by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
The Gator Bowl Association isn’t taking the ACC Championship Game’s future lightly and its top officials were prominent at the league’s annual Football Kickoff earlier this week in Pinehurst, N.C.
“It’s just another way that we show how important the game is,” said GBA President Rick Catlett. “We want it back.”
The city has had the first two and will host the third on Dec. 1. After that? It’s yet to be decided and Jacksonville faces competition from Orlando, Tampa and Charlotte.
The Pinehurst delegation was led by this year’s chair, Kelly Madden of Wachovia Bank, and the group included Catlett, immediate past chair Scott Keith of BB&T and chair-elect Brian Goin of the PGA Tour.
There’s no question that the ACC and the Gator Bowl Association got sideways after last year’s game when the conference decreed that the bowl take the losing team, Georgia Tech, for the Toyota Gator Bowl a month later. Tech had performed poorly in a 9-6 loss to Wake Forest and, worse yet, didn’t bring many ticket buyers. The announced attendance was 62,850, about 10,000 less than the first championship game between Florida State and Virginia Tech.
But that seems to be in the past and Catlett and wife Carol sat with ACC Commissioner John Swofford at the closing dinner along with officials from the FedEx Orange Bowl in Miami.