The Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game has become an exciting tradition to open up the college football season, with premier programs going head-to-head in a neutral site game on primetime television. The 2022 edition of this contest is a doozy, with the No. 11 Oregon Ducks taking on the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs on Sept. 3 at 3:30 p.m. EST at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

We had the chance to speak with Peach Bowl president Gary Stokan to discuss the matchup, which was first put together and announced in 2018. He and his team knew back in 2018 how good this matchup could be with how both schools were recruiting, but he didn’t envision the many storylines that have built up this event.

“You’ve got the Dan Lanning vs. Kirby Smart story, you’ve got Lanning against kids that he’s recruited, and then you’ve got the team that’s picked with Utah to win the Pac-12 against the team that’s picked with Alabama to win the SEC,” said Stokan, who created the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game in 2008.

Oregon and Georgia both being favorites in their respective conferences in four years wasn’t a surprise when this game was scheduled in 2018. Stokan couldn’t have predicted that Georgia would be the reigning national champion coming into this game and that the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator would replace Mario Cristobal as the Ducks’ new head coach, only to have his first game as a head coach be against his former team in Atlanta.

Stokan described the process of creating this blockbuster matchup back in a college football world that is far from the landscape we’re witnessing today. Georgia has been a mainstay in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game, making its third appearance in the event this weekend. Smart’s first game as the Bulldogs head coach was in this event against North Carolina in 2016.

“When Kirby Smart got the job at Georgia, he said, ‘Gary, I’ll play in as many kickoff games as you’ll have us,” Stokan told The Transfer Portal CFB. “And so we scheduled them for 2020 against Virginia and we lost that game to COVID-19. In 2022, [we scheduled] this game against Oregon. And then they’ll come back in 2024 and play Clemson.

“Fast forward to 2018, I flew out to the Pac-12 Media Days and met with Mario Cristobal. I had looked at their schedule and saw they had an opening in 2022. I pitched him on coming to play in 2022. I told him I got Kirby Smart and Georgia coming. He said ‘Well, I love Kirby. I’d love to compete against Kirby. We’re recruiting very well, and we’ll really be ready in 2022 to compete against Kirby.'”

Pitting Cristobal against Smart, a duo that coached together for Nick Saban at Alabama, was bound to be exciting. Little did Stokan, and really the college football world, know that Cristobal would leave Oregon to coach his alma mater, the Miami Hurricanes.

“Ironically enough, Mario takes the Miami job. Lanning, who was defensive coordinator at Georgia, takes the Oregon job and his first game is gonna be against Georgia in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game against kids he’s recruited. You’re better lucky than good, right?” Stokan said.

It was luck for the matchup to turn out this way, but whoever wins this game won’t need luck on their side. The 11th-ranked Ducks may have a brand new coaching staff and a lot of new pieces across their roster, but there’s as much talent in Eugene as there has been in years. But the Ducks are heavy underdogs in this one, 17.5-point underdogs to be exact.

“I don’t believe in the 17-point spread,” Stokan said. “I’m more of the belief that we’re throwing a football out there and teams are gonna compete. I think you can throw out any kind of spreads or whatever. It’s a matter of who can withstand the punch and who can stay in the fight the longest. Oregon’s strength is the offensive and defensive lines. Playing against SEC opponents, you better be strong in the trenches. They’ve got similar talent back from when they went to Ohio State and won up there. I think we’re in for a very, very competitive game on Sept. 3.”

As for the reigning champion Bulldogs, they lost 15 players to the NFL draft, including eight members of their historic defense. But as Stokan notes, they’ve done an admirable job filling in the holes through recruiting.

“As Kirby Smart would tell you, this is not the national championship team. They’re not even defending national champions because it’s a different team,” Stokan said. “They’ve recruited really well, and they’ve got three or four All-Americans on their team. They recruited to where they can have kids fill in, but at the end of the day, this is their first game as a starter and they’re playing against a ranked opponent that has numerous potential NFL draft picks on their team in Oregon.”

Like Stokan said, it’s better lucky than good that this matchup will be as enormous as it is. But the approach to scheduling games in advance like this has gotten so much more difficult with the unpredictability of this sport. Stokan described it as “putting together a Rubik’s Cube” in order to predict if a matchup scheduled years in advance will eventually pay off.

“The way we’ve approached it is we tried to get up far enough in advance to look into the future and pick teams that were recruiting really well and that their fans would follow their programs,” he told The Transfer Portal CFB. “We try to look at the conference schedules, coaches contracts, the fan avidity.”

When the Oregon vs. Georgia game was scheduled in 2018, it was thought to be fairly simple to schedule events like this. But now, Stokan and his team have to consider the ever-changing conferences in the world of realignment, the coaching carousel, the transfer portal, the College Football Playoff expansion, among other things.

“We’ve scheduled games through 2025, but we have to wait and see what the CFP expansion looks like and what conference expansion will look like,” Stokan explained. “And once that’s settled, what does this conference scheduling look like? Because we’ve heard it discussed that once it’s settled, conferences may move to nine or 10 conference games. If that’s the case, it’s really going to shrink the inventory available to put on a neutral-site Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game.”

Oregon-Georgia and Clemson-Georgia Tech (Sept. 5) are scheduled for this season, and the Yellow Jackets will return to the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game in 2023 against Louisville. Then in 2024, Clemson faces Georgia; in 2025, Tennessee and Syracuse will duke it out; and in 2025, South Carolina takes on Virginia Tech.

The eventual College Football Playoff expansion plays just as big a role in how these neutral-site games are scheduled. With only four teams qualifying every year, it makes every matchup between ranked opponents feel like a wild card game to stay alive for the CFP race. No team has ever lost two games in a season and made it to the playoff, so a loss for either Oregon or Georgia, statistically, would mean that they would have to run the table through the rest of their schedule and win their conference to even be considered for the CFP.

“With the four-game CFP playoff, every game matters,” Stokan said. “I think our Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game has changed the face of college football scheduling, because now you’re seeing teams like Notre Dame play Ohio State in the first week, or Alabama going to Texas in Week 2. I think this could be the year that you could possibly see a team with a two-loss record get into the CFP. We’ve never had that in the past, but you’ve never had teams in the top five playing each other early in the season.”

The ever-changing world of college football also heavily impacts the Peach Bowl, of which Stokan is the CEO and President. Before the bowl joined the College Football Playoff rotation, Stokan was in charge of the decision process for the Peach Bowl, but now it’s up to the CFP Committee, regardless of if the game is a semifinal or a New Year’s Six game.

“I certainly miss it,” Stokan said of his days deciding the Peach Bowl participants. “But I don’t miss it enough to want to change it back because we’re a part of something bigger now.”

The transition to being a part of the CFP was quite a culture shock to Stokan in 2014, when the CFP system replaced the BCS.

“I remember in the first year we were in the CFP, I called Bill Hancock on Saturday night because the selection show was on Sunday, and I said, ‘Bill, you’re gonna call me and let me know who the selection committee decides to put in our game?’ And he laughed and he said, ‘Gary, you’ll find out when the rest of America finds out.’ So it was kind of like Christmas morning when you’re sitting there not knowing who you’re going to host, and then two teams pop up there.”

2022 will be a great year for Stokan and his crew with the two Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Games this month, and then the Peach Bowl will be one of the two CFP semifinal games on Dec. 31.