The 2008 Chick-fil-A Bowl was a

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivis ...

between the Louisiana State Tigers and the

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets is the name used for all of the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), located in Atlanta, Atlanta, Georgia. The teams have also been nicknamed the Rambl ...

played in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

on December 31, 2008. With sponsorship from

Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A ( , a Word play, play on the American English pronunciation of "wikt:filet#Pronunciation, filet") is an American fast food restaurant chain which is the country's largest which specializes in chicken sandwiches. Headquartered in Coll ...

, it was the 41st edition of the game known throughout most of its history as the

Peach Bowl The Peach Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played in Atlanta, Georgia since December 1968. Since 1997, it has been sponsored by Chick-fil-A and is officially known as the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. From 2006 to 2013, it was officially re ...

. LSU was from the

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities of ...

(SEC), and their opponent represented the

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Associa ...

(ACC). It was the final game of the 2008 football season for each team. The game payout was a combined $6.01 million, the sixth-largest among all college football bowl games and the third-largest non-BCS bowl game payout.

Selection process

In choosing the SEC team, the Chick-fil-A Bowl selection committee has the right to select the first SEC school after the Bowl Championship Series,

Cotton Bowl Classic The Cotton Bowl Classic (also known as the Cotton Bowl) is an American college football bowl game that has been held annually in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex since January 1, 1937. The game was originally played at its namesake stadium i ...

Capital One Bowl The Citrus Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida. The bowl is operated by Florida Citrus Sports, a non-profit group that also organizes the Cheez-It Bowl and Florida Classic. The gam ...

, and

Outback Bowl The ReliaQuest Bowl is an annual college football bowl game played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, usually on New Year's Day. The event has been formerly called the Hall of Fame Bowl from 1986 to 1995 and the Outback Bowl from 1996 to ...

make their selections. The selection committee cannot select an SEC team with two fewer losses than the highest available team. The bowl earned the right to select these teams via its multimillion-dollar payout system, which guarantees a certain amount of money to the participating conferences. Prior to 2006, the Chick-fil-A Bowl (then known as the Peach Bowl) matched the No. 5 team in the SEC versus the No. 3 team in the ACC. After the bowl increased its payout to $2.8 million per squad, it then was given the second pick from the ACC, with the Gator Bowl dropping to third."Georgia-Va Tech In Peach Bowl Just About Set" AOL Sports
The Fanhouse, AOL Sports, November 30, 2006. Accessed October 30, 2007. Beginning with the 2006 game, the Chick-fil-A Bowl had purchased the right to select the highest-ranked Atlantic Coast Conference team after representatives from the

Bowl Championship Series The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was a selection system that created four or five bowl game match-ups involving eight or ten of the top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of American college football, including ...

made their selection. According to the official selection rules still used today, the team chosen to represent the ACC must be within one conference victory of the remaining highest-ranked conference team or be ranked more than five spaces ahead of the ACC team with the best Conference record available in the final BCS Standings.

Pre-game buildup

On Sunday, December 7, 2008, the SEC representative for the bowl, LSU, was announced. The Chick-fil-A Bowl representatives selected Georgia Tech on December 3, to represent the ACC in the 2008 Chick-fil-A Bowl. Georgia Tech sold out its allotment of 17,500 tickets in less than four business days leaving the Chick-fil-a bowl with only 1,000 tickets remaining. The Chick-fil-A bowl sold all available tickets to the game, making it the 12th consecutive sellout in the combined history of the Peach and Chick-fil-A Bowls.

Television coverage

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

broadcast the game for the 13th straight year.

Scoring summary

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2008 Chick-Fil-A Bowl Chick-fil-A Bowl Peach Bowl LSU Tigers football bowl games Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football bowl games Chick-fil-A Bowl December 2008 sports events in the United States 2008 in Atlanta