Aflac Kickoff Game part of Peach Bowl CEO Gary Stokan's vision to save Bowl Season

The changes to college football’s landscape since the introduction of the College Football Playoff have been tectonic, but the forces in action to shape it move much quicker than the Earth’s crust. 

An unprecedented 15 teams moved conferences this offseason alone, and that’s after a massive reshuffling of the deck in 2023. Perhaps more consequentially, the College Football Playoff’s expansion to a 12-team format is finally here. The sport may be through the worst of it, but the aftershocks are far from over.

So much of college football is rooted in the tradition and the history of the sport. Gary Stokan, CEO of Peach Bowl Inc., has made it his mission to preserve that tradition, helping facilitate the move of the College Football Hall of Fame to Atlanta. Yet, he has still managed to stay ahead of the evolutionary curve. 

Looking to the future, Stokan sees a world where the ultimate college football tradition, the postseason bowl game, is a relic of the past. 

 “If I were a bowl that wasn’t in the CFP, I would move to the front side of the season,” Stokan said as he prepares for the Aflac Kickoff Game between No. 1 Georgia and No. 14 Clemson, hosted by Peach Bowl Inc.

“I worry about the middle bowls, that with potential opt-outs, with the media focusing solely on the playoff, that those bowls could struggle a little bit. I may be wrong, it remains to be seen, but I think if you put them at the beginning of the season, you have a lot more attendance, you have everybody playing, and you have a lot more excitement than you would at the end of the season.”

The death of Bowl Season

When Christian McCaffrey decided not to join his Stanford teammates in the 2016 Sun Bowl and instead to prepare for the NFL draft, he began a cavalcade of young athletes prioritizing their health and future earning potential over a bowl game that, with the introduction of the four-team CFP in 2014, was made relatively meaningless.

McCaffrey, LSU running back Leonard Fournette, and the other pioneers of the opt-out were met with blowback that reached gale force, but less than a decade later, opt-outs are understood as smart business and the few draft prospects who do suit up for their final college action outside of the CFP, are applauded as heroes of a bygone era. 

The introduction of the 12-team playoff now threatens to dismantle bowl season and even strip away the unique identity of the New Year’s Six Bowl games, and Stokan was one of the few prepared. In 2008, he transformed the first week of a long college football season into a can’t-miss event for the coaches, players, fans, and most importantly, the TV partners. 

Stokan took over as the CEO of Peach Bowl, Inc. in 1998, and a decade into the job, he established the first Kickoff Game, then sponsored by Chick-fil-A. It was Part 2 of his two-pronged push to “make Atlanta the capital of college football,” and it featured a matchup between No. 24 Alabama and No. 9 Clemson, the two programs that would define the subsequent decade of college football. 

The game has been a massive success for Peach Bowl Inc. and for many of the teams that have played in it. Now, in 2024 Stokan is looking to further eventize the first week of the season for the players and the fans because, in the new CFP era, that’s just not possible at the end of the year. 

“There’s not really going to be a bowl experience because the week is going to be shortened, you’re only going to get teams in town for three days, two days for a semifinal, it’s a business trip, they’re there to win a game and move on in the playoff,” Stokan said. “I think it’s going to be more like an NCAA basketball (tournament), where you’re going to win a game and move on rather than having the old bowl experience.”

"“There’s not really going to be a bowl experience because the week is going to be shortened, you’re only going to get teams in town for three days, two days for a semifinal, it’s a business trip, they’re there to win a game and move on in the playoff. I think it’s going to be more like an NCAA basketball (tournament), where you’re going to win a game and move on rather than having the old bowl experience.”"

Gary Stokan, CEO Peach Bowl INC.

The Peach Bowl has long been defined by its southern hospitality and state-of-the-art venue. While those two factors remain the same, the old-fashioned bowl game experience has been lost. Despite the demolition of tradition, Stokan is taking an optimistic approach to the expanded CFP because of what it can do for the continued relevance of the sport on a national level. 

