The 11-person CFP Management Committee (10 conference commissioners plus Notre Dame) and its board of managers (university presidents) will meet Monday in Santa Clara, California, in a regularly-scheduled meeting ahead of the CFP National Championship.
I mean, what could go wrong?
“Right now, it’s [just] talks,” said a source intimately involved in the process. “I don’t think anything is imminent, but I’m guessing we’re going to start digging into it a little bit. If people are expecting us to walking about the door saying, ‘Here we go,’ it’s not going to be that way.”
Several sources mentioned the word “logistics.”
Fuck. We’re doomed.
These guys wouldn’t know from logistics if logistics walked up and bit ’em in the ass. They’re fretting over what another round of playoff expansion might do to what’s left of the top tier bowls. Never mind that this year’s Sugar Bowl prices fell off a cliff, check out what’s happened to CFP ticket prices.
Maybe sticking your premier event in a stadium just south of that rabid enclave of college football known as San Francisco wasn’t such a hot idea, hunh. But I’m sure it’s paying them well.
I respect the opinions of those who think an eight-game playoff would be good for the sport, but, damn, if you’re paying attention to the idiots calling the shots and quite frankly not feeling a little nervous about that, I think you’re going to wind up being just as dismayed as I am, ultimately.
Get The Picture 
It would serve these idiots right for the championship game to have wide swaths of seats empty on Monday night.
That view will be Blimp-worthy for sure.
It’s easily a $7,000 trip for a family of 4 from Greenville or Birmingham to make this trip. That’s what college football is all about.
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Southwest fare if you book today from Atlanta to San Jose – $533 x 4 = $2132
3 nights at Best Western in San Jose = $802
4 tickets to the game @ $160/ea = $640
Airport parking = $40
Uber charges = ~$120
Food = say $200 a day = $600
I’m coming up well under $5,000, with about $700 left as a slush fund for liquor, merchandise or whatever. For a trip to Silicon valley from the East coast and a national championship game for a group of 4 people? That doesn’t seem exorbitant at all, really.
I really think y’all are overstating how much cost is factoring in to the equation here.
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Let me re-state that last sentence – I think y’all are overstating how much the cost of a trip to San Jose relative to another location is factoring in to the equation.
Bowl games have traditionally been destination trips. Sure, New Orleans might be a little bit cheaper if you’re coming from the Southeast, but I think there’s more to it than that.
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For a once in a lifetime game maybe but the average Clemson and Alabama has had to travel every year for a while and the people I know who have gone before are not going this year. I live in Greenville and Clemson fans are excited about the game but I don’t know anyone going this year. I have in the past known several.
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Although to be fare the airlines are adding direct flights from Greenville so people must be going.
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Right but isn’t that simply a result of the fact that Alabama and Clemson are literally always in the playoff? It’s not special anymore for them. Even if you had the money to go, you might skip it simply because you didn’t feel like making the trip right after the holidays.
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Round trip on Southwest from Atlanta to SJC is $1100 right now.
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It appears the Alabama fans are buying up the remaining tickets this morning because there were cheaper ones available when last I looked and now running the same search they’re mostly gone.
At any rate, us looking at them now is a poor representation, because if you were planning on going to the game, you probably would have been looking at airfare a lot sooner than three days before game day.
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The $537 you quoted earlier was one-way. Southwest sells their tickets that way.
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That’s an anytime fare, not a wanna get away fare, which are cheaper.
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The “wanna get away” fare typically has an advance purchase associated with it. I selected whatever was the cheapest fare today. I don’t fly Southwest a lot, so I may be wrong about that.
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I’d cut that estimate of food by some because you have to eat even if you stay home…but eating out in Cali is expensive.
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I was trying to be generous given it’s a vacation and people tend to eat a little bit pricier when they’re on vacation. My only point was that the cost isn’t that high relative to what it costs to go anywhere else. Yeah, the Bay area is expensive, but I just don’t think that’s the reason the market for tickets to the game are down as much as I think it’s a bi-product of apathy from the two team’s fan bases which this has become ho-hum for coupled with waning attendance for sports across the board which I think is due to a Millenial generation that increasingly can’t afford to do the things their elders did at their age.
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From Birmingham/Tuscaloosa area, drive to JAN (Jackson) and fly to SFO. Better than driving to ATL and probably a lot cheaper parking. Less flights for sure, but you can save a couple of thousand bucks for a family of four.
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Best Western?! Oh right, it’s Clempsun and Bammer fans. The free all you can eat breakfast is the real draw.
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Nothing wrong with a Best Western. I travel a good bit and have stayed in quite a few.
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Dumb location for sure.
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What I struggle with as a fan, having not played college football, is just what type of product are you trying to market to me, NCAA??? We’ve spent the better part of the last fifty years ‘Disney-ifying’ the hell outta college football, see the renaming of the World’s Largest Cocktail Party, to now the broadcast of expanded playoffs, alcohol sales at every college venue and salaried players…??? This just sounds like a watered down NFL model, where the majority of players aren’t nearly as good. Can you imagine how nasty fans will be when they have continual access to booze inside stadiums and the amount of nastiness passionate fans will have towards paid players??? Yikes. Doesn’t sound like a place I’d want to take children to.
