Tennessee Georgia Tech to meet on first week of 2017 season

It won’t be the first game of the 2017 college football season.

The addition of Tennessee to the schedule makes for a pretty impressive 2017 out-of-conference lineup for Georgia Tech, as the Volunteers are added to a slate that already included a trip to Orlando to face UCF, as well as the annual game against rivals Georgia.

Tennessee and Georgia Tech will open the 2017 college football season in the Atlanta Falcons’ new stadium on Labor Day Monday night as part of the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game doubleheader that weekend. It will be a busy weekend in Atlanta, two days prior to that game; Alabama will play Florida State in another kickoff classic.

It will be the first game between the Yellow Jackets and Vols in 30 years.

“This will be the renewing of a long and beloved rivalry that’s been off the board for far too long”, Percy Vaughn, Peach Bowl, Inc. chairman, said in a statement.

The Chattanooga Press reported, the game will be held in the Atlanta Falcons’ new stadium on Septemeber 4th and will likely ve a primetime slot on ESPN.

Jones is looking at this game as an opportunity to improve their footprint in the fertile recruiting ground of Georgia.

Most of the tickets for the game in the 71,000-seat state-of-the-art stadium will be split evenly between the two schools.

Tennessee opened the season against N.C. State in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff game in 2012 in the Georgia Dome, breaking the dreaded cursed stadium that had haunted the Vols since the 2001 season. Traditionally, winners of The Old Leather Helmet don the helmet on the field after the game, starting with the head coach and then rotating from player to player as the team celebrates its victory. But the Vols won’t have to wait long after that for another major neutral-site meeting with an ACC power.

“Playing an SEC team like Tennessee in the nonconference is important for us, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to play them in our backyard”, said Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson, who has averaged eight-plus wins per season in his seven-year tenure in Atlanta.