College Football Playoff officials spent the past two days in Atlanta, scouting the city as a possible site for the national championship game in January 2018.
Atlanta, Miami, Houston and Santa Clara, Calif, submitted bids last month to host the game. Playoff officials plan to choose the site by the first week of November.
If Atlanta’s bid prevails, the game would cap the first football season in the new $1.4 billion Falcons stadium, which is under construction downtown.
Visits to each bid city are “an important part of the process,” said College Football Playoff chief operating officer Michael Kelly, who was among four playoff officials in Atlanta on Monday and Tuesday.
“It’s basically a chance for the community to show us if they were hosting the event how they would run it and make their bid vision come to life for us,” Kelly said.
Playoff officials use site visits to learn about the stadium where the game would be played, the facilities where the participating teams would practice, the venues where ancillary events would be staged and the hotels where teams and media would stay.
On Monday, the playoff reps saw Georgia Tech’s practice facility, the College Football Hall of Fame and a number of hotels. On Tuesday, they visited the Georgia World Congress Center, the stadium construction site and the Falcons’ stadium preview center on Northside Parkway.
Atlanta is competing with three other NFL stadiums to host the game — the Dolphins’ Sun Life Stadium, the Texans’ NRG Stadium and the 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium. Playoff officials visited Houston last week and also have trips planned to Miami and Santa Clara.
“It’s our job to really become extremely familiar with everything every community has to offer and … make sure we can figure out the right place at the right time for our championship,” Kelly said.
Atlanta’s bid committee consists of representatives of the Atlanta Sports Council, the Falcons, the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, the Georgia World Congress Center Authority and Georgia Tech.
“We … are thrilled to have the opportunity to show the (playoff) group all that Atlanta has to offer for their event,” Sports Council executive director Dan Corso said. “With a new stadium in Atlanta’s compact, walkable downtown district, visiting fans will be provided with a great overall experience.”
Playoff officials also are in the process of considering bids for the January 2019 and January 2020 national championship games. Atlanta didn’t bid for 2019 because it hopes to host the Super Bowl that year, and the city wasn’t eligible to bid for 2020 title game because the Peach Bowl will host a national semifinal two weeks earlier.
Houston and Santa Clara are among six cities bidding for the playoff’s championship games in 2019 and 2020. Miami, like Atlanta, is bidding only for 2018.
The winning bidders originally were scheduled to be selected in mid-October, but Kelly said the first week in November is “now the most likely scenario for us to reach a final decision on each of those years.”
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