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Great handle!
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Yeah, first they allow alcohol at the games. Next think you know, they will allow dancing.
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This guy gets it. Good to know I’m not alone in my prudishness.
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You are 1000% alone in your prudishness. I don’t know how I could have made it more obvious I was joking. Poe’s Law strikes again.
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It did strike, but I don’t think it struck in the direction you think it did.
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touche, possibly.
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“Logistics”?
Air fare to the Bay area without a 30 day advance/Saturday stay? about $800
Nightly lodging in a hotel you can walk to restaurants and such? about $400 a night, or minimum $1,200 if you fly in Saturday and fly out on a Tuesday
Plus tickets and concessions?
Watching from home on a large screen TV? Free
Can’t wait for that national championship game from New York City. Just think of the casual fans they could convert from a life-long devotion to the Jets, Rangers, and Mets.
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Currently on Delta, the cheapest fares to SFO (depart Saturday/return Tuesday):
BHM – approximately $1,600
GSP – approximately $1,200
I haven’t checked Southwest, but I bet they are close to the same.
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For BHM area folks..check on flying out of Jackson, Ms…three hour drive could save you a bundle..From Tuskerlooser, it’s even closer drive.
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You could get a round trip ticket from ATL to Oakland for $533 on Southwest right now. Honestly not that terrible.
And you have to remember the game is not in San Francisco, it’s in Santa Clara which is actually adjacent to San Jose so you’re not going to pay $400 a night for a hotel unless you want to stay at the Ritz. You could find reasonable lodging from 200-250 a night right now.
I think it’s a mistake to look at the ticket prices for the CFP and think it’s just a result of the location of the game. It seems to be a trend in the sport overall, and in fact all sports overall and maybe a sign of the slowing economy and stagnant wage growth relative to inflation in general.
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That was airfare from ATL to San Jose, not Oakland, btw. Oakland is about $50 more but San Jose would be the better airport to fly into if you’re going to that game.
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The Delta fares from the South Carolina and Alabama airports are ridiculous to San Jose as well.
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Budget minded people don’t fly Delta. Just saying. And if you’re in the Tuscaloosa or Greenville area you’re probably not going to fly 4 people out of those airports when you could drive 2 hours to the ATL airport and save a couple hundred bucks a head.
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Southwest is $1200 from Birmingham. I didn’t check Greenville. If you have a family of 4, you aren’t driving 2 hours plus the time to navigate the Atlanta airport and drive 2+ hours at midnight or after a red eye to get home.
If it’s 4 adults going, I’m sure this would make sense.
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When I grew up we drove in a van full of 5 kids plus the parents from North Georgia all the way to South Florida for vacation. You think driving a family of 4 for a measly 2 hours to the airport is impractical as opposed to paying $1200 for airfare? Dude….
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I get it. I just drove a family of 5 to and from New Orleans. My point is that the price whether it’s $4500 or $10000 to go to the game on Monday isn’t “budget friendly” to your typical family of 4. The typical family isn’t setting money aside all year long for this trip.
If I told my family today, “we’re going to save $5000 for a trip next January. Would you rather go to a Georgia football game that may not happen or to Walt Disney World?” I would be going to see the Mouse every time.
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I agree with you. I’m simply saying I don’t think the location of the game is the cost-prohibitive factor here. I think attending post-season football games is inherently a cost-prohibitive prospect today, no matter where you have it.
I think you can point to a lot of other reasons why attendance numbers are down, and I think it’s a much bigger problem than who is on the CFP committee.
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I’m encouraged that they are throwing 6 around. Might be fools gold, but that’s the magic number for me. Of course I’m sure they’ll screw it up by mandating that all conference champions be included, and they’ll probably add a G5 since UCF proved how worthy they were by losing to LSU.
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Automatic bids is where I’ll go from “the playoff is stupid” to “someone needs to pull a Harvey Updyke on the playoff committee’s front lawn.”
Let’s cast our minds way back to 2012…#3 Georgia falls just a yard short of upsetting #2 Alabama in the SEC Championship Game. After the game, they fall to 7th in the playoff standings. Thanks to the automatic bid rule, they’ll be spending New Year’s Day in Orlando while Big Ten Champion Wisconsin (7-5) makes the field.
