As retirement beckons, Gary Stokan has made massive impact on sports in Atlanta
In December 1999, Gary Stokan was overseeing his second Peach Bowl. It was not a major bowl. The College Football Hall of Fame was in South Bend, Indiana. Atlanta did not host a neutral-site game on the season’s opening weekend.
At that point, Stokan merely was the president of an up-and-coming bowl game, albeit one with a dream — to get the Peach Bowl into the Bowl Championship Series, a forerunner of the College Football Playoff.
“Certainly, we can’t go from what we’re doing now to a BCS game, but we can look at what the expectations are and start to drive our committees to that point,” Stokan told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1999.
Twenty-six years later, the Hall of Fame will celebrate its 11th anniversary in Atlanta this month. In about two weeks, Mercedes-Benz Stadium will host two Aflac Kickoff games, continuing the eyeball- and visitor-drawing staple of the opening weekend that began in 2008 (then the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game).
And on Jan. 9, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl will be a CFP semifinal game for the fourth time in the bowl’s history. It’s not all Stokan’s doing, but he’s been the driving force in bringing these entities to life in Atlanta, not to mention a myriad other sporting events of note during his 12 years as president of the Atlanta Sports Council.
The Peach Bowl will be Stokan’s last in his role as the game’s CEO and president, as he has decided to retire next June at the end of the college football season. Stokan made the news public Monday.
Stokan will be succeeded by David Epps, the Peach Bowl’s chief operating officer and a 31-year veteran of the organization.
“It’s been a great run,” Stokan, 70, told the AJC on Monday. “I’ve been honored, privileged to represent the fans and the media and the corporations and the government and my family and my staff as a leader in Atlanta. Truly a blessing.”
Atlanta may have had more successful and impactful sports-industry movers and shakers than Stokan, but the list has to be awfully short.
Stokan was hired in 1998 to run the Atlanta Sports Council and the Peach Bowl. With two daughters in middle school, he saw the chance to be at home more.
“I saw an opportunity that the Atlanta Sports Council and the Peach Bowl could really become something special,” he said. “So it went from there from ’98 till now.”
Boosting bowl payouts with the support of sponsor Chick-fil-A, claiming a favorable time slot on the evening of New Year’s Eve, benefiting from the controlled climate of the Georgia Dome (and then MBS) and building on the proven formula of matching teams from the SEC and ACC, Stokan significantly raised the game’s profile. Of the past 25 years, 22 have sold out.
When the BCS never added the Peach to its rotation for hosting its championship game, Stokan created a different path to bring a major game to town. When the NCAA expanded the regular season to 12 games, he staged the first Chick-fil-A Kickoff game between Alabama and Clemson in 2008. Always the salesman, he branded the season-opening clash the “Daytona 500 of college football” until the speedway’s owners sent him a cease-and-desist letter.
ESPN’s “College GameDay” has brought its set to the game four times. The kickoff game’s success birthed copycats in Charlotte, New Orleans, Dallas and Orlando, among other locations. The kickoff game, the Hall of Fame and the bowl game have helped stamp Atlanta with another often-used Stokan moniker — “the capital of college football.”
Along the way, the Peach Bowl has given away more than $65 million in charity, much of it to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and will clear $70 million by Stokan’s retirement, he said. Asked what accomplishment he is most proud of, he cited the 18 medical trials with the aim of eradicating childhood cancer that Peach Bowl donations have helped fund.
Besides his college football endeavors, in his role as head of the Atlanta Sports Council, he keyed bids to bring a Super Bowl, both men’s and women’s NCAA Final Fours, the MLB, NBA and NHL All-Star Games to Atlanta, among a multitude of major and mid-tier events.
Highly personable, vision-oriented and always ready with an anecdote or sales pitch, Stokan seems as if he were made for this job. He cited philosophies that have guided his business — to maximize his God-given talents and to do business based on relationships that benefit both parties.
“Because pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered,” he said. “It’s OK for everybody to eat at the trough, but you never want to be the hog and hog a deal. You want to do long-term business.”
Near the end of a 47-year career, Stokan has been honored many times for his labor and compensated well. The National Football Foundation will present him with its Legacy Award in December for his dedication to the game of football. He looks forward to coaching his four grandsons, all under 10 years old.
“I’ve been blessed in 47 years to be in sports, so I can’t retire because I’ve never worked a day in my life,” he said.
In so doing, he changed the face of sports in Atlanta for the good.
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
