UATL

Like many good ideas, the Atlanta Soccer Map started in a group chat.

Soccer in the Streets and local Black and brown creatives were thinking about how Atlanta should show up ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. They wanted to give visitors and locals what Gavin Guidry called “a guide to what the culture is and feels like.”

The project was led by Guidry and created with artist Joseph Veazey, Wander, Marcus Hollinger’s Brighton & Chelsea and the football platform Forty-One. The hand-drawn map features more than 90 entries, from landmarks, bars, fields, shops and murals to the people and organizations shaping local football culture.

Read the full story at the link in our comments.

The HBCU Legacy Bowl is coming to Atlanta.

The showcase game for top NFL draft prospects from historically Black colleges and universities is moving from New Orleans to Georgia State’s Center Parc Stadium in 2027.

Organizers say the game’s career fair and the number of HBCUs in and near Atlanta helped drive the move.

What do you think this means for Atlanta’s place in HBCU football?

📸: Derick Hingle / AP

Spelman College’s board of trustees has tapped Ayanna Howard, a dean of engineering at The Ohio State University, to serve as the school’s 12th president.

Howard attended Brown University as an undergraduate, then earned master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering from the University of Southern California. She also has an MBA from Claremont Graduate University.

An engineer by trade, Howard has worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and held several different positions at Georgia Tech. While there, she founded a trainee program in healthcare robotics and recruited college students outside of Georgia Tech to participate.

Howard became the first outside funder of the SpelBots, Spelman’s award-winning robotics team. She also launched Zyrobotics, a company that develops assistive technology for people with disabilities.

In an interview with the AJC, Ayanna Howard shares more on her background and plans for Spelman in her new role. Read more: https://bit.ly/4vvp83F

🖋️ : Martha Dalton / AJC
📸 : Natrice Miller for the AJC