Atlanta Sports Council president Gary Stokan is on the other end of the telephone line. His voice is rolling with confidence, saying about the upcoming Alabama-Clemson matchup at the Georgia Dome, “People are calling it the Daytona 500 of college football.” What Stokan has done, under the brand of Atlanta’s very own Chick-fil-A Bowl, which undoubtedly has become the best all-around non-BCS bowl (sorry, Capital One), is a masterstroke.
He has brought two great football traditions and two top-25 teams to Atlanta on Aug. 30 to open a college season that usually begins with games like Michigan facing Appalachian State. In hindsight, that might not be a good comparison, but you know what I mean: powerhouses playing small schools that are just happy to be there, picking up a big check along the way.
It’s very unusual for teams like Alabama and Clemson to meet on the first week of the season, but Stokan was able to broker the deal, which will mean a $1.9 million payout for each club and a huge boost for college football in Atlanta.
Stokan even suggested, “It’s the toughest ticket for any Dome event.”
The Super Bowl and a Hannah Montana show aside (just having fun here), he may be right. Both schools are about three hours away, have fans that travel with them everywhere and regularly fill up their home stadiums, which hold 92,138 in Tuscaloosa and 80,301 in Clemson. These schools are going to paint our town crimson and orange, ESPN will be here with their College GameDay crew and there will be a big celebration (see page 15) at Centennial Park that Saturday. The game will be broadcast at 8 p.m. on ABC.
But this game is the just the beginning of Stokan’s vision, one that includes a big football opening weekend, which could involve a Georgia Tech game on Thursday night, followed by a big high-school game on Friday at the Dome, a concert and much, much more. Already, Stokan has Virginia Tech lined up to play next year and he told me he will have an SEC opponent for the game within the next few weeks. In the future, Stokan also wants to see if he can go beyond the ACC and SEC and get all the BCS conferences involved. He even mentioned a possible matchup between Georgia Tech and Georgia State when State plays its first game in 2010.
But the focus is on this game, as Stokan explained: “The brand [had] to work the first year.”
Here’s to betting hard that it will.
Rosenberg can be reached at ijrosenberg@scoreatl.com and 404-256-1572.
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