The Dallas-Fort Worth area’s AT&T Stadium hosted the very first College Football Playoff championship game this past January, and won’t host another one for a while.
According to Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News, AT&T Stadium’s Stadium Events Organizing Committee has decided not to bid on the 2018-20 title games, which are due by the end of the month. AT&T Stadium joins the Rose Bowl and Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil Stadium among major venues sitting out the next round of bidding. (The 2016 game will be played at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., followed by the 2017 game at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla.)
Big 12 commissioner and CFP management committee member Bob Bowlsby indicated recently that there was no guarantee the title game would return to North Texas by 2020 anyway, saying, “I think we’ve already demonstrated a desire to move it around... I don’t know there would be anything that would preclude it coming back there but I do know there’s a long list of suitors.”
Among those suitors for the next round of title games are Lone Star State neighbors Houston (NRG Stadium) and San Antonio (Alamodome).
AT&T Stadium is expected to be a major player for title games played in 2021 and beyond, Carlton reported, and is set to host semifinal games through the Goodyear Cotton Bowl following the 2015 and 2018 seasons.