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SANTA CLARA — In the Bay Area, a pro-sports market by an overwhelming margin, college football doesn’t take a back seat. It takes a nosebleed seat.
And yet, college football’s marquee event — the national championship game — will be played here Monday night, making the Bay Area the first West Coast site for one of the crown jewels of American sports.
What in the name of Pop Warner was the College Football Playoff committee thinking?
It turns out long-established relationships, the 49ers’ move to Santa Clara and San Jose’s improving downtown corridor trumped the Bay Area’s moderate interest in the college football teams at Cal, Stanford and San Jose State. Even as lackluster ticket sales and a soggy weather forecast are generating criticism that the choice was unwise, college football’s hierarchy insists it’s delighted to be here.
“We decided this was the place for it,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said this week. “It had a college feel. We know San Francisco is one of the great cities in the world and it is right here. But we just love the South Bay. We just love the vibe we get from this area.”
Hancock was sold on the area long before the playoff system was born in 2013. His feelings about San Jose coalesced in 1997 when, as director of the basketball Final Four, he brought March Madness to San Jose for the first time, a men’s regional that was played at the SAP Center, then known as San Jose Arena.
The indoctrination 21 years ago is the biggest reason the title game between top-ranked Alabama and No. 2 Clemson is coming to Levi’s Stadium. But the 49ers and San Jose city officials also played major roles by convincing Hancock and his staff that the South Bay could provide an ideal backdrop to college football’s big week.
“When the first NCAA regional came here I was blown away,” Hancock recalled Monday while watching the Redbox Bowl at Levi’s. “The hotels, the new arena and just the whole spirit in this community to hold an event like that was off the charts.”
Utilitarian San Jose — not eye-catching San Francisco — has become the heartbeat of the Bay Area’s sports events scene because of its easy downtown access, hotels and facilities. The football championship launches the start of another congested sporting year for the South Bay.
To wit:
The NHL All-Star game will be played Jan. 26 at SAP Center, followed by the U.S. men’s soccer team game against Costa Rica on Feb. 2 at Avaya Stadium.
March Madness returns to SAP on March 22-24, a subregional that begins the same day that the Mexican national soccer team plays an exhibition at Levi’s. The United States plays at Levi’s on May 12 for a pre-Women’s World Cup tuneup and the year ends Dec. 6-8 at Avaya Stadium with the Women’s College Cup — soccer’s Final Four.
Another factor in landing the College Football Playoff championship is the powerful draw of Silicon Valley. In the year leading up to the game, CFP executives visited Facebook, Google and Twitter campuses to cultivate connections. Hancock said the exposure for players from the Deep South to the center of technology is the kind of footprint the CFP wants to leave.
“It is going to work out well for us in a lot of ways that aren’t going to be visible,” he said.
When the 49ers opened 68,500-seat Levi’s Stadium in 2014, plans for the CFP plans had just begun. From the start, team executives viewed the billion-dollar-plus project as more than a facility for 10 NFL dates.
“We wanted to bring large-scale events back to the Bay Area,” team president Al Guido said.
It’s part of the financial equation for a stadium that didn’t get a direct public subsidy like the Raiders and other teams. The 49ers built Levi’s on the back of a $950-million loan from the Santa Clara Stadium Authority and $200-million NFL loan. The team is paying the city back through revenue from naming rights, personal-seat license sales and a 40-year lease of $24.5 million in annual rent.
But the CFP title game is more likely to hurt, rather than help, the 49ers’ balance sheet. The team could lose as much as $10 million on a game that is estimated to cost $25 million to produce.
A year ago, Alabama-Georgia matchup in Atlanta fetched a resale price of $1,700 a ticket on the low end. By contrast, upper deck seats at Levi’s were being offered Friday for a mere $128 by ticket broker StubHub, leading to speculation that yet another Alabama-Clemson matchup — they have met for the championship three of the last four years — won’t sell out.
Patricia Ernstrom, host committee executive director and a 49ers vice president, expects Bay Area fans to embrace the game despite what ticket prices suggest. If nothing else, the big football schools from the South are a novelty for Northern California sports fans.
“It is such a different event we just have to think about it in a different way,” she said. “Just like the Super Bowl is not another regular-season NFL game.”
Guido, the 49ers president, takes a longer view than revenue generated, or lost, on a big event. A game such as the CFP championship makes the 49ers’ sponsors giddy because of the exposure they get from the broadcast alone. It also gives 49ers suite owners and season-ticket holders another entertaining event to attend and further strengthens the relationship the NFL team has with San Jose city officials.
In Guido’s mind, a one-off financial loss could lead to future profits by attracting more big events with community backing.
“This place needs to have events like ours on a regular basis,” the CFP’s Hancock said.
When the 125 Division I football schools created the playoffs six years ago as a mega event like the Super Bowl they decided to put the first 10 title games in different cities to maximize visibility. The playoffs, which include semifinal games, are operated separately from the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which handles all other championship events, including the Final Four.
The first CFP game in 2015 was held at the Dallas Cowboys’ sports palace in Arlington, Texas. Next came the NFL stadiums in Glendale, Arizona, Tampa and Atlanta last year. Four of the next five title games will be played deep in college football country: New Orleans, Miami, Los Angeles and Houston.
The Bay Area doesn’t come close to matching the college sports DNA found in College Station or Tuscaloosa or South Bend. But the region enjoyed a rich college football tradition before pro sports dominated the marketplace.
The Play at the end of the 1982 Big Game between Cal and Stanford is one of football’s most indelible moments.
Stanford played in the original Rose Bowl in 1902, once had Pop Warner as its coach as well as modern-day innovator Bill Walsh, a San Jose State graduate. Then there were the “Wow Boys” of 1940 under legendary coach Clark Shaughnessy.
Cal had the “Wonder Teams” in the 1920s that won four mythical national championships in five years. Santa Clara, before it ended the sport in 1992, won two Sugar Bowls (1937 and 1938) and an Orange Bowl (1950).
CFP organizers hope to rekindle some of those golden memories by turning downtown San Jose into a campus setting. Kim Walesh, San Jose’s Economic Development director, said city officials learned the importance of proximity from Super Bowl 50 three years ago when many of the ancillary events were in San Francisco.
CFP executives didn’t want their supporters dealing with traffic.
“While not as well known, San Jose will be very pleasing to everyone,” said Michael Kelly, the former CFP’s chief operating officer. “They will be surprised with how concise everything is.”