“I think that college football, which is only second to pro football in fan avidity in this country, is going to see a rise in level of attendance, as well as in TV viewership, and it’s primarily for a couple of reasons. One is, you’re going to have more networks broadcasting college football now, so you’ve got a game on NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, and FOX. So, more people are going to show the game, and with that comes more promotion.” Stokan remarked about the changes that the new format can bring.

“No. 2, because the playoff is going to have 30, 40, maybe upwards of 50 teams, longer into the season, into November, still having an opportunity to play their way into that 12-team playoff, you’re going to have increased attendance,” Stokan said. “So, I think college football, which is already at a high level of viewership and attendance, is only going to see an increase because of the 12-team playoff.”

The birth of a playoff model moved college football into a new category as a product. Suddenly, the four-team CFP was of such outsized importance compared to the other bowl games that it gobbled up all the sport’s attention and suffocated the less important bowls that were left out of the party. Eventually, it became apparent that the only way to survive was to expand. 

Now, as the CFP grows, college football is stepping further out on the tightrope that all sports with a playoff model must learn to navigate. The sport is stepping away from the safety of weekly importance, where college football once resided alongside the English Premier League, and towards eventization, where college basketball is king. Trip and you’ll fall into the chasm of oversaturation, if you look closely you can see Rob Manfred at the bottom. 

In non-playoff sports each week is as crucial as the next, this creates a consistently captivating product and lately has driven the growth of the EPL in America. As your playoff system grows, the impact of a single win or loss lessens, and if the value of a top seed in that playoff system decreases in any way, apathy begins to fester, from the fans and players. 

In the NBA, this problem gave way to the “load management era” and Adam Silver has resorted to a midseason NBA Cup to up the stakes. The only way out of the problems that playoffs create is more playoffs. 

Last year, Ohio State/Michigan was a de-facto elimination game, the stakes couldn’t have been higher for a regular season rivalry. In 2024 both teams could meet in Columbus with undefeated records and much less on the line. Still, a first-round bye in the 12-team CFP is coveted, but if the playoffs balloon to 16, 18, or someday 32, Ryan Day and Sherrone Moore could be resting their starters to gear up for the real season to begin. 

College basketball resides on the other end of the tightrope. March Madness is a billion-dollar industry, its place in the sports calendar etched in stone, untouchable, but at the expense of the regular season. 

The NFL is Simone Biles on the balance beam, flawlessly maneuvering back and forth, simultaneously adding games to its playoffs and the regular season, and making it look easy, the envy of all, and the model for college football to emulate.  

After the 2025 season, the 12-year contract that the New Year’s Six Bowls signed with the CFP is up, so Stokan views this as an experimental phase for the entire sport before finalizing the playoff format going forward. Regardless of the final iteration, it feels safe to say that behind Stokan’s vision, the Peach Bowl, will be prominently involved. 

Stokan didn’t wait until the bowl schedule had an existential threat to experiment with the kickoff game, and now he’ll reap the rewards as others scramble to keep pace. 

Kirby Smart can lead the way

As for that plan to make Atlanta the home of college football, hosting the biggest game of Week 1 is important, but having Kirby Smart’s emerging dynasty just an hour and a half down the road hasn’t hurt either. 

Since taking over in 2016, Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs have played in the Kickoff Game twice beating North Carolina in 2016 and Oregon in 2022, and were slated to face Virginia in 2020 before the games were canceled due to the pandemic.

This year’s matchup against Clemson will be the Bulldog’s third appearance and was part of a collaboration between Clemson and Georgia, serving as an appetizer for a home-and-home series scheduled for 2032-33. The two longtime rivals' most recent contest came in the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Classic in Charlotte, another kickoff series in Stokan’s model. It was a 10-3 Georgia victory and began a run to the national title. 

As Stokan recalled, from the very beginning Smart has understood the value of testing his team on a big stage early in the year. Stokan will need that mindset to permeate the sport for his and other early-season showcase games to flourish. 

