New Year’s Eve 1981 was probably the coldest sporting event and evening of my life, spent 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 remember very little about the entire evening other than the biting wind and freezing rain, and my hot date (not quite charmed by the event, nor the smuggled bottle of holiday Seagram’s).
It wasn’t my worst New Year’s Eve ever, 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 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 of 41 years, but the recent Peach Bowl was probably the hottest ticket in Georgia during 2022.
Now one of America’s leading bowl games and the largest in terms of charitable, scholarship, and philanthropic giving, this success 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, drew an even smaller crowd to watch Army narrowly beat Illinois 31-29, in a monsoon that turned the infield shared with the Atlanta Braves during baseball season into a mud pit. For the first time, the Peach Bowl lost money, forcing organizers to dip into reserves to fund the 1986 game. The NCAA warned Peach Bowl organizers they had one year to turn the game into “something.”
Then-Peach Bowl Chair Dick Bestwick met with Ron Allen, at the time CEO of Delta Air Lines and incoming chair of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, along with longtime Metro Atlanta Chamber President Jerry Bartels. 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 indoors. Then, in 1996, Chick-fil-A CEO Truett Cathy (an Eatonton native) committed to upping the ante with a $1-million title sponsorship. 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.
Since then, Chick-fil-A has 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.
Two years later, the Peach hosted its first CFP semi-final. Arthur Blank’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium was already on the drawing board and as the Georgia Dome was imploded on a frosty morning in 2018, the Peach Bowl literally moved next door into the new, state-of-the-art arena.
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 to opponent Ohio State.
As the clock counted down the game’s final few seconds, the Buckeyes attempted a 50-yard field goal to win the game. The ball snapped four seconds prior to midnight.
The kick was made, and the ball sailed toward the goalposts. But its trajectory had a visible leftward slant and the field goal graciously missed, falling with a less-than-silent thud to the ground.
Cacophony erupted in the stands among Bulldogs fans, one final snap again in Dawg possession and Heisman Trophy finalist Stetson Bennett IV and the team took a knee and a 42-41 victory, thus ending one of the top-five New Year’s Eves of my life.
It’s just too bad Nancy couldn’t have been there to better enjoy this one.