Notre Dame, Penn State, Texas, and Ohio State are preparing to host the first home games in College Football Playoff history this weekend, but things won’t look exactly the same on campus as they do any given Saturday for those four schools.

While the higher-seeded teams in Friday’s and Saturday’s games have a home field advantage over their road opponents, they won’t cash in as much as they normally do, and visiting teams won’t be quite as unwelcome.

That’s because the CFP is organizing the games, creating some unique circumstances:

• Ticket sales revenue goes to the CFP. Schools keep parking and concessions sales.
• Opposing schools are allotted 3,500 tickets (including seats for band members), far fewer than the typical 50-50 split during conference championship and bowl games.
• Away teams have the option for a hype video during introductions.
• Home team staff will operate the P.A. system and music, but the script is largely controlled by the CFP.

The Playoff action will kick off Friday night when Indiana will play in-state rival Notre Dame. On Saturday night, SMU will visit Penn State, Clemson will go to Texas, and the nightcap will feature Tennessee at Ohio State.

Back to School

For the games at Notre Dame, Penn State, and Ohio State, weather forecasts call for subfreezing temperatures at kickoff—but no snow at this point. That will be a stark contrast to the sunny sky and warm weather expected in Austin, which could be more than 60 degrees at kickoff.

The on-campus CFP games created high demand for hotels and housing rentals in home markets, particularly South Bend, Ind., and State College, Pa. Those smaller cities each have roughly 100,000 residents, compared to the nearly one million each in Columbus and Austin.

The seriousness of the Mavericks’ intentions to build a new arena and casino in the Dallas area has been laid bare with the team’s hire of legendary basketball executive Rick Welts as CEO.

The Mavericks, now led by governor Patrick Dumont following a deal roughly a year ago with Mark Cuban to buy a controlling interest in the team, brought Welts out of more than three years of retirement to lead both team operations and the efforts to develop a new arena and casino complex. Welts will succeed the outgoing Cynt Marshall.

Named to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018, Welts built a 46-year career in basketball that ended as president and COO of the Warriors, where he won three NBA championships and oversaw the development of the $1.4 billion, industry-leading Chase Center in San Francisco. But he also had meaningful stints with the Suns and WNBA’s Mercury, the NBA league office, and the Seattle SuperSonics, winning another NBA title and three more championships in the WNBA and NBA G League. 

Having turned the Warriors into an industry colossus and also having helped found the WNBA and acting as a key force in the “Dream Team” marketing for the 1992 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball squad, the 71-year-old Welts had nothing left to prove in the sport. But the large-scale opportunity inherent in the Mavericks’ real estate project—as well as with a team that reached the 2024 NBA Finals—formed an irresistible lure for Welts.

“Part of the vision that Patrick shared with me is this belief that our basketball and business operations, working hand in glove together, really can maximize the opportunity that this team has,” Welts said. 

“There’s no reason this team shouldn’t stand toe-to-toe with any franchise in sports. We have everything here,” he said. 

Land Matters

Soon after the Adelson and Dumont families who control the Sands Corp. completed their deal to acquire majority control of the Mavericks, two companies connected to those entities acquired two prime real estate parcels in the Dallas area. One is downtown, while the other is in suburban Irving, closer to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. 

Exact plans for either property are still being formulated, but Dumont and other team leaders have made no secret of their desire to build the arena-casino complex. A key part of that effort will rely on Texas legalizing sports betting, which has yet to happen and is proving to be a continually thorny issue in state politics there. Texas lawmakers meet in alternating years and will be back in session in 2025.

But even if that legalization is delayed, Dumont reiterated the firm desire to have a new facility. The Mavericks’ current lease for the American Airlines Center expires in July 2031 and will be honored, but future options are already being considered.

“Our goal is to build the best facility possible for the Dallas Mavericks, to be state-of-the-art, world-class, and something that really defines what NBA basketball can present,” Dumont said. “We have the capability to do it … and building is a very, very cool thing. Very exciting. To do ground development is very special, and to have the opportunity to do something transformational doesn’t come along very often.”

The time-tested axiom of “winning sells” was proved once again as a historically strong Army-Navy college football game delivered historic ratings.

The Dec. 14 clash, pitting an 11–1 and nationally ranked Army team against 8–3 Navy, produced an average viewership of 9.4 million on CBS—representing the highest figure for the game since at least 1990. “America’s Game,” won by Navy 31–13, elevated strongly from a television audience average of about seven million over the past decade—and also beat a prior record of 8.45 million set in 1992. 

There are some existing attributes aiding the annual Army-Navy game, including a mid-December schedule slot largely to itself between other conference title games and most bowl games, as well as the pageantry connected to the academies’ pathway to future military service. But the surprising on-field success of both teams this year clearly helped draw in additional casual fans. 

That draw of 9.4 million, a 31% boost from a year ago, easily beats out a slew of major events in pro sports over the past year, including a historically strong Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final last June and MLB’s 2024 All-Star Game that averaged 7.44 million. 

Army is now scheduled to play in the Dec. 28 Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., with its opponent recently changed from Marshall to a 5–7 Louisiana Tech team due to mass departures to the transfer portal for the Thundering Herd. Navy, meanwhile, will face Oklahoma in the Dec. 27 Armed Forces Bowl.