“Kirby told me when he was at Alabama under Nick Saban and they had played in our kickoff games, he saw what the impact was on the Alabama football team, so when he got the job at Georgia, he said ‘Hey Gary, I’ll play as many times as you’ll have us in the kickoff game.”

Smart’s very first game at Georgia was that 33-24 win over North Carolina in the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game. The first-year head coach was willing to test his team when a two-loss season, or even a single defeat could keep you out of the four-team College Football Playoff. 

The perfect storm for Week 1 "bowl games"

The 12-team CFP is finally here, but Stokan believes it was supposed to arrive two years ago. In preparation, many teams scheduled, and in some cases subsequently canceled, competitive home-and-home series in 2022 and 2023. 

That aggressiveness from emboldened coaches and athletic directors, no longer petrified of a single defeat, along with the growing fan experience and massive payouts to both the programs and TV partners, has created a perfect storm to move the pomp and circumstance typically associated with bowl season to late August and the kickoff game model that Stokan described as a “win, win, win for everybody.”

“That’s what we’ve tried to do with our Aflac Kickoff Game now, we’ll have Georgia and Clemson, two top 15 teams, we’ll have team walks where the teams will actually walk through their crowds, the cheerleaders, the band to go into the game to build up that interest level. Both teams doing it rather than when you’re at home, only one team does a team walk,” Stokan said of the environment they’re hoping to cultivate in Atlanta on August 31.

“Right next to Mercedes-Benz, we have our ‘tailgate town’ presented by PNC which has all kinds of activities, games, merchandise, food, and drink, so it’s really a big tailgate opportunity for people before the game.” 

Though even the perfect storm, has the potential to be knocked off course. Realignment has further beefed up perennially arduous conference schedules, particularly in the SEC. Teams like Georgia, who beyond an early season test against Clemson, must face No. 4 Texas, No. 5 Alabama, and No. 6 Ole Miss, all on the road in 2024, could shy away from playing additional Power 4 opponents before ever seeing their team take competitive snaps. 

So, far, it hasn't been an issue. South Carolina and Tennessee are both featured in next season’s Aflac Kickoff double-header, but the SEC could swiftly wipe out the prospects of a reimagined bowl season in Week 1 and funnel all the money that would come with such a spectacle in their direction. 

“One of the remaining factors that we have to watch is the SEC, will they, in 2026, move to a nine-game conference schedule, which would make more money for them, but with already bringing in Texas and Oklahoma, their schedules are getting difficult now,” Stokan said, seemingly aware of the fragility of the future of his kickoff game format, “If they go to nine, these kickoff games inventory is going to shrink and it may be difficult to put on kickoff games in the future.”

Evolution is the nature of college football right now and money is the selective force. Money could drive the SEC to foil Stokan’s plan for kickoff games to replace the traditional bowl season, just as money drove the CFP’s creation and its recent expansion. Money, or lack thereof, led to the destruction of the Pac-12, and money is driving Clemson and Florida State’s desperate attempts to flee the ACC. 

Stokan is tired of all the money talk in college sports. “All anybody talks about is money and nobody talks about education,” he said, concerned about the future of collegiate athletes, especially in non-revenue sports. 

Still, money, is also what led to Stokan’s and Peach Bowl Inc.’s new partnership with Aflac, first incited by a meeting between Stokan and Aflac President Virgil Miller at the New York Stock Exchange and solidified by the multi-million dollar donations both have made to help eradicate childhood cancer.

Ultimately, if the money is right, then kickoff games will take root as a reimagined tradition in a CFP world, and if not, more change. Either way, Gary Stokan will be right in the middle of it. With the Peach Bowl featured in the CFP and national championship game rotation and the Aflac Kickoff Game established as the preeminent Week 1 showcase, Stokan will help college football to navigate the tightrope walk that a playoff format presents. 

In professional sports, the leaders all step out on that tightrope together, but without a singular governing body in college football, it’s innovators like Stokan who will be forced to find balance in this new playoff era.