ATLANTA — It might be the Dr Pepper “Playoffuary” Fan Experience, where a cardboard stand-up of Sheriff Bosworth welcomes you to a twisty (and social media-friendly) college football wonderland. Maybe it’s the Chick-Fil-A inflatable helmet the size of a modest family home. Maybe it’s the smell of Eckrich, the official sponsor of the smoked sausages and charcuterie of the College Football Playoffsor the golden 50-yard American football field that covers much of the Georgia World Congress Center. Maybe it’s all these brand activations and more, a huge circus of traveling sponsors that now accompanies the College Football Playoff. Either way, the effect is inevitable. We are now a long way from tailgates, Saturday afternoons and fight songs.
Welcome to the new world of the College Football Playoff. Branding and experiences are the rule, and gaming is just an excuse for all that. As Ohio State and Notre Dame prepare to battle for the national championship Monday evening At Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, sponsor glitz reached overwhelming levels. College football is now the NFL with younger players, better music, and crazier storylines. Whether or not you think this is a positive change doesn’t really matter; it’s here, and it won’t diminish in the foreseeable future.
The level of spectacle won’t shock anyone who’s followed the sport during its explosive growth in recent years, but it’s still a bit of an ironic disconnect. A sport that has spent most of its existence hiding behind the fig leaf of “amateurism” has now completely and utterly immersed itself in the excess of the Super Bowl.
It’s a good thing that players are now getting paid for their efforts. Seeing this incredibly expensive multi-day extravaganza would make even hardcore amateurism obsessives like Clemson coach Dabo Swinney think that maybe there should be a few dollars funneled to the people who actually do the work that makes it all possible.
Oh, that’s right. The players. They’re virtual afterthoughts in all the pregame hype, and they spent Saturday morning looking perplexed by all the attention swirling around them, from the media to the mascots to the puppies.
The CFP held its media day Saturday morning and, aside from the early morning hours, it was virtually indistinguishable from the NFL’s. Super Bowl equivalent week. Head coaches and star players were given podiums where reporters crowded and peppered with questions; lesser-known players roamed the open area in warm-up gear. The questions ranged from serious to stupid, and the answers were mostly genial, well-rehearsed blandness; everyone involved knows how to dance this dance.
(Notable differences between CFP and Super Bowl media days: Some assistants, like Ohio State’s Chip Kelly, get much more attention in college football than in the NFL. The whole affair played out at 9 a.m., rather than prime time, and the media was there to tell stories, rather than become the story. Expect those last two to change very soon.)
Media Day serves an important and necessary purpose, generating tons of new content for a college football fan base hungry for every bit of new information. But it’s also quite a distraction for the teams playing this game, the final challenge of a months-long marathon defined by a singular goal.
“The number one priority for us right now is to focus on this game. I told our team; we need to avoid all distractions right now,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said. “We have a lot of family, a lot of friends, a lot of people that definitely want to come to the game, and obviously you have to take care of those things, but at the end of the day, we have to do our job.”
Kelly added: “As you progress through these games, you go from the first round to the Rose Bowl, to the Cotton Bowl, to the national championship, all of a sudden I think the distractions become bigger and you must learn how to deal with distractions. This media day is different from the Rose Bowl media day. And rightly so.
As he spoke, several of his players posed with rescued puppies, others signed autographs for rows of Buckeyes fans, and still others weaved around a 7-foot “Perry the Pylon” mascot tall making his way through the crowd.
“In our world it’s a Thursday because it’s Saturday but our game isn’t until Monday,” Kelly continued. “So that’s our Thursday state of mind. What will our state of mind be on Thursday when we enter the meeting rooms upon our return? What will our state of mind be on Thursday when we arrive on the training pitch today? »
Notre Dame follows a similar path of maintaining routine. “We have a very limited schedule that we get pretty much all season,” Notre Dame kicker (and Orange Bowl hero) Mitch Jeter said. “That’s what we’re doing this week as well, having the same training schedule, same meeting schedule, stuff like that.”
Beyond that, teams must manage their own affairs; At this point, there’s not much coaches can do to keep their charges. And if they don’t yet know the issues…
“Our guys are men,” Day said. “The job of everyone on the team, including coaches and staff, is not to distract other players while they prepare, but also to avoid distractions to yourself, (which it (whether) posts, written stories, discussions about previous years or previous games, or things that have nothing to do with what happens in this game.
Some players said they would stay away from their phones until kickoff; others will wait until the hours leading up to the game. Some will watch television, others will lose themselves in prayer. Everyone said they understood that the weight, the meaning, the emotion of the game could wait until later.
“We put so much into this,” Ohio State linebacker (and Cotton Bowl hero) Jack Sawyer said. “There will be time to look back and reflect after the season.”
What matters now is concentration and preparation. One last lap, without getting weighed down by the idea that it’s a last lap.
“Every rep you’ve done,” Jeter said, “leads up to this moment.”
Or, as Notre Dame’s Jeremiah Love summed it up: “I gotta keep it the basics, the essentials.” »
It will be a big challenge considering that all the fans, sponsors, officials, media and families are fighting for the attention of the players. But whichever team can manage that concentration will have a huge advantage heading into kickoff. And then it will be up to the men on the ground to create the spectacle.