Peach Bowl Details
The Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl is one of the six New Year’s Day Bowl games that are a part of the College Football Playoffs rotation. Every three years it will host one of the two semifinal games; the winner moves on to the championship game.
It moves to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta after having played in the Georgia Dome since 1993. Previous locations include Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium (1971-1992) and at the beginning, on the Georgia Tech campus at Grant Field (1968-70).
The game began as a fund raiser for the Lions Club of Georgia in 1968, but after years of poor attendance and little revenue being generated the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce took over the game in 1986.
Fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A became the sponsor in 1997 and changed the name to the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. But from 2006-2013 it became the Chick-fil-A Bowl. They changed the name back to ‘Peach Bowl’ after it was announced the game would be part of the College Football Playoff rotation.
Many of the early editions of the game featured an ACC team playing against an at-large opponent. From 1993-2013 the opponents were from the ACC and SEC. In the ACC, the honor was often given to the runner-up of the ACC Championship game. But with the BCS often taking two SEC teams, they were often forced to be satisfied with a division runner up.
Once the game became part of the College Football Playoffs rotation, it became guaranteed major conference champions or at least the best runners-up available.
Clemson has appeared in the game the most (eight times; winning three times) followed by NC State (seven times; four wins), and LSU (six times; five wins). Four schools have been to the Peach Bowl five times, Auburn (four wins), Georgia (three wins), North Carolina (two wins), and Tennessee (one win).
Last season’s game featured one of the two College Football Playoff Semifinal games, No. 1 Alabama versus No. 4 Washington. Behind Bo Scarbrough’s 180 yard, two touchdown performance and a stifling defense, Alabama won easily, 24-7.