ACC football championship game proves location is everything (corrected)

The ACC football championship game was inaugurated in 2005 and played in either Jacksonville or Tampa Florida for its first five years.  The ACC picked these location because when the conference expanded to 12 teams, the ACC powers expected FSU and Miami to meet in that game more often than not and those cities won the bidding for the game.

Well Miami has never made it, and FSU has been in it twice, both times against my alma mater, Virginia Tech, though only once when the game was in Florida.  When the game was played in Florida and did not include FSU, it was played in front of embarrassingly empty stadiums.  So much so that it became widely derided as an abject failure.  Its reputation for poor attendence got so bad that if you do a google images search for ACC Championship Game, copies of this  image from the 2007 game dominate the results, as shown here.  I'm sure if he could John Swofford would pay to make this picture disappear.

All that can be said about that is: Yikes.  In fact I was so inspired by this image that when the Hokies made it back to the championship game in 2008 in Tampa, I flew down with a friend, arrived at the stadium 15 minutes before kickoff and we purchased 40 yard line club seats from a scalper for one third of face value to watch the Hokies stomp BC again for another ACC title..

The problem  with the ACCCG was, quite simply, two fold:

1. The game was in Florida but usually without Florida teams playing
2. Teams with no fan bases (Boston College, Wake Forest) made it to the game too often.

What a difference a change of location makes

Finally starting in 2010 the game moved to Charlotte.  This is where the game should have been all along, for a couple of reasons:

1. It's more centrally located for the ACC
2. It's an easy drive for the fans of the team that has made the game more consistently and more often than any other (i.e., Virginia Tech).

In 2010 the game was a sellout as VT beat FSU for the championship.

In 2011 the game is also a sellout.

Whoda thunk it, the ACCCG is a tough ticket!

How did I determine that the ACCCG is a tough ticket this year?  I did a stubhub check. I did this on the morning of Wednesday Nov 30th, three days before the game.  Here is what I found about the college football championship games for BCS conferences:

• ACC: 2221 tickets available starting at $65
• Big Ten: 8952 tickets available starting at $7.
• SEC: 4398 tickets available starting at $3 (actually much fewer tickets, starting at $95, see below)
• PAC-12: 2599 tickets available starting at $16

As was pointed out to me after I posted this initially, the SEC number includes parking passes and tickets to pre-game festivities.  Strip them out and the SEC actually starts at $95 and has far fewer tickets available. So while the ACCCG hasn't reached the level of popularity of the SECCG, they are still doing much better than before, looking mid-pack for a conference championship game.  Plus, things are so bad for the Big Ten that they are looking to hire seat fillers for their game, as seen here.

Another interesting thing I noticed is that the minor conferences, MAC and CUSA, actually appear to be pretty tough tickets too.   The stubhub status of those conferences was:

• MAC: 1024 tickets available starting at $1
• CUSA: 944 tickets starting at $55

It's worth noting that the CUSA does not play their championship games at neutral sites.   This year's game is on undefeated and sixth ranked Houston's home field, which probably helps immensely.  Also, looking at the BCS conferences above, the PAC-12 game is played on Oregon's home field, which probably helps them as well.  I have no explanation for the MAC's seeming popularity, though the $1 entry price indicates it may be an easier ticket than the 1024 available seems to suggest.

The ACC is obviously helped this year by the fact that the teams are Clemson, which is probably closest to Charlotte of all the ACC teams and has a huge fan base in the area, and Virginia Tech which is also pretty close to Charlotte and has a large fan base that isn't that far away and travels well.    In fact, VT-Clemson is probably the best case scenario for an ACCCG in Charlotte.

So I guess the lesson from this is that if you want your football championship game to do well, have it on the home field of one of the teams, or at least someplace that's easy for the participating teams' fans to get to.  And it also helps if the teams that make it are ones whose fans actually care and are willing to go to the game.  Pitting cities against each other in bidding wars and then picking the one that promises the most, without regard to fan geography, leads to embarrassment as the ACC learned 7 years ago and the Big Ten is learning now.

After several years of embarrassments in Florida, the ACC seems to finally have it right.

(btw, here's the screen shot of my stubhub research: