It’s a path that nearly all Georgia Tech fans would find perplexing and possibly heretical.
Craig Topple is a proud Tech grad and ardent Yellow Jackets fan. But he has also come to a place in his life where his 49-year-old heart has a place for … the Georgia Bulldogs.
“One of my lines is, I cheer for the Dawgs 364 days of the year,” Topple told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the lone exception being, of course, the annual Georgia-Georgia Tech clash that this year takes place Friday.
Surprisingly, Topple’s Tech diploma did not burst into flames upon his uttering those words.
The reason for Topple’s rebellion against what would seem a near-universal Tech ethos is not what you might guess. He didn’t grow up in a family of Georgia fans. In fact, his father Jim is also a Tech grad, making Topple the embodiment of the seventh and eighth lines of “Ramblin’ Wreck” – “And if I had a son, sir, I’d tell you what he’d do/He would yell ‘To hell with Georgia!’ like his daddy used to do.”
His wife, Trasie, also is a Tech grad and was a cheerleader for football and basketball. She has undergone the same shift, herself having earned her Ph.D. in social work from Georgia and taught there. Their two daughters don’t attend Georgia.
Once a true Dawg hater, Topple recognizes his peculiarity. I asked him what his 20-year-old self would tell 2024 Craig. He contemplated this puzzle.
“He might say, ‘Don’t sell out.’”
The explanation is that the Topples moved to Athens in 2013 for Trasie’s graduate studies, and it just kind of happened.
“It was definitely a process,” Topple said.
If you’ve been versed in the Tech-Georgia rivalry, you understand that the Topples are outliers. Hating the Bulldogs and exulting in their defeat is just as much a part of being a Tech fan as loving the Jackets. The schadenfreude runs both ways but seems to course much more passionately in the direction of Athens.
Take it from Mike Jones, a fellow Tech grad and a close friend of Craig’s.
“I’m sure you’ve heard people from Tech say, ‘If Georgia was playing the Taliban, I’d root for the Taliban,’” Jones said. “And that’s true. That’s 100% true for me.”
From his home in Dallas, Texas, Jones makes a point to watch not only Tech, but also Georgia in hopes of witnessing a Bulldogs loss. (He added a third Saturday viewing appointment this season – North Carolina, to watch Tar Heels opponents run up yards and points on UNC defensive coordinator and former Tech coach Geoff Collins.)
“The hatred is real,” Jones said.
It isn’t just that Georgia has dominated the football series since Vince Dooley took over in Athens in 1964, winning 45 of 59 starting with his first season. (UGA coach Kirby Smart has expanded the lead, winning the past six by an average 41.3-12 score.) It’s also that Bulldogs fans are everywhere.
“Just completely outnumbered,” Jones said.
Even in Texas, Jones still comes across Georgia fans, their bodies, houses and cars adorned in Bulldogs accoutrements.
Said Jones, “I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I can’t even get away from these people this far away.’”
Here’s the funny thing, though. It was the Topples’ close proximity to Georgia fans that helped bring about this partial conversion. For the past seven years, Craig has been a chaplain at a retirement community in Waktinsville, near Athens, where many of the residents that he ministers to are Bulldogs fans. Before that, he worked in Christian ministry with congregations that also leaned heavily red and black. And particularly given that he was ministering to them, he discovered that, even as a Tech fan, he could share their joy over Georgia wins and their disappointment in losses rather than the opposite.
“It’s sort of like, ‘Yeah, I can cheer for this team and I can get a sense of what this is (as a Georgia fan) instead of reveling in any kind of (tormenting),’” he said.
Trasie recalled feeling “like a fish out of water” when she first traversed the UGA campus for her graduate studies.
“Just even seeing the color red had some emotional feeling attached to it,” she said.
But time passed. She joined the faculty and taught for about five years. She called it assimilation.
“You begin to definitely feel more of a community than separate,” she said.
Don’t get the Topples wrong. They don’t traipse about Athens garbed in red and bark at strangers. Tech always will be first. When Craig attended the Tech-N.C. State game Thursday with his daughter Ruby and Jones, the video board showed highlights of Tech’s 2016 win over Georgia in Sanford Stadium, a game he attended.
“That brought back some really deep-down, good energy right there,” he said.
But they occasionally attend Georgia watch parties with friends and can tolerate their daughters Ruby and Zia being full-fledged Bulldogs fans. Craig will watch Georgia play at home (and not root against the Bulldogs).
Despite his own disdain for UGA, Jones can understand and even appreciate his friend’s split loyalties. When the Topples moved to Athens, “I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I know what’s going to happen here,’” Jones said.
Like many Tech fans, Jones calls Athens a cesspool, but he knows better. During his undergraduate years, Jones took part in Tech’s co-op program in which students alternate taking classes and gaining work experience. His co-op was located in Athens, and he lived there with high-school friends then at Georgia.
As a Tech grad, he can’t help but continue to look down upon Georgia as an academic institution. But, having lived in enemy territory, he holds no grudges over his friend’s change of heart.
“I give him a hard time, but I understand,” Jones said. “I mean, it’s a great place. Athens is awesome.”
As kickoff approaches, ponder a 17-word sermon from the Rev. Topple.
“Let’s have rivalry week, but we can hope for our communities to succeed at the same time.”
Can Clean Old-Fashioned Hate be, as Craig puts it, a sentiment that is more playful than literal? Could Jackets diehards find it in their hearts to get behind Georgia in the SEC Championship game? Were the Bulldogs to suffer an agonizing defeat in the College Football Playoff, could Tech supporters summon a response more compassionate than delirious mocking?
How about it, Tech fans?
Yeah.
I didn’t think so, either.
