Trying to reach FriscoOf the eight teams still alive in the FCS playoffs, none is closer than 980 miles to Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, Texas, the new home of the national championship game:School Miles to Pizza Hut ParkWofford (Spartanburg, S.C.) 980Appalachian State (Boone, N.C.) 1,000Georgia Southern (Statesboro, Ga.) 1,012North Dakota State (Fargo, N.D.) 1,063Delaware (Newark, Del.) 1,424Villanova (Philadelphia, Pa.) 1,474New Hampshire (Durham, N.H.) 1,827Eastern Washington (Cheney, Wash.) 1,962Source: Google Maps
Eight teams remain in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, which resume tonight when third-seeded Delaware hosts New Hampshire.
Two teams will survive the next two weekends and advance to Frisco, Texas, the new home of the NCAA Division I championship game. Regardless of which two make it, the teams and their fans are in for a long trip to the Dallas suburb.
Of the teams still alive, Wofford’s campus is the closest to Frisco’s 23,000-seat Pizza Hut Park, according to Google Maps, with a driving distance of 980 miles from Spartanburg, S.C.
The campuses of top-seeded Appalachian State and Georgia Southern are both slightly farther away, while the other five schools are all at least 1,400 miles from Frisco.
Tom Burnett, commissioner of the Frisco-based Southland Conference, said the lack of a nearby team is a concern. He said the fact that the game has been moved back to Jan. 7 should help the finalists’ fans get to Frisco.
“I think where we have some positive feeling is that the championship game is not six or seven days after the semifinals,” he said. “There’s close to three weeks and that gives more people time to plan and travel and buy some affordable airfare tickets.”
Frisco’s best hope for a large out-of-town crowd rested with Stephen F. Austin, which is located in Nacogdoches, Texas, less than 200 miles from Frisco. But SFA was knocked out by Villanova last weekend.
“Had they made the game, honestly we wouldn’t have had enough tickets,” Burnett said. “I think it would have been similar to Appalachian State’s experience in Chattanooga.”
If the national champion was still decided at Finley Stadium, home of the title game from 1997 to 2009, five of the eight remaining teams would have to travel less than 750 miles.
The best-case scenario during Chattanooga’s run as host always involved having Appalachian State or Georgia Southern in the title game. Their die-hard fans came out in huge numbers, with the total attendance typically approaching or exceeding 20,000.
Appalachian State, the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, and Georgia Southern are on opposite sides of the bracket and could meet in Frisco. And that could be Frisco’s best-case scenario, along with a Delaware-ASU matchup.
Appalachian State led the FCS in attendance this season, Delaware was fourth and Georgia Southern was sixth, each averaging at least 19,100 a game. North Dakota State also had a solid average of 16,568, which was 10th in the nation.
Of the other four teams still alive, only Wofford (8,764) was in the top 40.
“I think there will be a lot of curiosity about what kind of crowd they have in Frisco this year with the distance of the teams and the Cotton Bowl conflict,” said Southern Conference commissioner John Iamarino, referring to the fact that the Cotton Bowl at Cowboys Stadium will be going on at the same time as the championship game.
Burnett said only about three to four thousand advance tickets have been sold so far, “but much of our local ticket push will come here in December.”
As he and the other members of the Frisco organizing committee have spoken with area groups, Burnett said they’ve had to educate the community on what the FCS is and how it differentiates from the bowl subdivision.
“That is probably something we underestimated a little bit,” he said. “We think that will get easier with time. We don’t have a Southland Conference team in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so even though we’re headquartered here that’s something that has to be overcome.”
He said he’d like to see the stadium at least 85 percent full on Jan. 7.
“I know our local committee is very confident that our community will come out strong and support this game,” he said, “and prove, hopefully, that the NCAA committee made a good decision to bring the game to our city.”
Contact John Frierson at jfrierson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6268. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mocsbeatCTFP.