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Amen
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For the foreseeable future, there’s more chance than not that at least one of the participants in the national title game will be from the southeast, either the SEC or ACC. Further, there’s also a large chance that one of the participants will be from the midwest. Putting the game in San Francisco made zero sense. For one thing, it’s incredibly expensive to get to California on short notice (ask all of us who paid out to get to LA for the Rose Bowl). Second, Levi’s Stadium isn’t the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl was worth it for the experience of seeing the stadium alone. But Levi’s Stadium? San Francisco is one of my favorite cities in America, but the 49ers Stadium is nowhere near San Francisco. It is incredibly difficult to get there. It’s even more difficult to get BACK from there after a game. The stadium itself is incredibly forgettable. Easily the worst of the modern wave of new stadium construction. So, throw in that you have to get all the way out there, you’ll be nowhere near San Francisco… why in the hell did they put the game there?!
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“Why in the hell did they put the game there?”
Cold, hard cash … nothing more, nothing less.
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Spreading the “brand’s” reach muh man. I sat in on NASCAR’s meetings when they wanted to take races from the South and move them to the Northeast, West Coast, Mexico, and Japan. Having a CFB game on the West Coast is a similar thought pattern, at least as it comes to branding. Left Coast having strong passions for anything is pretty much a reach. Just chill, dude, and pass the bong and frisbee.
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Agree. I thought the championship game was part of the bowl rotation. Ya know, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Peach, Rose. How’d the Diamond Nuts Bowl sneak in there?
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The game was in Tampa a few years ago. Here are a selection of no -bowl sites coming up.
2022 – Indianapolis
2023 – Los Angeles
2024 – Houston
Source: https://collegefootballplayoff.com/sports/2017/9/20/-1291310442_131504027197336411.aspx
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WTF? They really are trying to make this Super Bowl Lite, just like they are trying to take a regional sport and make it NFL Lite.
Well, I’m getting close to retirement age. I guess my Saturdays are going to be a lot more open than they used to be. Probably better for my health anyway.
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Well Im nowhere close to retirement age and Im disgusted by the direction the game is headed in. It has seemed to take a leap forward in that direction just recently and a large part of the BS is coming out of Athens. Meanwhile, we have grown “adults” advocating for this “progress”. The inmates are running the asylum and some people are supporting it. I went from a die hard NFL fan a few short years ago to completely not caring or watching a single down. And it was EASY.
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The semifinals are on a rotation. The championship game is an open bid. Can’t wait for Vegas to submit a bid when the new Raider stadium opens and for the CFP’s reaction to a crazy large bid.
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Easy solution: Play the title game in Atlanta every year.
Atlanta is a located within the geographical footprint of two P5 conferences (ACC & SEC) and 3 of the 5 non-P5 conferences. For folks attending from outside the ACC/SEC, Atlanta is a 2 to 2.5 hour flight from Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, and Dallas.
Unlike Santa Clara, Atlanta actually gives two rips about college football and is home to plenty of large alumni groups for Big Ten and Big XII institutions. I don’t think you’d have attendance or ticket issues with an Atlanta-based championship even if there were no SEC schools involved.
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Literally nobody would go for that outside of SEC fans.
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I don’t think Clemson would mind. Same for the rest of ACC save Pitt, Syracuse, and Boston College (but what are the odds any of them are ever in playoff contention?).
Outside of Dallas or New Orleans, I can’t think of another domed stadium that is better suited logistically to handling a permanent national championship game.
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rotate lucas oil, jerry world, the benz…. problem solved and covers 4 of the 5 Power 5 easily. Hell Indy isn’t even an impossible drive from North Georgia or Birmingham.
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I’d be fine with the Rose Bowl getting thrown into that rotation, I’m fine with the extra flight time when LA is involved. You couldn’t pay me to go to Indianapolis.
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The one thing the BCS got right was rotating between 4 really good locations: Los Angeles, Phoenix, Miami, and New Orleans.
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I have no idea that they’ll figure out what makes college football special now. They’ll figure it out three or four years after it’s too late to piss out the flames.
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Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, the CFP ratings dip won’t be solved by more of the same. The committee may even suspect that, but those check$ sure are large.
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Tickets were 5x the price before Notre Dame and Oklahoma lost.
It’s all in the timing of the purchase.
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Playing on a Monday night in January during the recovery period from holiday gluttony doesn’t help either when you have to travel cross country. Most fans still have a job. As I watch the bowls I wonder how many players would be left for a game 16. Every time I looked up there’s an injury, especially Notre Dame. There just seems more reasons to leave it at four than reasons to expand but money ultimately will decide. Would ESPN also get out of the minor bowl business to salvage the $$$ for playoff games? They own 13 bowls.
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Real easy fix… end existing upper tier bowl system as it is, expand playoff and have playoff game location given to the higher ranked team in each game. Home field advantage, same basically as the NFL.
Catering to the bowls, as the old system has done for decades, needs to end if universities desire to maximize profits by playing games people will pay to watch and can afford to attend. You could still have the natty at a predetermined site, like the super bowl, whatever’s most profitable.
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So what bowl games go away in your scenario? Do the NY6 bowls only get played when they come up on the rotation? Does a loser in a quarterfinal get to play in a bowl game? Do teams that don’t qualify for a bowl game get to add the bowl practice allotment to their spring practice?
There is no “easy fix” to the college football postseason.
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