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Now with a template, CFP looks to year two

The words most often heard inside the College Football Playoff offices last Tuesday were “It’s over.”

What seemed like a mad dash to get to Jan. 12, the date of the inaugural CFP championship game, led to a bit of professional hangover the next day inside the CFP’s Irving, Texas, office.

The 13 staff members mostly were present and accounted for — albeit a bit sluggish — by late that afternoon. They sifted through boxes of unsold merchandise and sat in the lobby comparing their exit times from AT&T Stadium the night before. The average seemed to be about 2 a.m.

With the trophy handed out, CFP COO Michael Kelly will start preparing for 2016.
Photo by: COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF
Down the hallway in a corner office, CFP Chief Operating Officer Michael Kelly, dressed casually in a white CFP windbreaker and khaki slacks, wrapped up a meeting and looked ahead to the evaluation process of year one. It begins almost right away.

“We’ll do some inventory this week and start writing our thank-you notes, and hopefully get an early start on next year,” said Kelly, whose office on the 10th floor of The Summit building in trendy Las Colinas overlooks a golf course and Texas Highway 114.

The idea of having a system in place and a full year to prepare for the Jan. 11, 2016, championship game in Glendale, Ariz., brings a smile to Kelly’s face. He has presided over the local organizing committee for three Super Bowls, but building not just a game but an event from scratch was nothing like he had ever experienced.

Some of the planning for core events, like

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Northwestern Mutual’s Taste of the Championship, a huge fundraising dinner at the Irving Convention Center, didn’t begin until September. “We were building from a blank slate,” Kelly said. “We now have a baseline for the first time.”

As the CFP prepares for year two in the Phoenix market, unique challenges will remain. One of the benefits of having the inaugural game in Dallas, near CFP headquarters, was that the staff was able to work closely with officials at AT&T Stadium. Developing that same cohesion out of market will be tougher.

Among Kelly’s other thoughts from a one-hour interview:

Playoff Playlist Live, the weekend concert series, could be held at Tempe Beach Park next year, Kelly said. Nothing is official, but the waterfront park would enable the CFP to take its concerts outside after staging them inside American Airlines Center last week. “We haven’t locked down anything yet, but we’ll look at it,” Kelly said. “We want to take advantage of what the community has to offer.”

The CFP will quickly begin talking to vendors about year two. Colonnade Group ran the fan fest, Solomon Group produced the weekend concerts and the Etzel Agency oversaw the Championship Tailgate. They are expected to return.

CFP does not expect to expand its office staff, at least not right away. “We’re where we planned to be,” Kelly said.

On the post-event analysis: “We’re going to have meetings with the championship teams in the coming weeks. We’ll probably have a small group from our office go to the campuses at Oregon and Ohio State just to hear what we can improve.”

On sponsors: “We had two sponsors that, in fairness, got their deals done in time to have a full season to plan — Dr Pepper and Chick-fil-A. They had a chance to execute all season and do some cool things. Now that the other brands have a chance to plan from January to January, we’ll see how that helps build up everything. We can also ask them what kinds of activations they’d like to do, and we can work on planning for that.”

Lastly, Kelly addressed the chief challenge for next season — playing both semifinals on New Year’s Eve, instead of Jan. 1: “A year ago nobody in the world knew what this meant [pointing to the CFP logo on his shirt]. Now people know. We know the popularity is there after this year and now we’ve just got to make sure everybody is aware of it on New Year’s Eve. Will it be culturally transformative? We hope to create the kind of excitement where people are together to watch the ball drop, and they watch the semifinals leading into that. It’s a little different because it’s not New Year’s Day, but it’s going to be that way for two of every three years.”

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