Gary Stokan has spent 25 years helping to bring college football games to Atlanta.
Thousands of plays watched from Peach Bowls, SEC Championship games, Kickoff games and College Football Playoff games and a national championship game.
Dozens and dozens of great moments from the Georgia Dome and Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
But Stokan’s favorite memory – and it’s intertwined with his hope – was a moment before Michigan played Florida in the 2018 Peach Bowl. Stokan wanted to celebrate the life of a 6-year-old girl, Anna Charles Hollis, who recently had died of leukemia. Anna Charles was the daughter of Benji Hollis, who works for the Peach Bowl. Stokan brought Benji and his wife onto the field before the game. Using the halo board, fans were asked to sing the Neil Diamond classic “Sweet Caroline,” but change “Caroline” to “Anna Charles.” The more than 70,000 fans obliged.
“Brought tears to my eyes and tears to just about everybody in the stadium,” he said. The Peach Bowl then pledged to donate $20 million to Children’s Healthcare to establish the “LegACy Fund,” the AC is for Anna Charles, whose purpose is to focus on funding clinical drug trials to try to help children with chancer.
One of the drugs funded is in second stage of trials and is focused on leukemia.
“God willing, I’m here long enough to see all this working,” Stokan said. “We’re really using college football for the greater good.”
A former basketball player at N.C. State, Stokan said he loves to challenge himself and those he works with to improve and to give. The Peach Bowl has donated more than $60 million to charities.
To that end, in his 25 years, Stokan started the Chick-fil-A Kickoff game, which now is the Aflac Kickoff game, as a reaction to the Peach Bowl not being part of the BCS and the season expanding to 12 games. It became a model that other cities have tried to copy with their own high-profile matchups to start the season. He helped make the Peach Bowl a part of the College Football Playoff. The city hosted the national championship game in 2018 and will again in 2025, making it the first repeat host. He helped bring the College Football Hall of Fame from South Bend, Indiana, to the city.
“Gary is a terrific ambassador for college football, and his tireless work to bring high-profile games to the city of Atlanta is well documented,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips said. “He is a tremendous friend and partner of the ACC, and his efforts continue to have a meaningful impact that is felt locally and nationally.”
Stokan has been an important agent of change for the sport in the city and has some thoughts on where college football is going and what it needs.
Though Atlanta has benefitted from the growth of college football and the playoff system, Stokan believes the sport is rudderless. Conferences are expanding. Others are collapsing. Players have become hired guns, some going to whichever program can offer them the most.
Stokan said a commissioner and a board are needed to handle the transfer portal, signing windows, the playoff selections, etc. It’s too much to ask a group of presidents, who are overseeing billion-dollar businesses of their own, to try to gain an expertise on all aspects of college football.
“I think you need some real leadership and without vision – we haven’t had a vision from the NCAA in the last 10 years – you get chaos,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we have right now in college athletics is chaos.”
Stokan has three years remaining on his contract, which would bring him to 28 working to bring football games to the city and more opportunities to give back to charities.
“As I tell people, my philosophy of life is simple,” he said. “God’s gift to you is life. Your present to him is how you maximize the God-given talents that he’s enriched you with.
“As I told my wife, I will probably never be rich enough like Arthur Blank to give the amount of money that he’s given away, but if I can use my God-given talents to create events, and be a part of things that can give money away in charity, then I have fulfilled my dream and my goal of giving back to society. As my mom and dad taught me, it’s better to give than receive, and you always leave things better than you found them.”
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