Grant Field, its place on the edge of midtown Atlanta, was college football’s biggest stage one Saturday afternoon in November 1956.

Johnny Majors was its biggest star.

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Even battered and bruised, the do-it-all, All-American back from Tennessee did it all in a titanic matchup between the No. 3 Vols and No. 2 Georgia Tech and their bid for No. 1, the SEC and the coveted Sugar Bowl.

Majors passed. He linked up with Buddy Cruze twice to set up the game's only score in the third quarter. Majors punted. His third down boot caught the Yellow Jackets by surprise and covered 68 yards.

Tennessee won, 6-0 to hand Georgia Tech its first defeat and remain unbeaten. The Vols ascended to No. 1 the following week, went on to win the SEC—their last for 11 years—and play in the Sugar Bowl. The Yellow Jackets bolted from the league eight years later.

But the rivalry didn’t stop. Tennessee and Georgia Tech continued playing, at least more often than not. That 1956 match up was probably the greatest ever played in the series. At least the Associated Press thought it was, ranking it as the second greatest college football game every played.

Bob Christian of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution opined in the Sunday paper that the game, "should take the same place Fort Sumter, Valley Forge and Battle of the Bulge in the history of world conflicts."

Other Vols- Yellow Jackets clashes didn't have quite as much at stake, nor the star-power. The storyline of former Tennessee players Bowden Wyatt and Bobby Dodd—both touted as "star pupils" by their head coach Robert R. Neyland—facing off as head coaches added more flavor to the match up. But the rivalry produced stories that few of the Vols' other rivalry games could.

Another chapter will be added in the coming years after both Tennessee and Georgia Tech announced last week that they would renew their rivalry with a home-and-home series that will begin in Atlanta in 2026 and then Knoxville in 2027.

The series will fill two voids on the Vols' future schedule after Nebraska backed out of a long-standing contract to play Tennessee in each of those seasons.

It will mark the first time that the Vols and Jackets have played each other since 2017 and the first time since 1986-87 that they have played in back-to-back years.

Tennessee leads the all-time series, which was played all but three years between 1954 and 1987, 25-17-2.

Bobby Dodd, who Georgia Tech's stadium situated beneath Atlanta's towering skyscrapers, is named after, was a Kingsport, Tennessee native that played for Neyland at Tennessee before becoming the Yellow Jackets' head coach from 1945-66.

Dodd won two SEC titles and a national championship as the Yellow Jackets' head coach, and he's one of plethora of players and coaches associated with the Vols enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.

On Tennessee's side of the rivalry, the 1956 game probably stands alone as the greatest on-field triumph in the series, but the Vols' 21-7 win over Georgia Tech at Neyland Stadium in 1965 was among the first signature wins of the Doug Dickey era and one of the first indicators of the program's resurgence to the SEC elite after laying dormant for eight years.

Dickey's Vols scored another big win against the Yellow Jackets a few years later in 1967, when third stringer Bubba Wyche, fittingly an Atlanta native, came off of the bench and quarterbacked Tennessee to a 24-13 victory in Knoxville.

Just shy of a year later , Lester McClain made history in Atlanta. The Vols' sophomore wide receiver from Antioch, Tennessee and the program's first black player three years after the SEC integrated, became the first black player to score a touchdown for an SEC team when he hauled in the first of two touchdown passes from Wyche in a 24-7 Vols' win over Georgia Tech at Grant Field.

Condredge Holloway was another trailblazer that ushered in more change to southern football when he became the first black player to start at quarterback for an SEC team, making his debut in a nationally televised game against Georgia Tech in Atlanta in 1972.

Tennessee won comfortably, 34-3 and it wasn't the last time that the dazzling Holloway gave the Yellow Jackets fits. In 1973, Holloway had a hand in two scores in the span of one minute, four seconds in the second quarter of a 20-14 win.

The first was a touchdown pass that Holloway uncorked with a defender's arms wrapped around his waste. The ball, somehow, landed into the hands of Bill Rudder in the back of the end zone.

Moments later, with the ball back to the Vols, Holloway dropped back to pass. But as the pocket collapsed, he rattled off one of his patented escape acts, dodging one defender, dragging another and then lowering his shoulder into the last road block before he walked in for a touchdown.

Both Tennessee and Georgia Tech, historically football royalty, were less of a factor on the national stage in the early part of the 1980s. The games were still good. Johnny Majors was back on the Vols' sideline as their head coach and Bill Curry, a who played for Dodd in the 1960s, was now leading his alma mater.

Late in a tie game at Grant Field in 1984, Majors opted to keep his offense on the field on fourth down, even in field goal range for kicker Fuad Reveiz, who had earlier made a school-record 60-yard field goal.

The decision paid off when quarterback Tony Robinson found Jeff Smith for the first down and then some, setting the Vols up inside the 20-yard line with less than two minutes left. A few plays later, Reveiz trotted back on the field and made a 22-yard field goal with 38 seconds left to headline a 24-21 win.

Tennessee found itself in a similar situation the following year at Neyland Stadium, but this time it didn't have Robinson or Reveiz.

Robinson had gone down with a season-ending injury in a win over Alabama at Legion Field in Birmingham the week before, and Majors had conservative game plan for backup Daryl Dickey.

Georgia Tech's famed "Black Watch" defense took advantage, and held the Vols scoreless for more than three quarters. But Dickey helped put two scoring drives together in the fourth, the first ending in a 55-yard field goal from Carlos Reveiz—Faud's younger brother.

Reveiz kicked another from 51, this one going through with four seconds left to all but ensure a 6-6 draw. Dickey guided Tennessee to six-straight wins after that, including the SEC title and a 35-7 thrashing of No. 2 Miami in the Sugar Bowl.

The Vols and Yellow Jackets played two more times that decade, splitting games in 1986 and 1987. Another 20 years passed before they played again. Tennessee won a thriller, 42-41 in overtime at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in an otherwise forgettable, 4-8 campaign.

In the ever-changing world of college football, it is hard to gauge where each program will be when they kickoff again in 2026. It's not even certain yet where the game will be played.

Bobby Dodd Stadium, where so many of those memorable Tennessee-Georgia Tech clashes took place, has taken a backseat to the more modernized Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Yellow Jackets' big home games.

The Vols are coming off of their first College Football Playoff run in 2024, and Georgia Tech has had a remarkable turnaround in two seasons under Brent Key. Regardless of where either team will be measured in the next two or three years, the effort to fill scheduling needs while rekindling some nostalgia in a sport that is losing some of it, should be touted.

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