Pre-bowl events.
Clemson
Solid Orange Tailgate Monday, Dec. 31, 2012, 3:30-5:30 PM in the Murphy Ballroom located in building B of the Georgia World Congress Center, 25 International Blvd. NW, Atlanta, GA 30313.
Tickets are $20, include buffet and iced tea and entry into the Chick-fil-A FanFest. Cash bar available
Clemson fans can cheer their players on the way to the Georgia Dome at FanFest
Contact us at iptay@clemson.edu or 1-800-CLEMSON.
LSU see www.lsuatlanta.com/
Park Bar at 150 Walton Street is LSU game central. It is located at the corner of Centennial Olympic Park Drive and Walton Street, across from the Centennial Olympic Park. Welcome Party and REAL Tigers Trivia Contest Sunday, Dec. 30 with contests, prizes and former LSU athletes.
Pittypat’s Porch serves as a central LSU restaurant with specials Sunday and Monday, 25 Andrew Young International Boulevard.
Chick-fil-A Bowl Parade
Saturday from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. downtown.This free event starts at Baker and Peachtree streets and ends at the Georgia World Congress Center. Includes floats, classic cars, cheerleaders, mascots, marching bands, dynamic dance groups.
FanFest
From 2 to 6 p.m. at the Georgia World Congress Center, Building C, next to the Georgia Dome.
Pre-game family fun and food. Receiving, passing and kicking games, obstacle courses and rock climbing wall. Buy bowl game items. ACC vs. SEC pep rally with bands. Team’s walk through on the way to the Georgia Dome. Tickets $15. Children under 5 free.
There are two sure predictions for this year’s Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta.
The first is that the tigers are going to win. The second is that pep bands will play “Tiger Rag.”
The Clemson Tigers and the Louisiana State University Tigers will face off in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve in the Georgia Dome, and Atlanta-based fans of both teams say it ought to be a good one. Both teams sport 10-2 records.
But a football game wouldn’t be the American sport it is without a little smack-talk going on.
“When you have the Southeastern Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference playing each other, I’ll take the SEC all day long,” said Frank Duffy of Atlanta, a graduate of the SEC’s Louisiana State.
He thinks his tigers, sporting gold and purple, have something to prove after their loss a year ago to Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game. The Crimson Tide defeated LSU 21–0 and captured the 2011 title.
“We do have a chip on our shoulder after last year’s performance against Alabama, which has some of us still in therapy,” Duffy said. LSU had defeated Alabama in an earlier regular-season game.
“I think we can exorcise a few demons in this bowl,” he said.
The Clemson Tigers, sporting orange, are not expected to roll over like kittens on catnip.
“My prediction is it is going to be a very competitive game, in the tradition of the Chick-fil-A Bowl,” said Todd Ballew of Buford, a 1991 graduate of Clemson.
Oh, and there is a fourth prediction. Everybody will have a good time, at least up until the last whistle of the game. At that point only half the fans in town will have as good a time as they all came here wishing they would.
There are tailgates and a pre-bowl parade, designated restaurants and bars for fans of either team, and old friends and family coming to town to visit the estimated 10,000-plus graduates of both schools living in metro Atlanta.
“There are two things LSU fans look forward to on game day,” said Atlantan Del Moon, an LSU grad. “Number one is go to the parade and cheer for Mike the Tiger [the mascot] and the cheerleaders.
“And Number two is seeing the LSU marching band, of which I am a proud three-year alum.”
Bands from both schools play “Tiger Rag” to celebrate points and great play. But like an aficionado deserving the title “fan,” he won’t give Clemson an inch on ownership. Moon helped found the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
" 'Tiger Rag' was the first Dixieland jazz single, released in 1917," he said. "I wonder where that song originated? Could it have been — New Orleans?" he pointedly asked.
Fight song aside, Clemson fans are in a good mood. The team whupped up on the SEC’s Auburn Tigers in the Georgia Dome for their season opener this year. Still, Clemson is ranked as the underdog, or undertiger, in the game.
“It’s kind of nice to go in as underdog,” said Theresa Quam, an officer in the metro Atlanta Clemson alumni club.
That might give her team a little advantage.
“People tend to write us off,” she said. “But I think we are in for a good game. I think there will be a lot of excitement and fingernail biting and hair pulling and all that.”
She would not venture a guess at a final result.
That, she said, is a way to jinx your team.
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