Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Tickets

Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl History

A small game that became a big one, the Peach Bowl in Atlanta is among the most popular bowls of the college football postseason. It's one of the so-called New Year's Six, the six bowl games that host the College Football Playoff semifinals on a rotating basis. Between the late 1990s and early 2010s, the Peach Bowl had a run of 17 consecutive sellouts — a remarkable achievement for any game that's not the Rose Bowl. Previous conference tie-ins were the SEC and ACC, but now Peach Bowl contests outside the CFP pit two at-large teams against one another.

The game was started in 1968 as an Atlanta Lions Club fundraiser, but it didn't truly take off as an event until after 1986, the year the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce began running the bowl's affairs. The first three Peach Bowls were played in Georgia Tech's Grant Field before moving to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1971 and then indoors, to the Georgia Dome, in 1993. Today the Peach Bowl is based in the 71,000-capacity Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons. The stadium opened in 2017.

The highest-ranked matchup in the Peach Bowl's history came in 2016, when the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide knocked the No. 4 Washington Huskies out of the CFP semifinal bracket. The game has featured several memorable offensive explosions, including a 2013 shootout between the Texas A&M Aggies and the Duke Blue Devils. Trailing 38-17 at halftime, the Aggies rallied behind Heisman winner Johnny Manziel, who racked up 455 total yards and five touchdowns. Texas A&M prevailed, 52-48, the highest-scoring game in the bowl's history. In all, 20 Peach Bowl records were tied or broken.

The 1985 edition, featuring the Illinois Fighting Illini and the Army Black Knights, lacked the high scores of the 2016 game but featured plenty of its own fireworks. Sixteen Peach Bowl records were broken or tied, and the teams combined for 863 yards of total offense on a cold and rainy Atlanta day. The Cadets got theirs on the ground, totaling 291 yards in all, 107 of them gained by quarterback Rob Healy. Illinois gained 401 yards through the air, via the arm of future NFLer Jack Trudeau. The Illini rallied late, but a failed two-point conversion attempt with 34 seconds left gave Army a 31-29 victory. In the 2018 Peach Bowl, No. 10 Florida routed No. 8 Michigan, 41-15.