Lake Burton an SEC escape

Alabama’s Saban, Ole Miss’ Freeze own property on water.

Few people in the United States are under as much stress as the 128 head football coaches at FCS programs. That stress is only multiplied for the 14 at the helm in the SEC.

Everybody needs an escape. That’s the theme of an ESPN story that appears in the college football preview edition of ESPN The Magazine. Some walk in solitude, others try to blend in with society (easier for, say, Pete Carroll at USC than Nick Saban in Tuscaloosa).

The only person Saban has to worry about recognizing him, though, is a fellow SEC program head. He and Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze both own property on the shores of Lake Burton in northeast Georgia. Saban enjoys floating around the lake on a pontoon boat with his wife, ESPN reports, and occasionally visits Freeze unannounced.

Freeze says Saban “just shows up at my place on his Jet Ski.”

The six-time national champion explains: “I have two normals. I have football normal, and I have lake normal.”

Vince Dooley, the former Georgia coach, also enjoys to retreat to Lake Burton, though he finds himself questioning if anyone would actually recognize him anymore.

Flirting with rivalry

Will Muschamp may be new to the Clemson-South Carolina rivalry, but he’s jumping in with both feet.

The new Gamecocks coach made the rounds with the media at a South Carolina Coaches for Charity event in Greenville, S.C., recently when he ran into Clemson coach Dabo Swinney.

As they shook hands in front of cameras, Muschamp jokingly delivered some bad news to Swinney: “Your wife was hitting on me.”

It surely caught Swinney off guard, who quipped back, “She’s a flirt.”

Former Carolina coach Steve Spurrier had to be thinking, “Not a bad start to the rivalry, Muschamp.” Not bad at all. The Gamecocks will close the regular season Nov. 26 at Clemson, giving Muschamp a chance to really make his stamp on the rivalry.

Checkerboard game

The voting public has spoken, Tennessee fans.

According to CheckerNeyland.com, Volunteers faithful voted to “checkerboard” the Neyland Stadium crowd apparel colors for Tennessee’s game against Florida on Sept. 24.

The contest edged out the matchup against Alabama on Oct. 15 by a close total of 1,867 votes to 1,831.

Will Tennessee enjoy better success this time around in the checkerboard game? The Volunteers are 0-2 in the past two years in such contests, with losses to Oklahoma and Florida.

Talking the talk

Eric Kolenich of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, on new Virginia football coach Bronco Mendenhall mulling throwback uniforms to salute the program’s history: “If he really wants to honor U.Va.’s greatness, shouldn’t the team wear basketball jerseys?”

College football has always been big in Atlanta, but never as big as it will be over the next 17 months.

The Georgia-North Carolina game Sept. 3 merely is the start of a stretch of major games at the Georgia Dome and its successor Mercedes-Benz Stadium that will culminate with the College Football Playoff national championship game Jan. 8, 2018.

“I think this will be the most significant time in college football history in this city,” said Gary Stokan, president and CEO of Peach Bowl Inc., which runs the postseason Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and the season-opening Chick-fil-A Kickoff game.

The two-season stretch will include a 2016 national semifinal game at the Dome, dual Kickoff games — Alabama vs. Florida State (two of the past three national champions) and Georgia Tech vs. Tennessee — at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to start the 2017 season and the national championship game in Atlanta for the first time at the end of the 2017 season.

Not to mention two SEC Championship games, which likely will have playoff berths at stake.

Capital city

Some Atlanta sports boosters long have called the city the capital of college football. Some years, that may have been hyperbole. But for the next 17 months, it will hard to argue against the moniker.

“There is no doubt we can claim that and look people in the eye and back it up,” Stokan said.

He cited the presence of the College Football Hall of Fame, which opened its new home in downtown Atlanta two years ago, as well as the long list of coming games with national implications.

The Georgia-North Carolina matchup in the Kickoff game at the Dome is compelling — in part because it marks UGA coach Kirby Smart’s debut — but it is only an appetizer for the college football mega-events headed to Atlanta.

On Dec. 31, the Peach Bowl will host a national semifinal for the first time. The game will match either the playoff selection committee’s Nos. 1 and 4 teams or its Nos. 2 and 3 teams. This season’s other semifinal will be played in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. The Peach and Fiesta winners will advance to the national title game in Tampa, Fla.

The selection committee’s No. 1-ranked team will play in the semifinal closest to its campus. That suggests the No. 1 team likely will play in the Peach Bowl if it is from the SEC, ACC or Big Ten and in the Fiesta Bowl if it is from the Pac-12 or Big 12.

Peach Bowl officials proudly call this season’s semifinal the most significant college football game ever played in Atlanta because it’s the first time an Atlanta game will be officially and unequivocally assured of sending its winner to the national championship game.

SEC fans, though, could quibble a bit with that claim.

In the 22 SEC Championship games played in Atlanta since 1994, there have been three occasions in which both teams entered the game ranked in the top three nationally by the Associated Press poll — 2008 (No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 2 Florida), 2009 (No. 1 Florida vs. No. 2 Alabama) and 2012 (No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Georgia).

So one could argue that, no matter the outcome, those three games were effectively an unofficial play-in for the Bowl Championship Series title game, which determined college football’s national championship from 1998 until the advent of the four-team playoff in 2014.

Indeed, in all three cases, the SEC champ went on to win the BCS title game.

But even if this year’s Peach Bowl is anointed Atlanta’s most significant college football game ever, it will be a short-lived distinction.

“It’ll have that record for one year,” Stokan said.

That’s because the following season will bring a game even bigger than a semifinal to Atlanta: The College Football Playoff ’s national championship game for the 2017 season will be played in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the $1.5 billion retractable-roof facility under construction next to the Dome and slated to open next year.

It’ll mark the first time the sport’s national champion has been crowned in Atlanta.

College Football Playoff executive director Bill

The study by Rockport Analytics said the college football semifinal in the Orange Bowl produced $161.8 million in economic impact and $65.9 million in media exposure value for South Florida.

While methodologies vary for calculating economic impact, Peach Bowl officials expect the same type of media exposure here this year — a week’s worth of pregame coverage from downtown Atlanta leading up to the New Year’s Eve semifinal telecast on ESPN.

As avidly as Atlanta follows college football, Stokan wonders if the city at large recognizes the collective magnitude of the games headed this way over the next 17 months.

“I don’t think it has been talked about a whole lot,” he said. “I don’t think people can imagine what’s coming down the road.”