Georgia Tech fans’ long-held interest in playing in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game may finally be satisfied, albeit in a few more years.
Tech has been in conversations with Peach Bowl president and CEO Gary Stokan, whose organization oversees the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game that has been played at the Georgia Dome since 2008. The two sides are particularly looking at 2017, when the new Falcons stadium is scheduled to open.
Tech athletic director Mike Bobinski said that 2017 is the first year that the kickoff game has availability that is also feasible for Tech. The Yellow Jackets could conceivably be the first team to play a regular-season game — pro or college — in the new building.
It would come against a non-conference opponent and not Georgia. Tech is scheduled to play at Ole Miss that year, the first half of a home-and-home series concluding in 2018. Ole Miss already is scheduled to play in the kickoff game this upcoming season against Boise State.
“It’s still in the concept stage, but we have been actively in conversation on that,” Bobinski said.
On a different scheduling matter, Bobinski said that the “eight-plus-one” scheduling model adopted this weekend by the SEC, in which the conference kept its eight-game league schedule while also mandating that each member play a game annually against an ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 or Pac-12 team, was also presented as an option to ACC athletic directors at the conference winter meetings in January.
Scheduling models will be on the agenda at the ACC spring meetings in two weeks.
“The eight-plus-one model, if that’s where we end up, we can certainly live with that,” Bobinski said. “We’ve done it for a long time.”
By virtue of its annual game with Georgia, Tech would already satisfy the requirements of the format. The ACC is in a slightly different position with an “eight-plus-one” format because of Notre Dame’s contract with the ACC to play five games against conference members annually, which already heightens schedule strength.
“Those five Notre Dame contests a year do create a different dynamic for our league,” Bobinski said.
Bobinski said he was hopeful that the SEC’s decision “will allow us to stop worrying about what they might do, since we do cross over with them a lot.”
On an ACC coaches teleconference last week, Duke coach David Cutcliffe said league coaches “lean heavily” toward an eight-game league schedule. Tech coach Paul Johnson is against nine games, as the Notre Dame agreement would create a scenario in which the Yellow Jackets play nine league games, Georgia and Notre Dame in one season roughly every three years. Florida State (which plays Florida annually) and Clemson (South Carolina) are also in the same situation.
Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer and Miami coach Al Golden, though, supported a nine-game schedule. Athletic directors will make a recommendation on the decision, which will be voted on by the schools’ faculty representatives.
Bobinski said he didn’t have a sense on a likely outcome.
“We’ve covered the waterfront on that one,” he said.
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