The College Football Playoff’s top executive apologized Tuesday to fans for the long waits to get into Mercedes-Benz Stadium at Monday night’s national championship game.
CFP executive director Bill Hancock attributed the delays at the gates, which some fans said were as long as two hours, to increased security associated with President Donald Trump’s attendance at the game.
“We do know some fans were inconvenienced. We feel very sorry for that,” Hancock said. “It was due to the security needs for the president.”
Hancock said the U.S. Secret Service closed the stadium’s Gate 1, which Trump entered, for longer than expected. In addition to forcing long waits for fans already lined up there, the closure created backlogs at other gates when some fans were redirected, Hancock said.
“We knew (Gate 1) was going to be closed, but they closed it for a little longer period than we thought,” Hancock said. “And the inclement weather didn’t help anything. “
He called the delays “disappointing” but said that when the president attends an event, “security trumps everything, so to speak.”
“I think all of us who were there know how important it is to provide security for the president of the United States.”
Hancock said he was heartened that despite the delays “almost every one” in the crowd of 77,000-plus was inside the stadium when the Georgia-Alabama game kicked off at 8:18 p.m. Alabama won the game 26-23 in overtime.
Dan Corso, president of the Atlanta Sports Council, echoed Hancock’s comments.
“Certainly a negative fan experience was not the intention,” Corso said, “but the Secret Service protocol, at the end of the day, was what the stadium had to go by.”
It was believed to be the first time a U.S. president attended college football’s official or de facto national championship game since Jimmy Carter, near the end of his term as president, attended Georgia’s victory over Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 1981.
On another matter, Hancock said he was aware before Monday night’s game of a leak in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium roof, which caused a slight stream of rain water to drip onto the field during pregame warm-ups.
Hancock said he learned of the issue from “our people on the sideline saying, ‘I’m feeling water on my hand.’”
“It was very minor and had no effect on the event whatsoever,” Hancock said of the leak.
The rain stopped during the game.
Monday marked at least the third event at which the stadium’s problematic roof is known to have leaked.
Hancock defended the CFP’s decision to use paperless, digital tickets for the game, the first time that has been done for the national championship game. Some fans said the tickets caused confusion.
“The mobile ticketing served us well,” Hancock said. “We’ll stick with it. The best thing about mobile ticketing is … we had much less instances of counterfeiting than we have had in the past.”
Overall, Hancock gave Atlanta high marks for its hosting of the event, the first time college football’s national championship has been decided here.
“It was awesome. From top to bottom, the people of Atlanta were wonderful hosts,” Hancock said. “Yes, they had a curveball thrown at them with the visit by the president of the United States. We were proud to have the president at our game. It shows the stature of the event.”
Sites have been selected for the national championship game through January 2024 as CFP officials made a point to spread it around to 10 different cities through the event’s first decade, but Hancock said “we will be back” to Atlanta.
“I know Atlanta will be in the picture when we begin to talk about future sites (beyond 2024), which will be in three or four years, probably,” Hancock said. “Atlanta is a great host for events like this.”
Said Corso: “Certainly we would love to have it back at the next available opportunity. ... We’re going back after it again.”
Atlanta hosts another marquee sports event Feb. 3, 2019: the Super Bowl.
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