For all the changes and improvements the Chick-fil-A Bowl has made over the years — in name, sponsorship, matchups and payouts — the most significant one was simply a matter of geography.
Saturday night’s game between Auburn and Virginia will be the 20th game held since the bowl moved inside into the Georgia Dome from about two miles away at Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium. And the move has made all the difference.
Moving indoors to a 72-degree controlled climate allowed what had been a struggling bowl to blossom into what is seen arguably as the highest-quality non-BCS bowl. Or at least that’s what bowl president and CEO Gary Stokan has heard from coaches such as Steve Spurrier and Frank Beamer.
“It allowed us to compete with the Florida bowl games who were always selling New Year’s Day and that they have 72-degree weather and the beach,” Stokan said.
The drainage system at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium caused problems, even when it wasn’t raining. So said Chick-fil-A Bowl board member and former chairman Albert Tarica, who has volunteered for the bowl since 1969, the second year it was played.
“We had a drought during the fall one year, and the field was wet game day,” said Tarica, who had to toss both the pants and the shirt he wore to the game one year. “You were always playing in mud. If ever I were going to bet when it was going to rain in Atlanta, it was whenever the Peach Bowl was played.”
Long before there was any debate about whether it should be called the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl or just the Chick-fil-A Bowl, Stokan says their unofficial title sponsor was “weather-plagued.” Stokan can laugh about it now, but such references in the media caused bowl organizers more than their share of heartburn, like when they drew only 29,857 fans for the Army-Illinois game in 1985.
“It was a foot of mud,” said Stokan, who volunteered with the bowl for the first time that year, when he was working for Adidas. “And [executive director] Dick [Bestwick] said unless we get the corporate community of Atlanta to step up, this bowl could go out of business.”
The following year, the Chamber of Commerce took over the bowl, and before long Ron Allen wrote a $100,000 check on behalf of Delta Air Lines. Soon thereafter other Atlanta companies followed suit.
Now the bowl, which added Chick-fil-A as its title sponsor in 1996 and dropped “Peach” from its name in 2006, has one of the longer standing corporate relationships of any bowl this side of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and the Outback Bowl.
Moving to the Georgia Dome was one of several key changes made in that winter of 1992-93, which also included a new TV contract with ESPN and new bowl tie-ins with both the ACC and SEC. What was then called the Peach Bowl went from the “wild, wild west” of at-large bids to a regional hit.
Stokan said the Chick-fil-A Bowl is on track for a sellout for the 15th consecutive year, second only to the Rose Bowl, which has led all bowls in attendance since 1945.
One reason ticket sales are so strong is regional interest, strong matchups — aided by money from TV contracts and the corporate sponsorship the Chick-fil-A Bowl used to negotiate the first non-BCS pick in the ACC — and strong alumni bases in Atlanta for all SEC and ACC schools.
Stokan said because of those factors, they know ticket sales will be strong, so they don’t choose their matchups in “cigar-filled rooms” based simply on who travels the best.
“Virginia deserved to be in here,” Stokan said. “They beat Florida State and they beat Georgia Tech. ... Because of those corporations and those local ticket buyers who’ve bought our tickets, it allows us to do the right thing.”
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