WREK plays hardball with Cox. (Georgia Institute of Technology's WREK 91.1 FM competes with Cox Broadcasting Corp.)

A group of rock 'n roll T-shirt-wearing engineering students has wrecked Cox Broadcasting's plans to put out a more powerful radio signal to Georgia Tech basketball and football fans.

Cox Broadcasting, which controls programming for WCNN Sports Talk 680 AM (The Fan), had hoped to use the 40,000-watt-strong signal of Georgia Tech's student-run radio station - WREK 91.1 FM - to broadcast Tech basketball and football games. WCNN, which has an exclusive contract to broadcast the Tech games, needed a stronger signal at night because its power drops to 10,000 watts after dark, leaving Yellow Jackets fans in the north metro area out of range and out of luck.

Cox approached WREK through the Georgia Tech Athletic Association, offering the radio station internships at CNN, a …