Dec. 6, 2009
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech, which will make its 13th consecutive bowl appearance, will play Iowa Jan. 5 in the FedEx Orange Bowl at Land Shark Stadium in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (8 p.m./Fox).
The Yellow Jackets, which won the Dr. Pepper ACC Championship Game Saturday night in Tampa, will play in their first major/BCS bowl game since Jan. 2, 1967.
Tech is 11-2 overall, one victory shy of tying a school and Atlantic Coast Conference record for wins in a season, is ranked ninth in the Associated Press poll and 10th in the USA Today poll.
Tickets are available at www.ramblinwreck.com/bowl.
Iowa, 10-2 overall and 6-2 in the Big Ten Conference, won its first nine games of the season. The Hawkeyes are ranked 10th in the AP poll and 11th by USA Today.
The Hawkeyes have seven players who were named first team All-Big Ten by the league’s head coaches.
The FedEx Orange Bowl will feature the coach of the year from the Atlantic Coast Conference (Paul Johnson) and the Big Ten Conference (Kirk Ferentz).
Georgia Tech, 22-15 all-time in postseason bowl play, will participate in a bowl game for the 38th time. Tech ranks ninth all-time for bowl victories (22) and 12th for bowl appearances (38).
The Yellow Jackets have appeared in four different major bowl games including the Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Rose, but none since losing 27-12 to Florida on Jan. 2, 1967. Tech is 3-2 all-time in five previous Orange Bowl appearances. Even in the Jackets’ most recent national championship season of 1990, Tech did not play in a major bowl game. That season Tech defeated Nebraska in the Florida Citrus Bowl.
Georgia Tech will play its fourth game this season in the state of Florida.
The Yellow Jackets have not played a team from the Big Ten Conference since beating Michigan State 17-14 in the 1985 All-American Bowl. Tech lost to Penn State in the 1991 Kickoff Classic in East Rutherford (N.J.), but the Nittany Lions did not begin participating in Big Ten football until 1993.
