The last straw, so to speak, was when the SEC passed a “140 Rule” in the 1963–64 offseason, which prohibited member schools from having more than 140 combined athletes on scholarship in football and basketball.
This wasn’t really a problem for most SEC schools. Back then, having way more than 100 scholarship players was common, but most teams would encourage players who weren’t getting any playing time to transfer to another school where they could play. Bobby Bowden famously got his start as a head coach by taking Bear Bryant’s rejects from Alabama and using them to make Samford a strong College Division (roughly the equivalent of modern Division II) program.
However, Georgia Tech (the logo is what they used in their SEC era) was a bit different. Tech was an excellent academic school, and even if a player washed out in football, many of them still wanted a Georgia Tech degree. Head coach Bobby Dodd could have just cut those players, but he said “I selected you, and if you’re not good enough, that’s my fault.” And so Dodd kept everyone he recruited and wanted to stay on scholarship.
Georgia Tech, because of this, had more than 140 players on scholarship in the two sports, and opposed the new rule. Bryant, who had a run-in with Dodd over an alleged unsportsmanlike act by one of his players in a game with Tech a few years before, still had a shaky relationship with him, but told Dodd he would get his university president to vote against the rule. Unfortunately, for one of the few times, the Alabama administration didn’t do what Bear wanted. The rule passed, and Georgia Tech immediately announced it would leave the SEC.
With that said, Dodd didn’t mind the idea anyway. For one thing, he hated playing the Mississippi schools, which he felt was beneath a university of Tech’s prestige. After he got to Atlanta, Dodd, who was born in the southwest Virginia mountains and was an All-American quarterback at Tennessee (he wanted to go to GT but they didn’t think he was good enough), went full-on Yellow Jacket and became something of a snob. Even a lot of his old colleagues at UT were not keen on him.
For another, Georgia Tech had a rich tradition and strong academics, and thought as an independent, it could be the “Notre Dame of the South.”
But it didn’t work out that way. There were too many other factors working against Georgia Tech and they never developed the national profile needed for that. In fact, they ended up mostly playing SEC teams for their key opponents. Between 1964 and 1987, even after they joined the ACC in 1978, and started playing an ACC schedule in the 1980s, the Yellow Jackets were playing Georgia and Tennessee every year, and Alabama more often than not. They were playing SEC teams all the time but not getting a share of the conference revenue anymore.
About a decade after they withdrew from the SEC, Dodd and Bryant patched up their relationship and Bryant tried to help Georgia Tech rejoin the conference. But a new admission to the SEC has to be unanimous, and Dodd’s past snootiness to Ole Miss and Mississippi State came back to haunt him. They vetoed Tech’s application in 1975. Tech realized they still needed a conference and soon joined the ACC.