By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

Back to the Benz.

That’s where the Georgia High School Association is taking the state high school football finals, starting in almost a year.

The stadium was supposed to host the 2017 championships, but ironically, weather led to blowing that plan up. Only two games – Class A Private and Class AAA – were able to finish inside the stadium.

The issue was snow, and the outside of the stadium. Then Atlanta United soccer led to moving the games to the middle of the week a year later.

But exorbitant costs forced the GHSA to move the games to the outdoor Center Parc Stadium, property of Georgia State and formerly Turner Field.

The constant question of moving back to the Benz came up at nearly every GHSA meeting or any speaking event with a GHSA official.

Thursday, everybody got the answer at a press conference held at the stadium.

“We’re here, the time is right,’ GHSA executive director Robin Hines said. “We’re grateful for them being able to work with us so we could make this happen.

“It’s nice to be able to have these things planned and not worry about the weather quite as much.”

Weather has been mostly uncooperative for the games at Center Parc, although snow hasn’t been an issue.

Rich McKay, president and CEO of the Atlanta Falcons, said the two sides had never stopped talking after the games were pulled after an abbreviated 2017 even and a mid-week 2018 schedule.

“This is where they belong,” he said. “This stadium, we designed it to host a lot of events. It hosts a few more than we thought it was going to host. … it is always a scheduling challenge for us.”

He said the stadium could have hosted last year’s event, but the GHSA had a contract with Georgia State.

“I am proud of them for honoring that agreement,” McKay said. “This became the year to get it done.”

Finally, as far as he’s concerned, and apparently Falcons owner Arthur Blank, too.

“I think it was important in the sense of when (Blank) called to say, ‘Why aren’t they there?’” McKay said. “We probably had that discussion then. I’d say the Boss, Mr. Blank, he’s all in for high school sports.

“I remain remiss on our part that we weren’t able to keep the championships here. But I do take my hat off to Georgia State, thank them very much, thank Charlie (AD Charlie Cobb) and his team for being fantastic hosts.

“But we want to have the championships here. We want to have the girls flag football championships here.”

Video of the press conference: Georgia Public Broadcasting

The stadium will host the boys tackle football championships as well as the girls flag football finals.

In 2023, though, they’ll be back to the middle of the week, because of the SEC Championship game on Dec. 2 and a variety of NFL-related schedule standards. It wasn’t clear if the mid-week schedule is until further notice, or open to adjustments a few weeks before the championships.

McKay said the NFL has certain requirements, like keeping Thursdays and Saturdays open.

“There a lot of requirements that go into trying to schedule these games,” McKay said. “But I think we’ve got ourselves in a good place.”

In 2017, four games were postponed from the weekend and pushed back a week to home sites, including the Class 5A game with Rome and Warner Robins, which was played at McConnell-Talbert. Ostensibly, snow falling from the roof and potentially injuring fans in line to get in was apparently the main reason for the major moves.

Other scheduled events at the stadium, including a college football bowl game, were part of the reason for the major change.

The GHSA faced another issue a year later and had to adjust the 2018 plans because of scheduling issue, the upstart Atlanta United soccer team and the possibility that the United could host the Major League Soccer’s Cup on Dec. 8, right in the middle of the football finals.

Less than a month before the championships and with the United scheduled to host the MLS Cup, the GHSA had to officially move the championships from Friday and Saturday to Tuesday and Wednesday, Dec. 11-12.

That didn’t necessarily go over too well, either, including a Change.org petition to move the MLS action somewhere else and allow the GHSA games to be played. It was signed by 329 people.

Two tumultuous tries to have the game at Mercedes-Benz, though, were second on the list of reasons the GHSA left the stadium.

The cost of holding the games at Mercedes-Benz, under a different operation situation than the Georgia Dome, was beyond expectations, in the $600,000 range, roughly four times the cost at the Georgia Dome and at Georgia State. The payouts had been It led to the GHSA dipping into funds to reimburse teams in the state finals.

Finals were held at the Georgia Dome from 2008-16, after years of the Dome hosting the semifinals and schools hosting the finals.

Hines was asked about the possibility of returning during a speaking visit to the Macon Touchdown Club last month.

“The answer to that is yes,” he said. “I’m gonna leave it at that.”

And, of course, he didn’t.

“We have a great partnership with the Falcons. Rich McKay and I, ever since we walked away, we’ve never quit talking about things. Of course, we’ve developed a wildly successful girls flag football program in partnership with them. … When it happened, it was a business decision. We feel like the Falcons, Mercedes-Benz, they’re better at cutting costs, they know how to run that facility, we know what we need in order to make it happen.

“We can’t just go somewhere and lose money and not be able to provide a decent payout to the participating schools. But we’re about there.”

Public sentiment isn’t as one-sided as many think, with a faction interested in games being at high school home sites – although not many are remotely able to host such an event – or at qualified neutral sites.

Schools in lower classifications, which tend to not be in metro Atlanta, have major travel concerns, as do their fans. And many lower-classification matchups regularly feature schools far from Atlanta. This year, nine of the 16 teams involved were more than an hour from downtown Atlanta. Other neutral sites would have worked well for Thomson and Fitzgerald, Ware County and Warner Robins.

Replay was a short topic, and expected one, after a call at the end of the Sandy Creek-Cedar Grove Class AAA game appeared to be seriously botched, with a touchdown ruled on a run in which the ball-carrier, by almost every broadcast angle available, was at least a yard short of the goal line.

“We’re going to take a look,” Hines said. “We feel like we have to, to look at instant replay when it’s feasible and the technology exists.

“There’s a lot that goes in to video review.”

The topic will be discussed seriously in January. Asked about small movement to replay the game, Hines said that wasn’t going to happen, as per GHSA by-laws.