The college football bowl season started and will end in Atlanta, giving the ”College Football Capital” moniker extra credence this season.
Just more than two weeks after the Celebration Bowl kicked off the postseason at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Texas and Arizona State will meet in their College Football Playoff quarterfinals game, a 1 p.m. Wednesday kickoff in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, at the same venue.
The No. 5-seed Longhorns are an 11.5-point favorite over No. 4-seed Arizona State, which earned a bye by virtue of being the fourth highest-ranked conference champion.
“We should be in for an interesting game,” said Gary Stokan, president and CEO of the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. “It’s hard to believe in one season we’ve had the ACC champion (Clemson), the SEC champion (Georgia) and the Big 12 champion (Arizona State).
“And, if Oregon beats Ohio State in the Rose Bowl and wins the Cotton Bowl, we could have the Big Ten champ, too.”
Or, as Stokan notes, the Longhorns could be making their third trip to Atlanta over a seven-week span to play at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Texas lost to Georgia 22-19 in overtime in the SEC Championship game Dec. 7 before winning a first-round CFP game at home against Clemson (38-24) that qualified it to advance to Wednesday’s game.
If the Longhorns beat the Sun Devils, and then beat the winner of the Oregon-Ohio State game in the Cotton Bowl, it would mean a return trip to Mercedes-Benz Stadium to play in the CFP Championship game Jan. 20.
“Three times in one stadium for a national champion — has that ever happened?” Stokan asked. “I don’t think it has.”
College football has been good to Atlanta, where an already strong market share has been bolstered by Georgia football success. The Bulldogs, who have played in the SEC Championship game in seven of the past eight years, were the most watched team in college football this year in the regular season, averaging 8.6 million viewers per contest — outdistancing second-place Ohio State (6.8 million) and third most-watched Alabama (6.6 million).
Three neutral-site matchups at Mercedes-Benz Stadium this season have featured ranked teams: the Georgia-Clemson Aflac Kickoff game, the SEC Championship game, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl — with the CFP title game still ahead.
Georgia Tech also hosted Notre Dame at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, part of a multiyear agreement between the Yellow Jackets and the venue. As part of that agreement, the 2025 Tech-Georgia game will be played at MBS.
Next season’s Aflac Kickoff games feature three teams that ended the 2024 regular season in the AP Top 25, with Syracuse (No. 21) playing Tennessee (No. 7) on Aug. 30, and then South Carolina (No. 15) facing Virginia Tech on Aug. 31.
“So we’ve got our own ‘orange bowl’ with Syracuse and Tennessee, with all that orange in the stadium,” Stokan said. “Then we have a Beamer bowl with Shane Beamer playing against the school he played for and his dad coached.”
The SEC’s deep roots in Atlanta, including moving its annual league championship there in 1994, aren’t moving, either. The SEC extended its contract to play the SEC Championship game in Atlanta last year, signing on to play the league title tilt there through 2031, with an option of adding a five-year extension through 2036.
Atlanta also has been home to the College Football Hall of Fame since signing a deal in 2010 and opening the facility there in 2014. Per the College Football Hall of Fame, its presence draws an annual $12.7 million in economic impact, adding yet another dimension to college football’s self-proclaimed capital.
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