Got Tickets? He Sure Does
By: Jennifer Herseim | Categories: Alumni Celebrations
The game looked over by half-time. The Yellow Jackets were trailing the No. 7–ranked Virginia Cavaliers by double digits. As the players returned to the field, 14-year-old Brad Edwards felt destroyed. He was in the stands with his father, Henry Edwards Jr., IM 72, holding out hope that Tech could pull out a win after the demoralizing first half.
Edwards comes from a long line of proud Georgia Tech fans. (His grandfather was even a freshman team quarterback on the 1928 National Championship team.) So witnessing the first half of that October 17, 1998, game against Virginia was particularly grueling.
But the game wasn’t over. The Jackets returned in the second half with an unexpected touchdown that spurred a late-game comeback. By the final whistle, Tech had clinched the victory 41-to-38, and thousands of fans streamed onto the field to celebrate. Later that night, Edwards and his father wrote a note on the back of their ticket stub. “We would always do that after games. It was a fun bonding thing that I did with my dad,” Edwards says. “My dad grew up without the Internet, so that was his way of keeping track of the score and what happened.”
Edwards put that ticket stub in a shoebox. He kept adding to the shoebox after every Tech game, until one day in 2011, he saw ticket stubs for sale online. “I thought it would be cool to have a ticket from every Tech football game ever played.”
He started hunting down rare tickets on obscure auction websites and meeting fellow collectors. Today, Edwards has 2,024 tickets and the count keeps growing. He created the website GeorgiaTechTicketStubs.com—which boasts the largest online collection of Tech football ticket stubs in the country—to display them.
He’s still chasing his dream of owning a ticket from all 1,304 football games Tech has played.
“That’s the goal. I don’t think I’ll ever achieve it, so it’ll give me the ability to keep the hope alive and keep collecting my whole life.”
Ticket to History
The oldest ticket stub in Edwards’ collection is from 1917. The game was coached by legendary John Heisman and it completed Edwards’ collection of ticket stubs from games including all of Tech’s paid coaches. He finally found the 1917 ticket stub in a lot of other game tickets on an auction site.
“I got into a bidding war and ultimately lost,” he says. “But I got in touch with the guy who won. I think he was looking for an Ohio State ticket and we split the cost of the whole thing.”
Collecting ticket stubs isn’t cheap. The most expensive one Edwards purchased is a 1927 press ticket at Notre Dame signed by legendary football coach Knute Rockne. Edwards wouldn’t reveal the cost, but he said it required a conversation with his wife, Molly. “She’s supportive. She went to the University of Georgia so that throws a bit of a wrench into things, but she knows how much I love Tech football.”
Punting on the First Down?
Coach Collins would not approve.
In addition to his 1917 ticket and his stub from the ’98 game against Virginia, Edwards’ favorite tickets are a 1925 ticket against Penn State, which was played at Yankee Stadium; a 1921 ticket against Penn State where the teams played at the New York City Polo Grounds (home to the New York Yankees and Giants at that time); and the 1999 Georgia game where Jasper Sanks fumbled and Tech won in overtime. “I remember it just being crazy.”
When Edwards first launched his website, he also wrote game synopses underneath tickets. He would search old newsreels on microfilm at the Decatur Library for articles describing the games.
“The way they talked about football and the rules has changed,” Edwards says. Some of the strategies would shock today’s fans.
“Teams in the 1920s would punt on the first down because they thought their defense was better than their offense. Today, no one would ever do that. They’d fire the coach immediately!”
Although he has less time these days to write synopses—by day, Edwards is chief technology officer at Sunrise Technologies, a Microsoft Business Applications partner—he looks forward to one day catching up.
“When I retire, I might get back into writing the game synopses. I’d like to provide a place where everyone can go and read about every game Tech’s ever played.” Now that’s the ticket.
The ticket artwork and designs are often a window into current events at that time, Edwards says. For example, during World War II, a 1942 ticket shows the time zone stamped with “E.W.T.,” or Eastern War Time. During the war, Congress instituted a national daylight-saving time as an energy-conservation measure. Tickets during that period also included patriotic images geared toward the war effort.
Tickets from 1933 showcased Georgia’s bicentennial celebration. And during the 1960s’ space race, the 1965 season tickets included a design of a Yellow Jacket dressed in a spacesuit.
