It was Sunday evening at State Farm Arena. Chris Williams sat courtside as Georgia Tech and Kentucky ran up and down the court in front of him as coaches John Calipari and Josh Pastner directed the action.
From where he sat, he could see the center-court logo of the Holiday Hoopsgiving event that he had built from the ground up, along with those of the corporate sponsors whose participation he had solicited in the midst of the pandemic. His 5-year-old daughter Paige was asleep on his lap.
“It definitely kind of hit me,” Williams said Friday. “That there’s people watching that game on national TV and my brand and my logos are on national TV and ESPN. And then my daughter’s right there asleep in my lap. I’m taking it all in. That’s when it hit me.”
Born and reared in the Atlanta area, Williams has brought to life the newest sporting event to the city’s sports calendar, one that has the potential to become a premier early-season attraction in college basketball. After Tech upset Kentucky on Sunday in the first stage of the event, four games were scheduled for State Farm on Saturday – Wofford-South Florida at noon, Dayton-Mississippi State at 3 p.m., Memphis-Auburn at 5:30 p.m. and Alabama-Clemson at 8 p.m.
Out of 10 teams, that’s three teams that almost certainly would have been in last year’s NCAA tournament had it been held (Dayton, Auburn and Kentucky) and another two that had a good chance (Mississippi State and Memphis). A sixth team, LSU, was a tournament lock that was signed up before it had to pull out this week because of COVID-19 protocol.
Also, in Alabama, Auburn and Clemson, three schools with significant alumni bases in Atlanta. Williams said that, if not for COVID, the event would have sold out. Williams has grander ambition beyond selling a lot of tickets. He wants to nurture Holiday Hoopsgiving into the basketball version of the successful Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, which Peach Bowl CEO Gary Stokan has developed into a landmark event for college football. Beyond great teams, Williams envisions tailgating and pregame concerts in Centennial Olympic Park.
“Just making it an entire weekend, really,” he said.
Stokan called it a great idea, noting the size of alumni bases in metro Atlanta. And while college basketball in the state of Georgia has been lacking in recent years – Georgia State and Mercer excluded – the number of blue-chip prospects that Georgia produces annually speaks to the pull that basketball has.
“He’s got some really good teams in there,” said Stokan, whose wisdom Williams sought last year. “That’s what it takes.”
Even as Saturday’s games were held with no fans, Williams has built momentum for the future. Williams said that this year’s participants have told him that they want to come back, and LSU does also. Florida State, another school with a significant alumni base in Atlanta, wants in, Williams said. Ole Miss and Saint Louis have plans to be in the event in 2021. Williams said that Calipari wants to return every other year.
“They call it ‘Catlanta,’” Calipari said on a videoconference before his team’s appearance. “I didn’t expect it to be with no fans, but it is what it is, and I like Atlanta. Atlanta’s a great town.”
Pastner said that he wants the Yellow Jackets to continue playing in the event.
“Easy to work with,” Pastner said of Williams. “He did a great job in organizing and everything.”
Stokan said he didn’t know of Williams before they met, and with reason. Until September 2019, Williams’ full-time job was in the IT department at NAPA Auto Parts.
But, there’s more than that to Williams, a 37-year-old married father of two who graduated from Lithonia High and Alabama A&M and lives in Lilburn. First, he created Holiday Hoopsgiving as a high-school event in 2013. Played over Thanksgiving weekend at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School (it was moved to Shiloh High this year), it has become a major high-school basketball event, drawing top prospects and teams in the state and region.
Also, Williams has been an AAU coach for the past 10 years and has sent a slew of players to power-conference schools. That position is what has connected him with many of the big names in college basketball, such as Calipari. One of Williams’ top players at Game Elite was Ashton Hagans, the Newton High star who played the past two seasons at Kentucky.
“Chris is a good guy and trying to do good stuff in Atlanta,” Calipari said.
Williams had ambitions of becoming a college coach and had interviewed for jobs at Auburn, Ole Miss and College of Charleston, among other schools. When that didn’t pan out, mentors such as Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton and Seminoles assistant coach Charlton Young encouraged him to make his place in college basketball through the entity he had created.
Williams went that route, leaving NAPA in September 2019 to form a sports marketing company (the VII Group) with his wife Tiffany.
“It was definitely frightful, leaving a job that you’ve got a set income that takes care of my wife and my daughters and pays the bills,” he said. “But I’m a risk taker, and you have to take a risk and bet on yourself at some point in life.”
Williams also has plans for the VII Group to get involved in marketing and other ventures such as leading college basketball teams on summer foreign tours.
He wants to make the event about more than basketball for the teams, too. The Williamses have used the high-school event to support children diagnosed with leukemia at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. On Friday, Williams’ staff and one of the teams was to do a videoconference with hospitalized children.
Beyond that, he aspires to be an example to the Black community as an entrepreneur in a business where the power brokers – coaches and athletic directors – largely are white.
“It’s about showing, not even kids, but showing people younger than me that, with everything going on in the world, with social justice and police brutality, that we can break down all walls regardless of what’s going on in the world, regardless of how you look,” he said.
Williams’ leap has been precarious, as COVID-19 turned his venture into a complete question mark. At one point, he was considering pivoting and staging a bubble event. Williams actually contracted the coronavirus himself early in the pandemic’s spread, developing symptoms and quarantining himself in his basement.
But, while fans will not be permitted to Saturday’s games, he was able to pull together corporate partnership, including Pit Boss Grills as the title sponsor, and had ESPN broadcasting games on its family of networks. As late as Friday, he was on the phone with the network, which wanted to shift games to different channels and times as replacement scheduling for football games that had been canceled or postponed.
LSU originally was scheduled to play South Florida, but Tigers coach Will Wade informed Williams on Tuesday evening that his team wouldn’t be able to play in the event because of COVID-19 contract tracing. Less than three hours later, Williams said, he had lined up Wofford as a replacement.
“Obviously, we took one on the chin this year, but just getting year one off the ground has set us up for the next three, four, five six, seven years,” Williams said.
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