One of these things is not like the other:
Rose
Orange
Sugar
Cotton
Fiesta
Chick-fil-A
The six College Football Playoff bowls are undoubtedly the most prestigious in college football, which is why the people running the Playoff wanted a certain symmetry among their names. Which means the Chick-fil-A Bowl had to go.
ESPN's Brett McMurphy first reported the change a year ago, but it became official on Friday: the Chick-fil-A Bowl will now become the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. Bowl officials will announce the change at a press conference on Monday according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It got down to what is our history, what is our heritage, what is our tradition and how can we pay homage to that in our name,” bowl president Gary Stokan told the paper. “We undertook research to find out what is the best name and how it fits with the bowl. That’s how we got back to Peach. We felt it was important to the fans, to the staff and to the volunteers who have committed to the bowl through the years. So we paid homage to the history and the tradition of the bowl.”
The game came into existence in 1968, known then as just the Peach Bowl. Chick-fil-A became the game's sponsor in 1998 and took over the name completely in 2006. While more and more bowls have ceded their names entirely in the name of sponsorship dollars (Russell Athletic Bowl, Capital One Bowl, Outback Bowl among them, and the TaxSlayer (Gator) Bowl is the latest), it's refreshing to see the conference commissioners and Playoff executives place heritage above the almighty paragon of capitalism at least for the game's championship system.
The prediction here is that, since Chick-fil-A held the complete title sponsorship for nearly a decade, many media outlets will still (frustrating as it may be to a purist like me) refer to the game as the Chick-fil-A Peach, completely forgetting that every other Playoff bowl - (Discover) Orange, (Allstate) Sugar, (Tostitos) Fiesta, to name three - also have title sponsors that get left off in the majority of instances.
The Peach Bowl, which remains a New Year's Eve institution, will host a College Football Playoff semifinal in 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025, and the game will move from the Georgia Dome to the Atlanta Falcons' new retractable roof stadium in 2017.