Playing rivalry games in NFL stadiums is a sad, and sadly understandable, reality of college football today (Video)

The walk to Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium takes you past frat houses with patio couches, dorms with spray-painted sheets, academic buildings filled with students hungry for knowledge even on a football Saturday. (This is Georgia Tech, after all.) Sure, you’ll have to tread lightly; the pavement is often cracked, beer cans are everywhere, and there are always random chicken wing bones to avoid. (This is Atlanta, after all.) But by the time you get to the more than century-old concrete behemoth, you’re in the mood for some college football. And if it’s the last Saturday in November, you’re full of Clean Old Fashioned Hate.

The drive to Atlanta’s nearby Mercedes-Benz Stadium, on the other hand, is wide and clean, carefully designed and masterfully executed, on sidewalks pristine enough to eat chicken wings on, not that you’ll see any. There is a tastefully planned and regimented tailgating area, sponsored by a certain Atlanta-based home improvement company, of course, and the whole experience is not unlike entering a cathedral, almost overwhelming in its greatness

Next year, Mercedes-Benz will host “Clean Old-Fashioned Hate,” the annual Georgia-Georgia Tech rivalry game, the first time since 1912 that Georgia Tech hosted half of the rivalry won’t be played at Bobby Dodd. It’s the latest example of the rise of the NFL in college football, and unfortunately, it’s also completely understandable given the new financial realities of the college game. Playing a rivalry game in an NFL stadium will provide “a transformative revenue boost,” and in the wild new world of college football, tradition is a piece of cake and revenue a behemoth.

It is true that old stadiums, even modern ones, are not as aesthetically pleasing as modern creations. Aluminum benches are not as friendly to alumni pockets as padded club chairs. The Saturday afternoon sun is much more tolerable in an air-conditioned monolith than in a concrete grandstand. Parking is a nightmare, traffic is apocalyptic “Walking Dead” level, and good luck trying to get a bite to eat after the game in a college town.

But what? Spend an afternoon at a rivalry game — the Iron Bowl, The Game, the Egg Bowl, Clean Old-Fashioned Hate, any of a hundred others — and you’ll understand it on a primal level. The sun shines a little brighter, the popcorn and hot dogs taste a little better, and the band plays much better in a university stadium.

In a rivalry game, alumni can point to the area of ​​the stadium where they sat as students. Current students can reunite with high school friends who chose the opposition. Friends, colleagues, customers mingle in tents and tailgates before and after the game, and when everyone takes sides, everyone wins.

There is no disputing the fact that Mercedes-Benz is one of the best stadiums in the world and an exceptional setting for big-time football. It has hosted one Super Bowl — the Patriots’ repeat over the Rams in 2019, but no fault of the stadium — and will host another in 2028. It’s the site of Alabama’s famous second and 26th national title win over Georgia in 2018, and will. hosts this season’s college football title game. Every year, MBS hosts the SEC Championship, the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic and the Peach Bowl, and at least one Georgia Tech home game, including this year’s Notre Dame game on Saturday.

All of these games are spectacular, often transcendent experiences. And none of them are rivalry games, steeped in a glorious, messy, transcendent tradition.

Georgia and Georgia Tech have played each other for so long that there wasn’t a person on earth alive when this series started. Sure, the series hasn’t exactly been competitive lately — Georgia has won the last six and 12 of the last 14 — but rivalries aren’t just about results on the field. (Georgia Tech fans have an armful of jokes at the ready: “What does a Georgia grad call a Georgia Tech grad? ‘Boss'” is about the only one we can print.) The Kirby Smart era in Georgia has tilted the rivalry firmly to the east, in the direction of Athens.

That, in part, is behind Georgia Tech’s decision to move the game. AMB Sports Enterprises, the umbrella organization of Falcons owner Arthur Blank, will pay Georgia Tech $10 million to play just one installment of the rivalry game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Ten million for a game is a hell of a salary to move a game a mile south. You could count the number of athletic directors who would reject this deal out of hand.

In , Batt outlined the expenses facing Georgia Tech as it tries to return to its national championship-level ways, starting with the financial realities of the impending House deal on student-athlete compensation.

“To compete for championships at the highest level in the post-House era, athletic programs will need to make an additional financial investment of at least $20-22 million annually to participate in student revenue sharing and athletes at the highest level, which is essential to compete with our peers,” Batt wrote. “Although at the same time, we will receive approximately $1 million less in annual distributions from the ACC, which will go toward our share of the $3 billion in subsequent damages.”

Suddenly a $10 million check to play a single game now makes a lot more sense, financially if not historically. Whether you see revenue sharing as a betrayal of college football’s core ethos is no longer the issue; either way, the bill is overdue.

In his letter to Yellow Jacket fans, Batt pledged to return the 2027 Georgia game to Bobby Dodd, though not in 2029, 2031 and beyond. Maybe it was an oversight, or maybe it was just about keeping options open for future transformative revenue increases. Nothing is off the table at this point in the college football universe.

The 2025 Georgia-Georgia Tech game will be another firecracker on the field, and the pregame message boards, podcasts and sports talk radio will light up in the same way. But when you start monetizing nostalgia and turning tradition into a commodity, something ineffable but essential is lost. “Sterile, climate-controlled hatred” doesn’t sound right, does it?