If you think that the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets have little chance heading into this weekend’s rivalry game in Athens against the Georgia Bulldogs, you might want to look back at the two most recent installments of this bitter local feud in the Peach State. When these two teams meet, predictability isn’t something to be sought or relied on.

Consider the 2008 edition of this peachy pigskin passion play, the last time these schools met Between the Hedges at venerable Samford Stadium. Georgia entered with a 9-2 record and a No. 11 national ranking behind lauded quarterback Matthew Stafford, who has shown his worth as an NFL-caliber gunslinger (if only he could keep his body healthy, though – that’s the problem). Georgia actually started very brightly, rolling to a 28-12 halftime lead and making the Yellow Jackets look slow and pedestrian by comparison.

Then the third quarter happened, and nothing was ever the same again in UGA’s backyard.

Georgia Tech, on the road and trailing by a bunch of points, merely came up with a 26-0 third-quarter blitzkrieg that stunned the Bulldogs – and a crowd of just over 90,000 fans – into silent  submission… well, except for the small pockets of gold- and yellow-outfitted Tech fans who yelled loud and long for the Rambling Wreck. The Yellow Jackets steamrolled Georgia on the ground, converting multiple third-and-long plays with option runs around the edges, primarily by tailback Roddy Jones. Georgia took away the quarterback keeper with Josh Nesbitt but regularly failed to account for the pitch man, Jones, near the boundary, and that’s how Tech rolled up 409 rushing yards in a wild 45-42 victory.

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The next year, it was Georgia’s turn to confound the college football cognoscenti. With the Dawgs limping into Atlanta’s Bobby Dodd Stadium with a 6-5 record, it seemed that Tech – playing at home with a 10-1 record and a freshly-minted ACC Coastal Division championship – would throttle the boys in red and black. Instead, it was Georgia’s turn to rush the field and run Tech out of town. Coach Mark Richt’s Dawgs exploded for 339 rushing yards, as UGA dominated the line of scrimmage and contained Tech’s triple-option offense as well. Georgia Tech coach Paul Johnson engineered the masterful 2008 upset on the road in Athens, but Richt got him back last year in Atlanta, a city that is compared to the other Athens… the one in Greece, not Georgia.

What will 2010 bring? Who the heck knows? Just expect the unexpected and don’t impose too fine a narrative on this contest before it starts.