CAPITAL OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL?
The final season in the Georgia Dome and the first season in Mercedes-Benz Stadium will bring these nationally televised college football events to downtown Atlanta:
Date / Event / Where
Sept. 3, 2016 / Georgia vs. North Carolina in Chick-fil-A Kickoff / Georgia Dome
Dec. 3, 2016 / SEC Championship game / Georgia Dome
Dec. 17, 2016 / MEAC vs. SWAC champs in Celebration Bowl / Georgia Dome
Dec. 31, 2016 / College Football Playoff semifinal in Peach Bowl / Georgia Dome
Sept. 2, 2017 / Alabama vs. Florida State in Chick-fil-A Kickoff / Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Sept. 4, 2017 / Georgia Tech vs. Tennessee in Chick-fil-A Kickoff / Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Dec. 2, 2017 / SEC Championship game / Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Dec. 2017 / Celebration Bowl / Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Jan. 1, 2018 / Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl / Mercedes-Benz Stadium
Jan. 8, 2018 / College Football Playoff championship game / Mercedes-Benz Stadium
College football has always been big in Atlanta, but never as big as it will be over the next 17 months.
The Georgia-North Carolina game Sept. 3 merely is the start of a stretch of major games at the Georgia Dome and its successor Mercedes-Benz Stadium that will culminate with the College Football Playoff national championship game Jan. 8, 2018.
“I think this will be the most significant time in college football history in this city,” said Gary Stokan, president and CEO of Peach Bowl Inc., which runs the postseason Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the season-opening Chick-fil-A Kickoff game.
The two-season stretch will include a 2016 national semifinal game at the Dome, dual Kickoff games — Alabama vs. Florida State (two of the past three national champions) and Georgia Tech vs. Tennessee — at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to start the 2017 season and the national championship game in Atlanta for the first time at the end of the 2017 season.
Not to mention two SEC Championship games, which likely will have playoff berths at stake.
Some Atlanta sports boosters long have called the city the capital of college football. Some years, that may have been hyperbole. But for the next 17 months, it will be hard to argue against the moniker.
“There is no doubt we can claim that and look people in the eye and back it up,” Stokan said.
He cited the presence of the College Football Hall of Fame, which opened its new home in downtown Atlanta two years ago, as well as the long list of coming games with national implications.
The Georgia-North Carolina matchup in the Kickoff game at the Dome is compelling — in part because it marks UGA coach Kirby Smart’s debut — but it is only an appetizer for the college football mega-events headed to Atlanta.
On Dec. 31, the Peach Bowl will host a national semifinal for the first time. The game will match either the playoff selection committee’s Nos. 1 and 4 teams or its Nos. 2 and 3 teams. This season’s other semifinal will be played in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. The Peach and Fiesta winners will advance to the national title game in Tampa, Fla.
The selection committee’s No. 1-ranked team will play in the semifinal closest to its campus. That suggests the No. 1 team likely will play in the Peach Bowl if it is from the SEC, ACC or Big Ten and in the Fiesta Bowl if it is from the Pac-12 or Big 12.
Peach Bowl officials proudly call this season’s semifinal the most significant college football game ever played in Atlanta because it’s the first time an Atlanta game will be officially and unequivocally assured of sending its winner to the national championship game.
SEC fans, though, could quibble a bit with that claim.
In the 22 SEC Championship games played in Atlanta since 1994, there have been three occasions in which both teams entered the game ranked in the top three nationally by the Associated Press poll — 2008 (No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 2 Florida), 2009 (No. 1 Florida vs. No. 2 Alabama) and 2012 (No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Georgia).
So one could argue that, no matter the outcome, those three games were effectively an unofficial play-in for the Bowl Championship Series title game, which determined college football’s national championship from 1998 until the advent of the four-team playoff in 2014.
Indeed, in all three cases, the SEC champ went on to win the BCS title game.
But even if this year’s Peach Bowl is anointed Atlanta’s most significant college football game ever, it will be a short-lived distinction.
“It’ll have that record for one year,” Stokan said.
That’s because the following season will bring a game even bigger than a semifinal to Atlanta: The College Football Playoff’s national championship game for the 2017 season will be played in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the $1.5 billion retractable-roof facility under construction next to the Dome and slated to open next year.
It’ll mark the first time the sport’s national champion has been crowned in Atlanta.
College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock has said the driving factors in awarding the game to Atlanta were “the opportunity to play in that brand new state-of-the-art stadium, the concise footprint of hotels and spaces for ancillary events (near) the stadium, and of course the excellent air service (to Atlanta).”
College football long has been big business here. According to the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau’s annual compilation of the largest conventions and events that visited the city, three of the top five last year — ranked by attendance — were college football games.
Nos. 1 and 2 on the list were the Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Markets in January and July at AmericasMart Atlanta, each drawing about 93,000 people. Nos. 3, 4 and 5 were the SEC Championship game, the Peach Bowl and the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, in that order, with attendance ranging from 73,800 to 65,000. (Falcons games aren’t on the list because they draw mostly locals, rather than visitors.)
The three college games generated direct economic impact of $42.52 million (SEC Championship game), $40.33 million (Peach Bowl) and $23.46 million (Chick-fil-A Kickoff), according to the ACVB.
The impact of this year’s Peach Bowl will be larger, based on a study commissioned by the Orange Bowl, which hosted a playoff semifinal last season. (The economic impact of sports events is hotly debated and often disputed by experts.)
The study by Rockport Analytics said the college football semifinal in the Orange Bowl produced $161.8 million in economic impact and $65.9 million in media exposure value for south Florida. While methodologies vary for calculating economic impact, Peach Bowl officials expect the same type of media exposure here this year — a week’s worth of pregame coverage from downtown Atlanta leading up to the New Year’s Eve semifinal telecast on ESPN.
As avidly as Atlanta follows college football, Stokan wonders if the city at large recognizes the collective magnitude of the games headed this way over the next 17 months.
“I don’t think it has been talked about a whole lot,” he said. “I don’t think people can imagine what’s coming down the road.”
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