Dec. 30, 2003
BOISE, Idaho – Georgia Tech arrived in Boise shortly after 12 noon mountain time to clear skies and 19 degrees. The Yellow Jackets and their official travel party began their day well before 7 a.m. with the loading of final luggage and departure from the north end of Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Tonight, Tech will take part in the annual “beef bowl,” where two players are selected from each school to compete in a steak eating contest. Junior guard Andy Tidwell-Neal is confirmed as one of the Jacket participants tonight. Reserve offensive tackle Kenton Johnson and redshirt freshman lineman LeShawn Newberry are rumored to be strong favorites to fill the other spot in tonight’s contest.
“HAVE YOU SEEN SNOW?”
The clear skies of the northwest gave Tech’s charter flight a beautiful view of the new fallen snow in Idaho of the last two days. While the wintry weather is a common place for players like Tidwell-Neal (Plymouth, Minn.), who once played football at temperatures below zero, or cornerback Dennis Davis (Atco, NJ), who had to dig out from 28-inches of snow in his youth, it will be the first-time seeing the white stuff for some of the Jackets.
Freshman lineman Matt Rhodes hails from south Texas (Angleton) and has never seen the stuff. Kick return man Kenny Scott said the first time he ever saw it was on an official visit to Notre Dame last year. Players were not nearly as forth coming about the information as one would expect.
LOOKING AHEAD…
Georgia Tech will workout tomorrow here for the first time. Unlike previous bowl trips, all of the Jacket practices will occur on the “blue turf” of Bronco Stadium. In fact, both schools will workout in the stadium each day leading up to Saturday’s contest. That is not very common to post-season play. In fact, while Tech was putting their final practices together in Atlanta, they were at times scheduling opposite Clemson, who was using Rose Bowl field, for their Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl preparations on January 2, against Tennessee.
