Georgia (U.S. State) - Sports

Sports

Main article: Sports in Georgia (U.S. state) See also: Tour de Georgia, Masters Tournament, and Bicycle Ride Across Georgia

Sports in Georgia include professional teams in all major sports, Olympic Games contenders and medalists, collegiate teams in major and small-school conferences and associations, and active amateur teams and individual sports. The state of Georgia has a team in seven major professional leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, ABA, AFL, IL, and ECHL).

Professional baseball's Ty Cobb was the first player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was from Narrows and was nicknamed "The Georgia Peach."

The Masters golf tournament, the first of the PGA tour's four "majors", is held annually the second weekend of April at the Augusta National Golf Club.

The 1996 Summer Olympics took place in Atlanta. The stadium that was built to host various Olympic events was converted to Turner Field, the home of the Atlanta Braves.

Atlanta's Georgia Dome hosted Super Bowl XXVIII in 1994 and Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000. It hosted WWE's WrestleMania XXVII in 2011, an event which set an attendance record of 71,617 .The dome is also the venue of the annual Chick-fil-A Bowl post-season college football games. Since 2004 the FIRST World Championships have been held there.

The Georgia Dome will host the 75th Anniversary of the NCAA Final Four Men's Basketball National Championship in 2013. The Dome has previously hosted the Final Four event in 2002 and 2007.

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Famous quotes containing the word sports:

    “The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
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    “Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
    Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
    Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
    And desolation saddens all thy green;
    One only master grasps the whole domain,
    And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
    —Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)

    “Reading about ethics is about as likely to improve one’s behavior as reading about sports is to make one into an athlete.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)