Photos by Tom Bastek

When you walk into the main entry at the College Football Hall of Fame and Chic-fil-A Experience in Atlanta, Georgia, or “The Quad” as they call it, you are presented with a real marvel:  A College Football helmet from every current football program at the collegiate level in the country, all 768 of them.  I capitalized College Football there because at the Hall of Fame they only do two things, College and Football, and they do them big. REALLY BIG. 

This entry masterpiece’s purpose is twofold.  The wall of helmets illuminates in a different way every couple of minutes to draw attention to itself as kind of a multimedia art exhibit (it was awe-inspiring and mesmerizing).  The other purpose is much more special, it shows what schools are represented by the fans that are actually in the building at that point in time.  Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John Christie excitedly told me, “We wanted it to be everyone’s hall of fame.  Not just the biggest schools in the nation.  We wanted to tailor the experience to the individual fans.”  Boy, did they.

When you first walk in, you head to one of three registration desks where you receive your RFID coded lanyard.  You tell them your favorite school and your helmet lights up on the wall.  That information is also coded to your lanyard as well.  Now, as you move through the hall, the exhibits come to life with your own school. 

Go to the Chic-fil-A Why We Love College Football wall and up comes personally selected media content with pictures, videos and history from your school.  All of which is guided by a light touch of your fingers to the wall.  In this section you can see full size replicas of all of the major college football awards.

PHOTO: The yet to be awarded National Championship Trophy. (Photo by Tom Bastek)

The Hall of Fame has done a great job remembering the fans are as much a part of the history of College Football as the players and coaches are.  The first section you come to was the Coca Cola Fans Game Day. There are a ton of interactive exhibits here to immerse yourself in including Fight Song Karaoke, where you can make a recording of yourself belting out your schools favorite song. 

There is an ESPN College Gameday Desk where you can go in as a guest on the show and make the pick of the week with Desmond Howard and Chris Fowler.  Remember that little RFID chip in your lanyard?  It is tracking you through these experiences, recording each event and when you get home, log in to the website and download all of this content to keep and share. 

I won’t go into all the other incredible nuggets of awesomeness that await you, but there is an amazing amount  to do and see, and that is just in that one section.  There are also the Kia Building A Champion, Chic-fil-A Building Leaders and the AT&T Game Time Sections, which chronicle how great teams are born from coaching, players, stadiums, rivalries, and even the bands.

This entire tour culminates with a ten minute film in the Game Day Theater.  If the two-minute intro outside of the theater doesn’t get you jacked for game day, there is something wrong.  Once inside, the lights go down for the ultra-high definition 4K feature film “The Game of Your Life.”  The players and the coaches of the hall take you through a Saturday in the life of a college football team.  Stunning. 

Once you have experienced the exhibits, and seen the movie, there is one more place to go:  The actual Hall of Fame.  Now it has been a while since I have been to Cooperstown, and I know that there is more to the Baseball Hall of Fame than just a bunch of plaques on the wall, but this Hall of Fame really blows it away.

If you go around the room, there are glass etchings of all of the years and names of the players that were inducted.   From there you walk to the center of the room where o rotating touch screens bring up photos and videos of the inductees as you turn towards the glass etchings.  You can search and sort, and of course if you have your RFID, it is going to bring your school’s players up first.  There are videos, plays, quotes, pictures and stories of the inductees in the hall.  Words are not enough to do it justice.

One last thing; don’t miss the playfield.  This 45-yard field with life size end zone, goal post and big screen hosts the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Skill Zone.  Test your abilities to kick a field goal, your quarterbacking skills, and your agility through an obstacle course.  You can even take a picture with the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Trophy to brag about it!

So even if you didn’t have enough reasons to be coming to Atlanta this year, we just added another one.  Just remember if you are like me, you may not want to go with your wife, because then you get stuck absorbing that awful Ohio State content all day long.  Go VOLS!