Tire Bowl permanent fixture?

Interesting article.


Charlotte, Ericsson Stadium officials ready to host ACC football title game

By Darin Gantt The Herald
(Published May 15‚ 2003)

CHARLOTTE -- Once the Atlantic Coast Conference finalizes its expansion business, it will be able to realize its dream of a lucrative championship football game.
Charlotte and Erics- son Stadium officials are ready and eager to offer that game a home.

The Carolina Pan- thers' home field could provide the ACC a midpoint in its new geography which is far enough removed from any school's home field to make it an attractive site. The fact the stadium has a history of success hosting college games also plays to Charlotte's favor.

Jon Richardson, the president of Carolinas Stadium Corporation, made it clear Wednesday he'd swing the doors of Ericsson Stadium open to the ACC whenever they want to walk in.

"We've had some conversations with the people in the ACC, and we've let them know we're interested," Richardson said. "There are a lot of things that still have to come together, but once they do, the right people know we want the game here.

"If they want to do it here on a rotating basis (with other sites), we welcome that. If they want this to be the game's permanent home, obviously we'd welcome that, too."

Championship games are like ATMs for conferences, which can negotiate another television deal and benefit from ticket and souvenir sales. But the cities which host the games also profit.

Charlotte officials estimate the ACC title game could generate as much or more income than the recent Continental Tire Bowl, which was a surprising success. The bowl game attracted 73,535 fans, which was the largest football crowd in Ericsson Stadium history.

Thanks to a favorable draw, with Virginia playing West Virginia, the area realized an economic impact of $20 million, according to a study by UNC Charlotte and Visit Charlotte, the local convention and visitors bureau.

Because of the proximity of the teams involved and the fact both entered the game with good records, practically every hotel room in the region was sold out the weekend of the bowl game. Including the outlying areas of Rock Hill, Gastonia, N.C., and Concord, N.C., more than 20,000 rooms were booked by Cavalier and Mountaineer fans.

"We would probably expect a similar impact, possibly bigger," said Tim Newman, president of Charlotte Center City Partners. "What a game like that would do is help raise the profile of the city and help us bring more events here."

The contract for the Continental Tire Bowl to be played at Ericsson Stadium lasts two more years, and Richardson said he thought the bowl could co-exist with the ACC game.

Richardson also said he expects other cities to make a pitch.

Washington D.C., and Florida locations such as Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville also have stadiums which fit many of the same criteria as Ericsson, but all those sites are located toward the periphery of the league.

Although only two conferences -- the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12 -- have football title games now, they show the two options for picking sites.

After a failed two-year romance with Birmingham, Ala., the SEC has held its last nine championships in Atlanta and has a contract to keep the game there through 2009. The Big 12, on the other hand, has rotated through five different cities the last seven years. St. Louis, Kansas City, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio have hosted the game, and Kansas City gets it again this year. The site for the 2004 game has yet to be determined.

Because the Big 12 covers more acreage than the SEC, rotating the games makes sense for teams in the far-flung Midwest. It enables the league to cover more markets, which they think strengthens their recruiting base.

But what that league gains in fairness, it gives up in revenue.

Each Big 12 school takes home around $600,000 per year from its championship, with the bounty divided 12 ways after the teams in the title game are reimbursed for their travel expenses.

The SEC, which has found something close to middle ground in Atlanta, makes significantly more from its game.

SEC officials said the game has cleared more than $12 million in recent years, and that pie is cut 13 ways. The conference office keeps a share, but each school gets over $900,000 per year from the title game.

The difference, according to those familiar with the process, comes from incentives from the local business community.

"Our philosophy is to get into as many areas as possible, so that teams in the Northern Division aren't always making long trips south or vice versa," Big 12 assistant commissioner Bo Carter said Wednesday. "But as a result, there are marketing opportunities for the SEC in Atlanta that we can't tap into because we're always moving."

Matt Garvey of the Atlanta Sports Council said the city brought in $20.8 million, with the state of Georgia deriving a total benefit of $25.7 million from last year's SEC title game between Georgia and Arkansas. Garvey said those numbers are likely lower than they could have been since so many nearby Bulldogs fans turned the game into a day-trip rather than spending several nights spending money in hotels and restaurants.

Perhaps the biggest sticking point for a game in Charlotte would be the NFL schedule. Teams can ask the league to work around certain dates to avoid conflicts, but there's no guarantee. The Panthers have asked the NFL each year for a road game the week of the fall NASCAR races at nearby Lowe's Motor Speedway, and that request has generally been granted. But in 2000, the Panthers played Seattle the same day as the Winston Cup race, which provided a logistical nightmare for the city. But other college games have been played there, with N.C. State and North Carolina playing there twice, along with a meeting between East Carolina and West Virginia.

Another consideration would be the field itself.

Artificial surfaces such as the Georgia Dome's are virtually indestructible can be changed overnight, which would hypothetically allow the SEC to play Saturday night and the Falcons to play an NFL game there Sunday.

Ericsson has endured turf problems in the past based on overuse, most notably the mess left after N.C. State and East Carolina played in the rain in 1996.

Richardson said family ties and regional pride would make his staff more likely to pull off the event if at all possible. He was a three-year football letterman at North Carolina, and his brother, Panthers president Mark Richardson, was a member of Clemson's national championship team in 1981.

"The only thing we don't want is to get in a situation where everybody ends up unhappy," Richardson said. "But we have a long history of working with the ACC, and hopefully we can make that continue."

Contact Darin Gantt at [email protected]

 

It'll suck to not have a home game in the last two or three weeks of the season.

it also sucks that Jon Richardson actually played some, but Mark's scrub ass is in charge of the team.

 

I like it. Bring it on.