Georgia
BREAKING: Vanderbilt Football selected for Birmingham Bowl, set to play Georgia Tech – The Vanderbilt Hustler
Vanderbilt Football has been selected to play Georgia Tech in the Birmingham Bowl on Dec. 27 in Birmingham, Alabama. This will be the Commodores’ first time playing in the postseason since 2018 when they lost to Baylor by a score of 45-38 in the Academy Sports + Outdoor Texas Bowl.
Vanderbilt went 6-6 during the 2024 season, starting with wins over Virginia Tech and Alcorn State in Weeks One and Two, respectively. Two losses to Georgia State and Missouri didn’t stop the ‘Dores from achieving their postseason aspirations, as they ripped off three consecutive wins against Alabama, Kentucky and Ball State to reach the precipice of bowl eligibility at 5-2.
The Black and Gold’s momentum stalled after a loss to Texas saw them fall to 5-3, but they went on the road and defeated the Auburn Tigers one week later to earn win number six and officially clinch postseason eligibility. The win also catapulted the Commodores into the No. 24 spot in the AP Poll.
Head coach Clark Lea and his team ended the regular season with a 6-6 record after losses to South Carolina, LSU and Tennessee.
Vanderbilt was selected for the Birmingham bowl — one of the SEC’s nine bowl tie-ins — after SMU beat Alabama for the final spot in the College Football Playoff. The Crimson Tide’s exclusion from the CFP left 10 SEC teams out of the field and only nine of the conference’s bowl tie-ins available. This pushed Oklahoma into a non-SEC bowl game.
Vanderbilt Football will look to end its three-game losing streak in its final game against the Yellowjackets on Dec. 27.
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Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
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