Peach cedes control of matchup, likes result

ABOUT THE PEACH BOWL

When; where; TV: 12:30 p.m. Dec 31; Georgia Dome; ESPN

History: This will be the bowl's 47th game, making it the ninth oldest bowl in the country.

Evolving name: The game was called the Peach Bowl from 1968-96, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl from 1997-2005, Chick-fil-A Bowl from 2006-13 and, as of this year, again the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.

Role in College Football Playoff: It is one of six bowls that will serve as rotating sites of semifinal games in the new four-team playoff. Each of the six bowls will host one semifinal every three years. The Rose and Sugar bowls will host the semifinals for this season, the Orange and Cotton bowls for the 2015 season, and the Fiesta and Peach for the 2016 season.

Possible role with national championship game: The playoff organization bids out the right to host the national championship game, outside the bowl system. The first championship game of the playoff era will be played Jan. 12 in Arlington, Texas, and the next two in Glendale, Ariz., and Tampa, Fla. Atlanta plans to bid for the January 2018 championship game, which will be awarded next year (as will the 2019 and 2020 title games).

Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl officials learned the matchup for their New Year’s Eve game — TCU vs. Ole Miss — the same way as anyone else who really wanted to know.

“We all huddled around the TV,” bowl president Gary Stokan said. “We literally were surprised when we saw it announced.”

In years past, the Atlanta bowl put a lot of time and work into lining up its teams. It would send representatives to college games all over the Southeast throughout the fall. It would hold weekly meetings to hash out possible matchups. And then it would choose its teams within the parameters of its contracts with conferences.

None of that happened this time.

As part of its move into the upper tier of college football’s postseason, Atlanta’s 47-year-old bowl relinquished for the first time the decision on its matchup. The same national committee that selected and seeded the teams for the inaugural College Football Playoff set the matchups for four other major bowls, including the Peach, without local input.

So on Dec. 7, a Sunday afternoon, about 40 people affiliated with the Peach Bowl — staffers, board members, volunteers and former members of a now-defunct team-selection committee — went to the bowl’s offices to watch a nationally televised announcement of this season’s participants.

Stokan had asked Bill Hancock, the playoff’s executive director, if the bowl would get a phone call with advance word of its matchup.

“Gary, you’ll find out when America finds out,” Hancock replied.

First, the bracket was unveiled for the four-team playoff: No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 4 Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl; No. 2 Oregon vs. No. 3 Florida State in the Rose Bowl. Then the playoff committee went back behind closed doors at its Grapevine, Texas, hotel, reemerging two hours later on ESPN with the matchups for the Orange, Peach, Cotton and Fiesta bowls, the other major bowls in college football’s new postseason pecking order.

“When our game popped up on the TV, everybody started clapping and congratulating each other,” Stokan said. “It was pretty cool.”

As soon as they saw it, the Peach people knew they had a winning matchup: No. 6 TCU, which just a week earlier was ranked in the top four, versus No. 9 Ole Miss, which defeated the SEC’s two highest-ranked teams. The nation’s No. 2 scoring offense (TCU, 46.8 points per game) versus the nation’s No. 1 scoring defense (Ole Miss, 13.8 points allowed per game).

“It was interesting in that we didn’t have as much control as we’d had in the past. It was kind of scary after being used to something else for so long,” Stokan said. “But in giving that control up, we knew what we were getting was well worth it: the ability to host a national semifinal game every three years and also have two top-10 (or thereabouts) teams play the other years.

“That’s what we bought into, and it proved to be accurate in the first year.”

The Peach’s pairing earned high scores from the national media. SBNation.com ranked it the best matchup of this season’s 38 bowls, playoffs included. The Los Angeles Times ranked it the third best, behind only the playoff semifinals. ESPN and Yahoo ranked it fourth best.

“If we were selecting ourselves … I’m not sure we could have had a matchup this good,” Stokan said.

It’s the best matchup in the Atlanta bowl’s history in terms of combined team rankings, topping the 2005 game of No. 9 Miami vs. No. 10 LSU — the only previous meeting of two top-10 teams.

Before settling on TCU-Ole Miss, playoff committee members allayed their only qualm: that Ole Miss opened this season in a Chick-fil-A Kickoff game here.

“They did talk about whether Ole Miss should come back to Atlanta, but decided that was not a factor,” Hancock said.

Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said the committee made the correct call, describing his program as honored to return to “a place that is extremely dear to us.”

The Peach pairing checked all of the committee’s boxes for the non-playoff bowls under its purview, Hancock said: “avoiding rematches, creating the best matchups, paying attention to geography.”

If the former bowl system and the Peach’s former contracts with the ACC and SEC had still been in place this season, Stokan figures he’d have wound up with a game of “probably Auburn against Clemson, something like that.”

That would have lacked the national angle that playoff-snubbed TCU brings. But it would have been a fine regional tilt, No. 17 vs. No. 19, and presumably would have made for easy ticket sales to two avid, nearby fan bases.

TCU-Ole Miss underscores a challenge inherent in the new system: selling tickets to fans of more distant teams.

The participating teams received a combined initial allotment of 25,000 tickets, 9,500 less than under the bowl’s previous arrangement. That meant more tickets to sell locally — and with sharply higher prices and a 12:30 p.m. Wednesday kickoff.

Part of the Peach’s pitch is that those who buy tickets this season and next will be guaranteed access to tickets when the bowl hosts a national semifinal Dec. 31, 2016. Sales also were helped by Ole Miss’ demand exceeding its initial allotment.

For the past 22 years, the Atlanta bowl was contractually limited to ACC and SEC teams. In the new system, it’s still likely, although not mandated, the playoff committee will send a team from at least one of those conferences to the Peach many years, as it did this time with Ole Miss.

But TCU, co-champion of the Big 12, would have been out of the question under the former system. In fact, the Horned Frogs haven’t played football in the state of Georgia since a 1988 game at UGA.

“Our players are going to be really excited getting an opportunity to play in the Georgia Dome,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said. “All we’ve ever heard is how well teams have been treated when they come to that part of the country.”