BCS Meetings: Positives and Negatives of Playing at Neutral Sites

With the four-team playoff model gaining traction, the biggest point of contention comes with where to play the games. As it stands right now, momentum is growing for the neutral-site showcasing of the semifinals and championship games.

Three playoff games, all off campus, to eliminate the home-field advantage of playing in one's own stadium and to make each of the games a destination—a way to give the games an almost NCAA tournament feel.

The format for the off-campus games is still being determined; using the BCS bowls is an option, as is giving the games to the highest-bidding site. Those are details to be hammered out after the format of the postseason is selected.

In speaking to the sites themselves, there is good and bad to the off-campus idea that is seeing its support swell. This is big business, and a wrong decision will result in empty seats and less money flowing through the system. As the idea of neutral-site games gains traction, we'll take a look at the pluses and minuses of each side. 

On the plus side of things, with the move to a four-team playoff, we are discussing spectacle: a three-game tournament, instead of the "one game for all the marbles" event that we currently have.

Nothing says spectacle like a neutral-site game, teams playing against one another on a big stage. There's a reason the Chick-fil-A kickoff to start the season has become a fast fixture on the opening day landscape—events sell.

The stage is as much the sell as the game itself. Big productions for these semifinals would give the games a truly eventful feel, not the "just another game" feel of being on campus.

To go along with the feel of being on campus, we have the stadiums themselves. The Superdome, Sun Life Stadium, Rose Bowl and University of Phoenix Stadium would most certainly be on the shortlist, as would Cowboys Stadium, the grandiose palace built by Jerry Jones.

Also included would be all stadiums and locations built for entertaining a spectacle of this magnitude, cities capable of absorbing the influx of fans and stadiums set up to host events.

The off-campus site removes the possibility that teams like Oregon or Boise State host one of the three biggest games of the year in a bandbox that can't even hold 60,000. Normalize the product as much as possible by disallowing for massive fluctuations in capacities.

While the feel of the event is important, we all know money is the biggest driving factor here. Semifinals mean more opportunity for branding and corporate sponsorship. If sites are bidding for the games, they can drive the price up; get sponsors on board and now we're talking about more money flowing through the system.

The power brokers of the sport love their money, and this neutral-site plan seems like the best way for them to get the cash.

However, it is not all good when you're discussing the neutral-site playoff. From the football side of things, teams are losing both the home-field advantage and that "business as usual" element afforded by an on-campus game.

Teams in the first and second spot have earned their seed by virtue of their play; now in playing a neutral-site game, that success is marginalized for the sake of the system squeezing out a dollar.

Both teams have to get on a plane or a bus and make a journey to a foreign locale for their semifinal game. There is no difference between being No. 1 and No. 4 in this move.

The other major negative to this push is the travel. Fans are already facing travel fatigue in a system that asks them to travel to a neutral-site conference championship game and then a neutral-site BCS bowl.

Virginia Tech's poor showing at the Sugar Bowl speaks to this point more than any other. A team that has been lauded for its fans' travel has had a tough time getting folks to go to Charlotte for the ACC championship, only to turn around and travel to Miami, or New Orleans this year, just a month later.

Now, with an additional game, teams and the system would be banking on fans in the Big Ten, ACC and SEC traveling to see their team play a conference title game, followed by a semifinal, followed by a title game.

For Alabama, provided its semifinal is in New Orleans, this not a tremendous problem. In the case of the Tide, we're talking Atlanta, an easy drive from Alabama, and New Orleans, another manageable car ride.

However, when you look into the Big Ten and Wisconsin, the travel fatigue would be a factor. The Big Ten title game in Indianapolis is a six-hour drive from Madison. A semifinal in the "closest" suggested site, Dallas, would still be 16 hours away. That's a plane trip, and plane tickets around the holidays aren't exactly cheap.

These are the fans that give you a full stadium, and adding an extra trip to their wallet is not going to guarantee a full house on game day. Relying on local fans is more of a crapshoot than a solution where these games are concerned, especially given the experimental nature of the changes coming to the game.

While local Pac-12 fans might go watch Oregon or USC in Arizona, what happens when there is no local conference team playing in the semifinal? Who buys those tickets when fans are all tapped out at the bank?

There's a lot to think about with this issue. The logistics of it all do not even take into account the possible diminishing of these proud BCS bowls if they become mere semifinal games as opposed to crowning a true Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar Bowl champion.

The choice becomes how much strain the power brokers want to put on fans' checkbooks when it comes to squeezing out more corporate dollars for the sake of the spectacle.