Patti Young started working for the Peach Bowl in 1970 and hasn’t stopped
Patti Young has been working for the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl for so long that she was there the last time Indiana played in the game, and that was 35 years ago.
“It’s so funny,” Young, executive assistant to retiring Peach Bowl CEO and President Gary Stokan, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They had the best athletic department. When they would come down, we’d have to find discos for them because they loved to go dancing.”
But that doesn’t fully explain Young’s longevity with the Peach Bowl or, to be clear, the scope of her job. For when the Hoosiers made their most recent appearance, in 1990, Young already had been helping bring the game to life for 20 years, often in roles unrelated to locating disco clubs.
Indiana makes its reacquaintance with the Peach Bowl — and Young — this week, as the Hoosiers return to Atlanta to face Oregon in a College Football Playoff semifinal game.
Friday’s game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium will be the 58th in the bowl’s history. Young, 74, has been there for all but the first two and has no plans to stop.
“It’s been fun,” she said. “I’ll keep on going until they tell me.”
Young can tell you about Lou Holtz when he brought N.C. State to Atlanta in 1972 and 1975.
“Coach Holtz would show me card tricks all night,” Young said. “He was great.”
She has a story about her role in the launch of the Fiesta Bowl, which like the Peach has risen from relative obscurity to become part of the CFP bowl system. When Arizona State played in the 1970 game, Phoenix boosters came to Atlanta to learn from Peach Bowl founder George Crumbley after their bowl bid had been denied earlier that year.
“The next thing you know, Mr. Crumbley’s got me working on trying to get all the stuff together to send to them for them to put together the Fiesta Bowl,” Young said. “That was basically taken off of Mr. Crumbley’s notes.”
And, surely, memories of the dancing Hoosiers athletic administrators, who made Peach Bowl trips at the end of the 1987 and 1990 seasons.
“They would have so much fun,” Young said. “I just loved it when they came.”
What the bowl staff prides itself on — delivering an exceptional experience for all involved — is what Young has personified. For decades, she has been a welcoming presence, whether it’s been to generations of interns, participating teams, bowl sponsors or fans.
“Back then, most conversations were on the phone,” Stokan said. “And she’s really good on the phone, because she provides Southern hospitality. That’s how people knew her, through the phone.”
Growing up in College Park, she learned the art of Southern hospitality from her mother, Virginia O’Brien. (Her father, Frank, ingrained in her a love of sports.)
“I mean, you just have to be nice,” Young said. “I mean, sometimes I’m nice and then I go home and I’m like, ‘I’m not sure how I made it through this one.’”
Which seems like a most accurate depiction of Southern hospitality.
To see her on game days, bouncing between suites for the Peach Bowl board, past winners of the Bobby Dodd coach-of-the-year award (which the Peach Bowl operates) and their wives, the National Football Foundation and VIPs, is to see her in her element.
“Knows everybody’s name, speaks to everybody, makes conversation, comfortable with everyone, welcoming,” said Carolyn Curry, wife of Georgia Tech great Bill Curry, a past winner of the Dodd Trophy and president of the board that selects the winners.
Young’s love for her job and the people it brings her in touch with — many whose names and numbers she keeps on a Rolodex that she still uses — is obvious.
“She relates well to people and she loves her job,” Stokan said of Young, a most worthy inductee into the Peach Bowl Hall of Fame in 2019.
It was a providential stroke that landed her at the Peach Bowl.
In 1970, she was a 19-year-old college student looking for a summer job. Her father had a relationship with Crumbley, the Peach Bowl founder and an advertising executive, and suggested that she meet with him. Crumbley brought her on and, after she proved indispensable, asked her to delay her return for a semester and then another.
It has since become abundantly clear that Young is not returning for her sophomore year. How fortunate to land a temporary job as a teenager and then never leave it. Young said she used to get asked for help in writing a resume. It was one task that she had no familiarity with.
“I’m blessed,” she said. “That’s all I can say is, I’m the most blessed person ever.”
As important as Young has been to the bowl — Stokan called her “a real glue in the office” — so the bowl staff and the game’s many connections have been to her.
A mother of two and grandmother of two, Young has beaten cancer three times. In her words, she is “totally convinced” that her joy in her work and the support and prayers of the many people in her circle through the bowl played a hand in her recoveries.
“If I didn’t have this place, I would probably be gone,” she said. “I mean, I just love it. It’s been my family outside of my family. It’s just been the world.”
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.
