A stubborn team and a stubborn coach find a way yet again

These guys are going to South Beach, going in high style. (AJC photo by Johnny Crawford)

Tampa – There was orange in the stands and orange across the line, but now there’s only Orange, with an upper-case “O,” in Georgia Tech’s future. The team with the high school offense is going where only the big boys of college football go. Going to the Orange Bowl. Going as champion of a BCS conference. Going because it was simply too darn stubborn to stop.

It takes nerve to play the way Tech does. The Jackets never get stopped, but they never stop anybody. This marked the second consecutive Tech game to go puntless. The last one was a loss, a bitter one, to Georgia. But such is the beauty of Tech that it keeps chugging. The Jackets always figure they’ll score the next time they get the ball, and usually they do.

Tech’s first seven possessions of the ACC championship game yielded seven scores — four field goals, three touchdowns. Only when the eighth was actually blunted, Josh Nesbitt failing on fourth-and-one, did it seem Tech could ever be halted. And even then the replay official had to look to be sure.

And with that one stop — one of eight — the game swung toward Clemson. The splendid C.J. Spiller had kept the Tigers afloat, and here he went again, flying down the left sideline to trigger the go-ahead touchdown. On the night he would rush for 233 yards and score four touchdowns, but finally the Jackets found Spiller’s weakness: He doesn’t play defense.

And even though Tech had wasted a 13-point lead, you just knew Paul Johnson wasn’t overly displeased. He’s an offensive guy, and here was the chance for his stylized offense to carry him to Miami. Just over six minutes to play, one point behind … what, PJ worry?

Actually, there was one moment when PJ did look worried. Tech faced fourth-and-inches on its 23 at the start of this massive drive, and the coach moved out of his designated box to get a good look, to tell Josh Nesbitt to sneak it “in the A-gap,” to make sure the darn refs spotted the thing properly after the quarterback lowered his shoulder and surged. Which they did.

And that was really the only close shave on the march for Miami. There wasn’t even a third down to convert from then on — 13 plays, 86 yards, 4:45 burned off the clock. Nesbitt kept making the right reads and Jonathan Dwyer kept storming up the middle, and finally Dwyer bounced outside and rumbled home with 1:20 remaining.(”I was yelling for him to get tackled on the 1, but he didn’t,” PJ would say afterward.)

Again the Jackets had the lead. But when Nesbitt’s two-point conversion was overruled on replay, even then you wondered: Five-point lead, 80 seconds left … was it safe yet?

It was. Clemson quarterback Kyle Parker was tripped by Derrick Morgan on fourth down, and the game and the title were Tech’s and  oranges were being hurled onto the field as a reminder of the game to come. But really, could the game to come be any better than this?

Because this wasn’t just a conference championship. (Not that conference championships are anything to devalue.) This was the affirmation of the decision Dan Radakovich made in December 2007, the decision to hire a coach with a high school offense as opposed, say, to the newfangled Rick Neuheisel, and here in the span of two seasons the high school offense is 20-6 and headed to the Orange Bowl.

“Hopefully we’re building a program that’s going to be here for a while,”‘ Johnson would say. And then, speaking not just of a conference title but of the national championship: “It’s a goal, certainly.”

To say Paul Johnson did it by himself would be incorrect. He inherited a gifted crew that had been undercooked by Chan Gailey. But Johnson took players not designed for his system and made them fit. One of the best pure coaches in the industry, through force of both scheme and will, hoisted a program and a team to a level we didn’t figure it could reach. The Institute has graced some big bowls in its history, but never in the BCS era. And now it’s there.

Orange in the rear-view mirror. Orange on the docket on Jan. 5, 2010. And orange (sorry to resurrect the the old pun) you as Tech fans glad you hired the guy with the high school offense?

(Late-breaking stat! At 12:50 a.m. the ACC announced that, of  more than 700 games played in the FBS — the old Division I — this season, this was the first in which both teams rushed for more than 300 yards.)