Atlanta will forgo making a bid to host college football’s national championship game for the 2015 season when proposals for that event are due Friday. Instead, Atlanta sports and tourism officials plan an aggressive bid to bring the title game here at the end of the 2017 season, the first in the new Falcons stadium.
“Strategically, we think the stadium will give us a differentiation point to win the bid for that game in January 2018,” Gary Stokan, president of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, said.
The new four-team College Football Playoff begins in the 2014 season, with the first championship game scheduled for AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The next two championship games will be awarded later this year.
Stokan said a large convention already booked for Atlanta in January 2016 left an insufficient number of available hotel rooms to meet bid requirements for the 2015 season’s championship game. Atlanta was not eligible to bid for the 2016 season’s title game because the Chick-fil-A Bowl will host a national semifinal in the playoff that season.
Even aside from those factors, Atlanta might have opted to synchronize its bid with the opening of the new stadium, Stokan said.
“We think playing it in the new state-of-the-art facility will be a natural,” he said.
A group including representatives of the bowl, Falcons, city, state, Georgia World Congress Center Authority, Atlanta Sports Council and Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau signed off on the strategy in a conference call Thursday.
“Atlanta is a world-class city with a strong track record of success in hosting major events,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank said in a statement. “We hope our new stadium will serve as a centerpiece for the 2018 (2017 season) National Championship Game, as well as in many of the ensuing years.”
Blank previously said he expects Atlanta to bid for the 2019 Super Bowl — the first Super Bowl that the new retractable-roof stadium would be eligible to host. That is the Super Bowl at the end of the 2018 season, which would be the new stadium’s second season of operation. NFL rules don’t permit a stadium to host the Super Bowl in its first season open.
The College Football Playoff organization expects to receive multiple bids for the championship games for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. It has not said when bids will be taken for the 2017 season’s title game.
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