Atlanta will compete against Miami, Houston and Santa Clara, Calif., to be the site of college football’s national championship game in January 2018.
Those four cities submitted bids to College Football Playoff officials ahead of a Wednesday deadline for proposals to host the event.
Atlanta’s long-planned bid pitches the new Falcons stadium, slated to open in 2017.
Six cities — Atlanta not among them — also submitted bids Wednesday for the 2019 and 2020 championship games. Atlanta didn’t bid for 2019 because it hopes to land the Super Bowl that year, and the city wasn’t eligible to bid for the 2020 event because the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl will host a national semifinal two weeks earlier.
“We know there will be a robust process to select the sites,” College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said at the SEC spring meetings. “We will be looking at the basics: air service, hotels, and the ability of the city to put on a big event.
“In our mind, nobody has any advantage in this race.”
Hancock said the winning bidders for the 2018, 2019 and 2020 games will be selected this fall.
“Between now and then, we will be reviewing (the bidders’) information,” he said. “We will be visiting each city.”
Bidders for the 2019 game are: Santa Clara, Charlotte, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans and San Antonio.
Competing for the 2020 game: Santa Clara, Charlotte, Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans and San Antonio.
Atlanta’s competition for the 2018 game includes one of the same stadiums it will bid against for the 2019 Super Bowl, the Miami Dolphins’ Sun Life Stadium.
The NFL often favors new stadiums for Super Bowl sites, but Hancock said the College Football Playoff won’t do that.
“When the stadium was constructed is not a factor,” Hancock said. “But what the stadium offers is a factor — number of seats, fan amenities, (amount of) backstage space … for media and entertaining.”
The four-team College Football Playoff debuted last season, with its inaugural championship game held at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium in Arlington, Texas. Sites already have been chosen for the championship games the next two seasons — Glendale, Ariz., and Tampa, Fla., respectively.
Atlanta’s bid committee consists of representatives of the Atlanta Sports Council, the Falcons, the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Peach Bowl, the Georgia World Congress Center Authority and Georgia Tech.
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