D.L. Claborn and Reg McCrary have combined to spend more than 80 years volunteering to help the Chick-fil-A Bowl grow from a start-up to one of the games that next year will help decide college football’s national champion.
They will be inducted into the bowl’s Hall of Fame this year for their efforts.
Claborn, 90, offered to help former Atlanta Tech High School classmate George Crumbley when he was first putting the bowl together. Claborn is in his 43rd year helping the bowl, most notably in sales. He set a record last year after selling more than 1,000 tickets and is the bowl’s all-time salesman with more than 30,000 tickets sold.
“It’s a tremendous honor,” Claborn said. “There’s not too many people that have somebody put you in a hall of fame.”
McCrary, who will turn 73 on Christmas, began volunteering when there were just a handful of people, such as Claborn, offering to help. He is in his 41st year helping the Bowl and now helps manage the pre-game and halftime shows, among other things.
“It means a lot to me,” he said. “In addition to having been there for the length of time, they feel like I’ve contributed to the bowl.”
Their backgrounds help explain their success, and how the bowl has grown.
Claborn played a year of football at Miami before moving back to Atlanta to be near his wife, Kathryn, and first child Gary and to help his mother.
He lifted so many crates at a Dr. Pepper bottling plant that his hands became thick enough with callouses that not even a knife could cut through them.
He eventually began working at a car dealership. He became such a good salesman that he received a dealership that mushroomed into eight more over 39 years.
Long-time Atlanta residents may remember his advertising slogan: “I got mine at Boomershine.”
Claborn said his approach was the same, whether it was bowl tickets or Pontiacs: Sell yourself. It’s a lesson he learned during a seminar when he was first starting out “from an old-timer from Arizona.”
“I subscribed to that 50 years ago and it’s really taken off,” he said.
Claborn also officiated college football games, even working the 1971 Peach Bowl.
McCrary played drums in Alabama’s “Million Dollar Band” before becoming a pilot for Delta. He became involved with the Peach Bowl at the urging of a friend. McCrary started out doing whatever needed to be done on the field before taking over the parade in 1975. In the early 1980s he moved up to the press box to take over the duties he still holds.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed it,” he said.
The affection they have for the game is evidenced by the fact that neither has any plans to slow down.
Claborn said he will still sell tickets until “they call me home.” McCrary said he will keep going until he’s no longer able to help.
The game, nor the logistics of putting on the game, closely resemble what it was like in the first years. The game now has 450 volunteers. It will be one of six rotating hosts of semifinal games for the college football championship tournament begining next year. Claborn pointed out that two years ago there were almost 73,000 people at the game. McCrary said moving to the Georgia Dome was incredible after playing at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.
“I’m just so thankful to George Crumbley and that group for starting the bowl,” McCrary said. “I think it’s something George would be proud of.”
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