Governor's office to unveil plans to attract college football national championship
The Land of 10,000 Lakes continues to assert its claims as a potential sports destination with the creation of the new Vikings stadium.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton's office announced Monday he and state business leaders will formally unveil plans Tuesday morning to bring the College Football Playoff national championship game to the Twin Cities. With the Super Bowl coming in 2018 and the NCAA Final Four a year later, locking in college football's title tilt would complete a triangle of world-class sporting spectacles within the new stadium's first four years of operation.
Minnesota's bid is expected to take aim at either 2019 or 2020 so as to not too closely overlap with the Super Bowl. Cities have until the end of this month to submit proposals for the national championship in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and can choose to zero in on a specific year or years if they so choose.
The 2016 CFP title game (capping the 2015 season) will be played in Glendale, Ariz. The 2017 game is in Tampa, Fla.
Minnesota representatives will state their case to the College Football Playoff committee by the end of May. The next three championship sites will be announced in October.
Last season, Division I-FBS football moved from the old Bowl Championship Series rankings system to a four-team playoff, with two select bowls annually hosting the national semifinals. The rotation for those "New Year's Six" bowls -- the Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and Peach Bowl -- already has been set through 2026, but the national championship game itself will rotate from site to site each year.
And that is where Minneapolis, which has hosted one Super Bowl and two Final Fours but never collegiate pigskin's crowning contest, comes in.
The Vikings' new $1 billion stadium was the lynchpin in Minneapolis' successful Super Bowl LII and Final Four bids. The 64,500 seat, glass-field venue is set to open for the 2016 NFL campaign and can be expanded to seat 72,000.
Several other cities, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, San Antonio and Santa Clara, Calif., reportedly have considered a bid for one of the three national championship games from 2018-20. If Minneapolis were awarded one of those events, it'd be the northernmost national championship game since before the BCS era.
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