Indoors or outdoors?
Anchor it at one site or move it around?
And do you consider fans' driving distance when evaluating bids?
It's interesting to watch Big Ten folks ponder these questions in expectation of their first conference championship football game. Climate control, rotation and location are issues worth serious discussion.
Fortunately for Big Ten decision-makers, there's a ready-made case study for how — and sometimes how not — to conduct a football championship.
Just track the path that event has taken in the Big 12, which in December will conduct its 15th and final title game.
As one of only two writers to have covered the first 14 (Jimmy Burch of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram is the other), let me be your guide.
First, decide if you're really going to have such a game.
Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany has said he “presumes'' a title game will follow Nebraska's entry to the league in 2011. We'll know more after the Big Ten meetings Aug. 2 and 3 in Chicago.
The Big 12 showed little support for a football title game in 1994, the first year of incorporation but two years before competition began. The coaches voted unanimously against it.
But at the 1995 league meetings, when new budget projections indicated that each member would net about $550,000 from such a game, things changed fast.
“Earlier, we were against this,'' then-Texas A&M Athletic Director Wally Groff said at the time. “But that was before the amount of money we were talking about per school was known.''
The Big 12 eventually voted 11-1 — with Nebraska in opposition because of fears it would hurt national title hopes — to have a league title game. That event now is worth about $900,000 per school.
Six cities initially showed interest in hosting the Big 12 game (Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City, San Antonio, Houston, Denver). That's the same number in early Big Ten talks (Indianapolis, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Green Bay, Minneapolis).
Denver fell out of the picture, but a wild card soon entered: Lincoln.
Then-Nebraska A.D. Bill Byrne, known for being an innovator and a little bit ornery, said if the Big 12 wanted a sellout crowd at a premier venue for the title game, it should have it at Memorial Stadium.
Hard to argue with a place that now has more than 300 consecutive sellouts and was willing to put the game into season-ticket holders' packages.
Other league members pooh-poohed the bid as a publicity stunt, but Byrne's points were based on “hard-iron dollars.'' The deal was legitimate enough that it twice delayed the Big 12's timetable because of the extra discussion generated.
Eventually, the Nebraska plan drew a vote at the quarterly athletic directors' meetings. It was 10-2 against, with NU getting support from Kansas.
The Big 12 took two early positions on location.
The first was to play in domes only. Steve Hatchell, the first commissioner and a flash-and-sizzle guy, said the game was too big a showcase to face weather woes.
He cited an early Southeastern Conference title game played outdoors in the rain in Birmingham, Ala. It drew 20,000 less than capacity, even with Alabama participating. The game soon moved to, and has stayed at, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
The second thing decided was to rotate the title game from year to year from the North Division to the South Division. The first four games moved between the domes in St. Louis and San Antonio.
Time to insert a warning about making sure you play your title game in a place that realizes college football exists.
The night before the first game in St. Louis, I was among a group of writers waiting at a noted restaurant a few blocks from the dome. The eatery was jammed with Husker fans.
As we walked to our table, one of three harried waitresses standing at the kitchen entrance said: “What in the world are all these people dressed in red doing here?''
For both games in St. Louis, that was the sense around the city. Few seemed to know a title game was in town, and even fewer seemed to care — as the 17,000 empty seats for the 1998 Kansas State vs. Texas A&M game indicated.
(Don't go by the attendance figures listed in the media guides. My estimates for empty seats came from building management and veteran event personnel.)
San Antonio did well, but the Alamodome capacity of 65,000 was a concern. An 80,000-seat stadium, at a time when ticket prices averaged $67, would bring in another $1 million.
So when Kevin Weiberg, the former Big Ten deputy commissioner, took charge of the Big 12 in late 1998, he solicited bids from outdoor venues, too.
“Given everyone's budget situation,'' Byrne said at the time, “we're all interested in making more money.''
Soon, Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City got into the mix (but oh my God was it cold for the 2006 Oklahoma-Nebraska game), as did Texas Stadium in suburban Dallas.
Weiberg, wanting to fly the flag from border to border in the Big 12, also got Reliant Stadium in Houston involved. But 21,000 empty seats for the 2002 Oklahoma-Colorado game were a warning sign about stretching the inner circle of interest too far.
As for moving yearly, Big 12 administrators repeatedly said they didn't want to anchor the football title game, saying the league's best interests were served by open bidding.
That appeared to end in June when Commissioner Dan Beebe announced that the Big 12 had agreed — without going through its formal bid process — to three more years at Cowboys Stadium in suburban Dallas, which would have meant five straight years at JerryWorld.
But with the league dropping to fewer than 12 schools after this season, future title games can't happen. NCAA rules require at least a 12-team league with two divisions.
The Big Ten, which touts its collegiality and cooperation, will need all the patience it can muster while creating a title game framework.
Good luck with your mission, Mr. Delany, should you decide to accept it.
Contact the writer:
444-1024, lee.barfknecht@owh.com
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