Georgia Tech football will continue to ‘schedule aggressively’

The marquee matchup will not be a one-off for the Yellow Jackets.

Tech, of course, is opening the 2025 season at Colorado and is scheduled to host the Buffaloes on Sept. 5, 2026. It also plays at Notre Dame during the 2027 and 2029 seasons and has a home-and-home series on the books with Alabama in 2030 and 2031.

Tech’s nonconference schedule is complete through 2027, but 2028 and beyond has plenty of holes to fill. Filling those holes with big-time opponents is more likely to happen than not.

When Clemson and Florida State reached a settlement with the ACC in March, after trying to litigate a possible way out of the league, part of the resolution was a new brand initiative that will distribute 60% of the ACC’s media revenue to schools with higher TV viewership.

That figure will be based on a five-year rolling average of viewership and the remaining 40% will be distributed among member schools.

That initiative is good news for Tech. In 2024, an average of 3.1 million viewers tuned in to see the Jackets, making Key’s squad the most watched team out of the ACC. Games like the Birmingham Bowl against Vanderbilt, the eight-overtime loss to rival Georgia, the upset of top-five ranked Miami and the season opener against Florida State in Dublin, Ireland, all helped drive those numbers.

According to a list compiled by FootballScoop.com, Tech had four among the 100 most watched games of the 2024 season, one of 18 teams to make the list at least four times.

Tech’s 2025 slate could see more high viewership numbers as well with the matchup at Colorado already being announced as an 8 p.m. kickoff on ESPN on Aug. 29, a Friday. A Sept. 13 game at home against Clemson and the Nov. 28 (also a Friday) game against Georgia at Mercedes-Benz Stadium are two prime candidates for the Jackets to play in front of big audiences.

Continuing to schedule such matchups is expected to be part of Tech’s philosophy going forward.

“Being aggressive in scheduling going forward is going to be really important. I think you’ve seen it, particularly from us, I think you saw others in our league made a big scheduling announcement,” Tech athletic director J Batt told SiriusXM radio this week, referencing a long-term scheduling agreement between Clemson and Notre Dame.

“Particularly in the new way in which we are going to allocate dollars in the ACC, being aggressive with scheduling matters. Certainly at Georgia Tech we are certainly aligned with that. We’re all in on that, and we’ve taken pretty definitive steps. I think you’ll see some other things that continue come out of Atlanta that indicate that,” Batt said.