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CHICK-FIL-A PEACH BOWL: LSU VS OKLAHOMADecember 27, 2019Gary StokanAtlanta, Georgia GARY STOKAN: First off, let me welcome everybody to the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. Bob Somers, who is the vice president of global sales for Delta, is our chairman, and Bob is somewhere in the audience. I want to recognize him. Thanks, Bob, for your leadership. We're awfully honored to have Number 1 LSU, the S.E.C. champs, against Number 4 Oklahoma, the Big 12 champs, the top two offenses in the country and the top two vote-getters in the Heisman Trophy with the winner, Joe Burrow. Maybe more importantly than anything we do is being the Number 1 bowl organization in the country in charitable contributions. At your seat, you have a State of the Bowl that goes into a little bit more information about that. But just a couple highlights. This year, we were able to donate $20 million -- yep, $20 million -- to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, to find cures and have clinical trials to fight childhood cancer. Only 4 percent of the National Institutes of Health budget goes into childhood cancer. So we're on the forefront of finding a cure or helping to find a cure for childhood cancer. Along with that, we created the Peach Bowl Legacy Fund. For every touchdown scored, you can donate money to this fund. We raised $515,000, and we matched that. The Peach Bowl matched that so we raised over another $1,030,000 to go into that Peach Bowl Legacy Fund as well. So this year, our total donations to charity will be 22 and a half million dollars. So a lot of people write about bowl games, but not many people write about what we do in our communities, and there's a perfect example of how a bowl can have an impact, a huge impact, on its community. Since 2002, that's $53.8 million that Peach Bowl, Inc., has given to charitable and scholarship contributions. So I want to thank everybody for their interest in that. Now we'll move to the Dodd presentation. In 2014, Peach Bowl, Inc. officially assumed management of what has been highly regarded as college football's most coveted coaching award, the Dodd Trophy. The Dodd Trophy, named for legendary coach Bobby Dodd from Georgia Tech, was established in 1976 to honor the FBS football coach whose program represents the three pillars of success: scholarship, leadership, and integrity. This year's recipient led his program to an academic progress rating, APR score of 989, which ranked eighth in the entire nation. Since he became head coach, his players have earned four academic All-American honors and 255 academic All-Conference awards. His team also won the 2017-18 Academic Achievement Award for recording a perfect 100 percent NCAA graduation success rate. Off the field in the community, he's been instrumental in developing a resource center for current and former student-athletes that prioritizes personal and professional development. He also boasts the second best bowl win percentage in NCAA history at 84 percent, and his 11 bowl wins ties him for second among active coaches and rank in the top ten all time. Under his leadership this year, he guided his team to an 11-win season and his second consecutive Pac-12 south division title. On behalf of the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the Bobby Dodd Coach of the Year Foundation, we are proud to honor Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham as the recipient of the 2019 Dodd Trophy. Congratulations, Kyle. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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