New Year's Eve, 1981 was probably the coldest sporting event and evening of my life, in 50-yard line seats, in the very top row of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. My maternal grandmother, a Falcon's season ticket holder, had given me the tickets...but I can remember very little about that entire evening, other than the biting wind and freezing rain, my hot date...not quite charmed by the event or the smuggled bottle of holiday Seagrams. It wasn't my worst New Year's Eve, but the game portion, I don't even remember who was playing, certainly made the bottom 10. My date Nancy tolerated the wind, sleet, and bitter temperatures, but it did not warm her into the New Year's evening that I was hoping for. The stadium was half-empty, and many in those days thought the Peach Bowl was more the pits and limping along on its last legs.
Not exactly a fast-forward 41 years, but the Peach Bowl 2022 was probably the hottest ticket in Georgia during 2022. And as you might expect, now one of America's leading bowl games, and the largest in terms of charitable, scholarship, and philanthropic giving, did not happen overnight.
It begins like many non-overnight success stories here, with something we like to call, The Atlanta Way. The 1985 Peach Bowl, still at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, exposed to the elements, drew an even smaller crowd, watching the Army narrowly beach Illinois (31-29), in a monsoon that turned the in-field shared with the Atlanta Braves during baseball season into a mud pit. For the first time, the Peach Bowl actually lost money. Dipping into reserves to fund the 1986 game, the NCAA warned Peach Bowl organizers they had ONE YEAR to turn the game into something.
Dick Bestwick, then Peach Bowl Chair met with Ron Allen, at the time CEO of Delta Air Lines (and incoming chair of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce), and Jerry Bartels (longtime Metro Atlanta Chamber President). Bestwick told the Chamber pair, that if the Atlanta business community did not step up, the Peach Bowl was done. Allen committed the Chamber's full support, along with $100,000 in seed funding, and a promise to nudge Delta vendors to also get involved with the Peach Bowl. Delta became the Peach Bowl's first title sponsor.
In 1992, the bowl inked its first national TV contract with ESPN. And then in 1993, the real game changer, the Georgia Dome opened, and the Peach Bowl moved into an indoor, roofed, and year-round comfortably dry and 70-degrees venue. Then, in 1996, Chick Fil A, and its CEO Truett Cathy committed to upping the ante and a $1 million title sponsorship. Truett and Dan Cathy and Chick Fil A's commitment increased the award purse for scholarships for the winning team and made the bowl much more able to assist and support numerous charitable causes. The Peach Bowl had been founded around giving, initially by the Georgia Lion's Club to support its Lighthouse Foundation.
And Chick Fil A stuck with the Peach, making it currently the longest corporately named bowl in the nation. In 2014, the Peach Bowl was invited by the College Football Playoff (CFP)Committee to the circle of the "Big Six" bowls. In 2016, the Peach hosted its first CFP semi-final. Arthur Blank's Mercedes Benz Stadium was already on the drawing boards, and as the Georgia Dome was imploded on a frosty morning in 2018, the Peach Bowl moved literally next door into the new state-of-the-art arena, which now also hosts the SEC Championship each year, and this year another National Championship Semi-Final.
This brings me back to THIS New Year's Eve and Peach Bowl, in one of the sweetest, suites I have ever experienced, looking out over the 50-yard line, as the University of Georgia battled back from a two-touchdown deficit with opponent Ohio State. As the clock counted down the game's final few seconds, the Buckeyes were attempting a 50-yard field go, and the ball snapped at four seconds prior to midnight. As the ball sailed towards the goalposts, its trajectory had a visible left-ward slant, and the field goal graciously missed...falling with a less than silent thud to the ground. Cacaphony erupted in the stands among the Bulldog Fans, one final snap again in Dawg possession, and Heisman Trophy finalist, QB Stetson Bennett IV and the team took a victory to kneel on the turf (GA 42 - Ohio State 41)...and thus ending one of the top five New Year's Eves of my life. Too bad Nancy couldn't have been there for this one.
