As expected, the College Football Hall of Fame is relocating from South Bend to Atlanta, per a press conference this morning, already equipped with a long-term marketing plan and a corporate sponsor guaranteed to make it the most delicious Hall of Fame on Earth:

Enshrinements for the College Football Hall of Fame will hopefully occur during the same weekend as the season-opening Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game at the Georgia Dome, officials said on Thursday before a press conference to officially announce that the Hall is moving to Atlanta in 2012.
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The Chick-fil-A Bowl will fund $5 million of the hall's cost. Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast-food company, will pitch in another $5 million, Stokan said.

The obvious equation is to the NFL's "Hall of Fame Game," the first preseason game of the season, coinciding with the League's Hall inductions every August -- the tentative plan is to move the College Hall inductions to the first week of the season to lead into an ACC-SEC showdown in the Georgia Dome -- only so, so much tastier. Atlanta-based college football may only the first step in the beloved restaurant's long-term plan to incorporate all of our institutions, elect a cow president under the banner of the Chikin Party and have its way with the Constitution while placating the masses with delicious, savory chicken sandwiches. As far as I'm concerned, they can have our sports, our halls of fame and our government, too, as long as we're still allowed to ask for bacon. (And if you're from one of the 13 states without Chick-Fil-A, remember: The rest of us can out-vote you 20 times over.)

Atlanta also ups the promise on traffic: Where South Bend didn't come close to fulfilling projections of 150,000 people a year (it averaged about 60,000, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), the "Football Capital of the South" is gunning for 500,000 annual visitors to a site near the city's Centennial Olympic Park. If that doesn't work out, tough: The contract locks the Hall into the city for the next 30 years.