SAN JOSE, Calif.– What if they held a College Football Playoff championship game and it wasn’t close to a sellout?
There is little question 2018 champion Alabama and 2017 champion Clemson, two 14-0 teams that will meet in the sports grand finale Monday night at Levi’s Stadium in nearby Santa Clara, are the two best teams in the country.
Having said that, there seems to be some question about how far their fan bases will go to see a third championship match up between these two powers from the deep South in the past four years.
The CFP selected Santa Clara for this year’s game because they wanted to broaden college fan base. They have discovered the hard way the Bay Area is more of a pro sports area and there is limited interest from the locals, who have no interest in bucking rush hour traffic for a game that starts at 5 p.m. West Coast time when they can watch it on ESPN.Local
Pac 12 teams Stanford and Cal have struggled to fill big on campus stadiums for home games and the league used tarp to cover empty sections during the Pac-10 championship game between Washington and UCLA. The Pac-12 has only had one team—Washington in 2106-17- in the college football playoff since its inception in 2104 and the Huskies lost to Alabama, 24-7, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Unlike the NCAA tournament’s Final Four, which features four teams in a Saturday-Monday event, location and familiarity play a huge role in ticket sales. The get in price for this game plummeted from face value of $475 to just $115 Wednesday on Stub Hub and other secondary markets. There are financial considerations. Driving cross country is out of the question and there are no major airports in either state. Round trip air-from Atlanta to the West Coast is over $1,100. Prices at most hotels in Silicon Valley are over $300 a night and a room at the Hyatt next to Levi’s Stadium this weekend will set you back $750 a night.
Conversely, when Alabama played Georgia for the 2018 national championship in Atlanta last year, the average get in price was $1745, largely because everyone in the state of Georgia wanted to see the iconic match up between their beloved Bulldogs, who defeated Auburn to win the SEC championship; and Alabama, which has the best program in the country and is within driving distance for rabid Tide fans.College football is rapidly becoming a regional sport.
The best teams play in the SEC. Alabama has advanced to the championship game four straight times and won two championships in 2016 and 2018. Clemson, which has participated in the last four playoffs, is the closest thing the Atlantic Coast Conference has to an SEC school. It probably didn’t help when the national semi-finals, which were played Dec.29, weren’t competitive. Clemson defeated Notre Dame, 30-3 at the Cotton Bowl Classic in Dallas; and Alabama outscored Oklahoma, 45-34, at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
Alabama’s comeback victory over Georgia last year did a 28.5 million TV share, the highest non-NFL broadcast of the year. If this year’s game is close, it has a chance to duplicate that number. But college football has learned the hard way it cannot draw a big crowd out West unless USC – which has a national brand name- is involved and the game is played in L.A. or Phoenix.
But, as long as the majority of teams involved in the title game are from Southeast, and there is limited representation from the Big Ten, Pac-10, the CFP should stop trying to grow the game by constantly moving it to different sites and start concentrating on holding its biggest game in Atlanta, New Orleans, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston and Dallas to insure crowd attendance and build interest by expanding the playoff to eight teams to increase participation from all areas of the country and convincing the bowl lobby to allow them to play the semi-final games on New Year’s Day, the traditional day when America watches college football.
