1986 Peach Bowl - Team Selection

Team Selection

The Peach Bowl game was created in 1968 by the Lions Club of Atlanta as a means to attract tourism to the city. First played at Grant Field on the campus of Georgia Tech, the game was moved to Fulton County Stadium in 1971. By the mid-1980s, the Peach Bowl was facing hard times. At the time, NCAA guidelines for bowls required 75 percent of gross receipts to go to participating schools, with 33 percent of tickets to the game also required to go to each school. In 1983, the NCAA threatened to revoke the Peach Bowl's charter when ticket sales hovered around 25,000 with a week to go before the bowl. Last-minute sales saved the game, as attendance at the 1983 game climbed to 40,000 and a new television contract allowed the bowl to make a payout of $580,000 to each team. Still, the bowl's future was in doubt.

In the spring of 1986, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce (MACOC) took over the Peach Bowl. The bowl executive director at the time was Dick Bestwick, and he encouraged the Chamber to step up its support of the game over what had been provided by the Lions Club. In 1986, the Peach Bowl had no contractual obligations with college football conferences, as its successor, the Chick-fil-A Bowl, does today. Team selections were made by the Peach Bowl committee, a board of Atlanta community members, business leaders, and organizers of the Peach Bowl. To form one half of the matchup, the committee selected second-place Atlantic Coast Conference team NC State, which accepted the bowl bid on November 22, 1986, the day of their final regular-season game. The other half of the matchup was Virginia Tech, a football independent that had finished with nine wins, one loss, and one tie during the regular season and received its invitation one week after the regular season concluded.

Virginia Tech had not participated in a bowl game since the 1984 Independence Bowl against Air Force, while NC State was playing in its first postseason game since 1978. The two teams had played each other 39 times prior to the Peach Bowl, with Virginia Tech leading the all-time series, 20–16–3.