The Chick-fil-A Bowl is an annual college football bowl game. Before it was called the Chick-fil-A bowl – named after its restaurant sponsor by the same name – the bowl was known as the Peach Bowl. The bowl game has been played in Atlanta, Georgia since December 1968, and currently hosts teams from the ACC and SEC conferences.
The first three Peach Bowls were played at Grant Field, located on the Georgia Tech campus. For thirty years between 1971 and 1991, the bowl game was played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. The game is currently hosted at the Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons.
The Chick-fil-A bowl was originally created as a fund-raiser for the Lions Club of Georgia, but was taken over by the Chamber of Commerce in 1986 due to poor attendance and revenue. Atlanta-based restaurant Chick-fil-A became the sponsor for the game in 1998. As of 2006, Chick-fil-A owns sole naming rights for the game, ending almost forty years of the Peach Bowl name. The funds from the Chick-fil-A naming rights contract is used to increase payouts for attending teams and hopefully boost attendance and stature of the bowl game. The bowl has sold out for eleven consecutive years, making it the most attended non-BCS bowl in the last decade. The game was also the highest-rated ESPN broadcast bowl game of 2007-2008, higher than even the two New Year's Day bowls – the Cotton Bowl and the Gator Bowl.
From 1969 to 1980, the Atlanta Marathon was sponsored by the game, and was held the same weekend. There is an annual game day parade that coincides with the bowl, and the parade features nearly 60 floats and leads more than 20,000 fans thorugh downtown Atlanta. The Chick-fil-A Bowl is one of three bowls to receive an NCAA grant for the Youth Football Program, and the game endows a $100,000 scholarship at each participating university annually. The current payout for the Chick-fil-A Bowl is $3,250,000.
Chick-fil-A Bowl Game Preview History