Arizona State came full circle to win the Big 12 Championship Game, so it’s only appropriate the Sun Devils do the same with their College Football Playoff bowl destination this season.
No. 4 seed Arizona State will play in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at 1 p.m. on New Year’s Day against the winner of the Dec. 21 first-round CFP game that features No 12 seed Clemson playing at No. 5 seed Texas.
The Sun Devils (11-2) shocked the Big 12 in their debut season, beating Iowa State 45-19 on Saturday to clinch a bye and a trip to play in the Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Arizona State and the Peach Bowl have come a long way since the Sun Devils were invited to play in the 1970 game in Atlanta.
“Back on Dec. 30 of 1970, Frank Kush and the Arizona State Sun Devils were No. 8 in the country, and none of the big bowls at that time would take them,” Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl President and CEO Gary Stokan noted on Sunday, referring to a 10-0 ASU team that had run roughshod over the Western Athletic Conference.
“The Peach Bowl brought Frank Kush and the Sun Devils here to play North Carolina, and the Sun Devils won 48-26.”
It marked Arizona State’s first bowl trip in 20 years and the program’s first major bowl victory. But it was also special for the Peach Bowl, which in its third year in existence had landed its first top-10 team with the No. 8-ranked Sun Devils, along with its first team from outside of the Southeast.
Legendary Georgia coach Vince Dooley was in attendance on the sideline to support his brother, Tar Heels head coach Bill Dooley. It proved to be a much fonder memory for Arizona State, as the Sun Devils capped an 11-0 season despite less than ideal conditions.
“In the first quarter it rained, in the second quarter it sleeted, third quarter it snowed,” Stokan said, “and in the fourth quarter it iced.”
The chilly conditions led Arizona State supporters to come up with an idea that would add to the collegiate football landscape.
“They said, ‘Hey, it’s 80 degrees out there in Scottsdale (Arizona), why don’t we start one of these (bowls)?’” Stokan said. “And out of that, the people from Phoenix started to meet with the people from Atlanta, and the Fiesta Bowl was created.
“It’s kind of a neat story between The Valley (a nickname for the Phoenix metropolitan area) and Atlanta.”
The first Fiesta Bowl took place the next year between Arizona State and Florida State. Now the Fiesta Bowl will host a CFP quarterfinal between Boise State and the winner of the first-round game between Penn State and SMU.
As for the Dooleys, not such a neat story.
“I still remember Vince Dooley said ‘Gary, I was so cold, I had to leave my own brother” Stokan said.” I was on the sideline, but I had to leave and go home.’”
It just so happened there wasn’t a Georgia bowl game for Vince Dooley to prepare for that season, as the Bulldogs finished 5-5 with a loss to Georgia Tech.
Fast-forward 54 years, and Kirby Smart is building on the UGA legend playing games on Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium. The Bulldogs are fresh off a 22-19 SEC Championship Game victory in overtime Saturday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The victory clinched UGA a spot in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1 in New Orleans.
The preseason No. 1 Bulldogs — seeded No. 2 seeded in the CFP — were expected to reach this stage of the season, but the same could not be said for second-year coach Kenny Dillingham and his self-anointed “Worst to First” Sun Devils.
Arizona State was picked 16th — last — in the Big 12 preseason rankings on the heels of back-to-back 3-9 seasons in what became a fractured Pac-12.
Dillingham, the youngest coach in the Football Bowl Subdivision at 34 years old, explained how his team has embraced the turnaround and the trip to play in Atlanta.
“I don’t know ‘why’ for the success we’re having other than that these guys are special,” Dillingham said. “They have a special aura about themselves. They live every day with a chip on their shoulder.”
Playing in Atlanta, with its rich college football talent in surrounding communities, offers an ideal jumping-off point to further solidify Dillingham’s rising Arizona State program.
“If we do it right and we get commitment from the top down, there’s an opportunity for us to be a name in college football, similar to what Dabo (Swinney) did at Clemson, where he changed that program into one of the college football blue bloods,” he said.
“We have a lot of our guys on roster from Texas, Louisiana, Georgia and Florida, and the Peach Bowl is a game a lot of these guys grew up idolizing and wanting to play in.”
Stokan, who has worked years to make the Peach Bowl one of the most relevant bowls in the nation — including landing a New Year’s Six CFP Bowl slot in 2014 — appreciated the young coach’s words.
“That warmed my heart to hear those kids say they’ve grown up watching and wanting to play in the Chick fil-A Peach Bowl,” Stokan said. “And now, instead of that freezing weather in 1970, they have a climate-controlled facility to play in, so it should be a lot nicer trip for them and their fans.”
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
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