The height in popularity of conference realignment in college sports has caused many great rivalry games to go by the wayside as a result.
Several of the important rivalries of the past that have been affected include Colorado–Nebraska, Michigan–Notre Dame, and, although set to revive, the Texas–Texas A&M rivalry.
Will Backus of 247Sports recently shared his picks for the top classic rivalry games that he wants to see revived. Among those were LSU-Tulane, Penn State-Pittsburgh, and Ohio State– Cincinnati. For Auburn, he would like to see the rivalry between the Tigers and Georgia Tech start again.
These two used to be fierce rivals — first when they both occupied the SEC, and then for another 20 years annually when Georgia Tech left. The rivalry became defunct in 1987, with a brief revival in 2003 and 2005, but the two teams have not played since. That is a shame for a game that has featured such prominent names as John Heisman — of Heisman Trophy fame — who coached on both sides of the aisle in this series. Georgia Tech still plays one SEC team annually in Georgia, so this may be a hard sell for the Yellow Jackets. But it would be nice to see it come back for at least a couple years.
According to AuburnTigers.com, Auburn leads the overall series, 47-41-4, and has not played since the 2005 season when Reggie Ball and Calvin Johnson led the Jackets to a 23-14 win at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Sept. 3, 2005. Prior to the games played in 2003 and 2005, Auburn held a nine-game winning streak that spanned from 1979-1987.
The rivalry began in 1892, and the teams played each other on an annual basis from 1944-1987. A key memory of the rivalry game with Georgia Tech includes the “Wreck Tech” game in which Auburn students greased the railroad tracks which caused the Yellow Jackets to glide through Auburn and walk five miles to campus.
The 1987 game was also a classic. The game is known in Auburn lore as the “Tillman, Tillman, Tillman game” where receiver [autotag]Lawyer Tillman[/autotag] caught a touchdown pass from [autotag]Jeff Burger[/autotag] to cap a come-from-behind effort to give Auburn the 20-10 win.
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