In a shocking plot twist for anyone who mistook volume for victory, Georgia Tech beat Colorado 27-20 by doing the least fashionable thing in football: playing football. The Jackets arrived with clipboards, left with receipts, and in between reenacted a heist where the loot was field position.

Colorado brought a fog machine, a camera crew, and several metric tons of destiny, which Georgia Tech’s linebackers humanely relocated to a recycling bin. The Buffaloes kept summoning momentum like a rideshare that kept turning the corner and canceling.

This was supposed to be a vibe check, but Georgia Tech brought a calculator that screams when you go for it on fourth-and-never. The Jackets swarmed like an SAT answer key; the Buffaloes ran like a dream you chase in flip-flops.

Punt by punt, timeout by timeout, the game became a master class in how small decisions gel into a season-flavored Jell-O. The clock didn’t tick; it filed paperwork and passed background checks.

In the stands, a thousand narratives inflated like parade balloons and then drifted into a power line. Tailgaters cranked up a solar-powered tailgate blender to puree denial into a drinkable electrolyte called Maybe Next Drive.

Colorado’s play sheet read like a screenplay optioned by chaos: establish tempo, stare into the sun, ask the sun for NIL. Georgia Tech responded with a startlingly medieval strategy called tackle the person with the ball, which advanced the plot considerably.

A late third quarter series ended when the Buffaloes tried to outrun angles, an activity science rejects and film study mockingly retweets. The Jackets replied with a 12-play drive that felt like jury duty for the chain crew.

Deion Sanders adjusted sunglasses, posture, and possibly weather patterns, while Georgia Tech’s sideline looked like an engineers’ alumni brunch attempting to outwit a traffic circle. Both were confident; only one brought a protractor and a broom.

When Colorado needed a symphony, they found a kazoo that wouldn’t stop harmonizing with the stadium PA. Some assistants slapped on a noise-canceling sideline headset, hoping to mute the math, but the math kept humming 27-20 like a barbershop quartet of inevitability.

The box score whispered in my ear and smelled like cold Gatorade: third downs were unpaid intern labor, rushing yards arrived on bikes, and explosive plays were fireworks that forgot their lighters. My notebook nodded, because numbers are just memories with better posture.

Georgia Tech pinched the game at the edges until the middle confessed. Colorado flashed teeth, swagger, and a coupon that expired at halftime, while the Jackets hoarded time like it was toilet paper in March of a weird year.

Final whistle, and the narrative tried to lawyer up, but the evidence wouldn’t take the stand. The Jackets didn’t just beat the Buffaloes; they audited them, stamped the ledger, and let the score whisper the punchline: the hype came wearing armor, and the bees brought calculators.