - Sure he went to the Moon, but he's always gonna be second best. 
  
• Buzz Lightyear - Another astronaut (and we know how Tech loves astronauts).  Except he isn't really an astronaut, he's a useless hunk of plastic that thinks he's an astronaut.  Seems fitting.
  
• Buzz McCallister - Tell me this kid doesn't look like he belongs at Tech:

4) Georgia Tech's Most Famous Alum

I could go on ad nauseam about the list of amazing leaders in the fields of engineering and science that have come out of Georgia Tech.  Or at the very least, I could find you a Georgia Tech fan that could.  I'm not going to mock those alumni because, unlike our brethren down on North Avenue, we don't feel the need to belittle the academic qualifications of our in-state rival.  I don't think you'll get any argument from a Georgia fan about Tech being a fantastic school.  It may not be as "OMG Amazing!" as they claim, but it is still a damn fine institution of higher education with a vast array of notable alumni.  Instead, I thought I'd focus on an alum that, in all honesty, I figured would get more appreciation from the Tech fanbase:

Barbara "Bobbi" Morse - Mockingbird

Barbara Morse graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in biology and passed her Civil Service examination so she could work with her biology professor, Dr. Wilma Calvin, on the government-sponsored project to rediscover the Super-Soldier formula that created Captain America. While in the government's employ, Morse's exemplary record came to the attention of SHIELD and she was invited to undertake training in her spare time. A champion gymnast in high school, Morse excelled at both the physical regimen and arts of espionage taught to all field agents. When Dr. Theodore Sallis, a maverick scientist also working on the Super-Soldier project, disappeared, Morse was given her first field assignment: to accompany SHIELD agent Paul Allen, suspected of being a traitor, to the Antarctic paradise known as the Savage Land in order to enlist the services of the hero Ka-Zar to find Sallis. Allen and Morse succeeded in contacting Ka-Zar and took him to the Florida Everglades. Although Sallis was never found (unbeknownst to them, he had been transformed into the Man-Thing), Ka-Zar and Morse flushed out a splinter group of the subversive organization AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) who were attempting to steal the Super-Soldier formula, and revealed Allen to be a member. SHIELD director Nick Fury assigned Morse as an escort to Ka-Zar during his stay in civilization, and the two managed to thwart yet another attempt by AIM to seize the Super-Soldier formula. Though Barbara Morse became romantically involved with Ka-Zar, she could not convince him to forsake the Savage Land. Preferring field work over biology, Morse was given another assignment: to trail the subversive El Tigre in South America. Coincidentally, this mission also took her to the Savage Land, where she renewed her acquaintance of Ka-Zar. Completing the assignment with the Jungle Lord's aid, she returned to SHIELD.

-h/t Comicvine

I'll credit Tech with Morse as an alumna, even though we all know this is a work of fiction.... hot girls don't go to Tech (with the notable exception of a certain someone's niece). 

5) The Great Tricycle Race

You may have seen Georgia Tech's ad campaign the last few years in which footage of Tech students participating in their annual tricycle race fades into footage of a space shuttle takeoff.  The implication, of course, being that the incredibly nerdy activities that constitute "fun" at Georgia Tech somehow lead to space flight.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for next year's commercial.  I hear it will have images of 3 guys in their mom's basement playing D & D and drinking Zima cut together with footage of the Hadron Collider being used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.

In closing, I think the only thing left to be said is this:

Now that you know everything you must about the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, I look forward to reading your illiterate, uneducated, incoherent, light beer chugging, tobacco spitting observations in the comments. 

GO DAWGS!