Buffalo’s Café has officially made the transition into GATA’s Sports Bar and Grille, celebrating the change with a Super Bowl party Sunday night.

“Today was our inauguration of Buffalo’s into GATA’s,” Jeff Stewart, general manager of GATA’s, said. “This is an annual thing, and it will also be GATA’s birthday, I guess.”

“So far I’ve enjoyed it — the game is on, people cheering and the giveaways. It’s great,” Carlton Hendrix, an undeclared sophomore, said.

At halftime, most of the restaurant turned to the many televisions in the bar area to watch the halftime show.

GATA’s is planning to add more televisions so that more people will be able to view them during events.

“We are adding six or seven more TVs, but while we are re-painting the dining room, we haven’t been able to hang them yet,” Chloe Douglas, a hostess at GATA’s, said.

“During the Super Bowl, the bar got crowded, but people didn’t want to sit in the dining room because the booths surrounding the two televisions were already full,” Douglas said.

The Super Bowl halftime show, performed by Madonna and featuring Nicki Minaj, M.I.A., LMFAO and Cee Lo Green, seemed to catch everyone’s attention.

“It freaked me out a little bit,” Thomas Bonner, a junior business major said.

“I thought it was cool. Nicki Minaj was bringing it down,” Randal Brunson, a graduate student, said.

Not everyone found it interesting, however.

“I stopped paying attention and went back to talking after a minute,” Stew Davis, a junior graphic design major, said.

The events of the night included prizes after every quarter of the game, as well as during Budweiser commercials and the first ever GATA Challenge.

“To enter into the giveaway contest, you need to buy a Budweiser. If you buy a bottle, you get one ticket, buy a pitcher, you get more. You take the tickets and bet on what you think the score will be at the end of each quarter. If you guess right, you win,” Mike Hall, general manager of GATA’s, said.

Among the items in the giveaway were a Budweiser grill, a cooler, tickets to a Pink Floyd concert in Savannah and tickets to a Bad Boys of Rock Concert.

The GATA Challenge is a 20 minute challenge where the contestant has to eat 10 of GATA’s hottest wings and then endure the after burn for five minutes.

“We’re also doing our first GATA Challenge tonight. You have to eat ten super-hot wings in fifteen minutes, then, let them sit for five minutes without water,” Hall said. “If you win, you get your picture up on our wall of fame, and a free t-shirt.”

The first winner of the challenge was sophomore business major Adi Vaknin.

“It feels like my mouth is on fire. It’s worse than it was when I was eating them,” Vaknin said. “If you really like spicy food like I do, then go ahead and try it.”

“I honestly didn’t expect him to complete it. You could tell he was hurting early on,” Hall said.

“Whenever the GATA Challenge started, we had around fifty to seventy-five people pushed up against the stage cheering. That’s the kind of thing people go tell their friends about,” Hall said.

Overall, the party was a success, Hall said.

“It was a phenomenal success. We had well over two hundred people and we were able to showcase GATA’s with great success,” Hall said.

“Being Super Bowl Sunday, it was a success, considering it was our first Super Bowl Sunday. We have been open on Sundays since Christmas break because of the Sunday alcohol sales,” Douglas said.

The guests agree with the change as well as the event.

“It’s been really fun. We had a blast,” Gregory Griffin, a nurse at Eastwood Regional Medical Center and GSU alumnus, said.

“The atmosphere was great. No one was afraid to cheer for their team, and the giveaways were cool,” Will Ofray, senior English major, said.

“There were plenty of white girls, and that’s never a bad thing,” Chris Shirley, a senior psychology major said.

“This is just the first day of GATA’s, there’s plenty more to come,” Stewart said.

Hall said, “Changing over has been a slow process, and this was a huge step.”