RFK Stadium has held crowds for baseball, soccer and decades of Redskins football. On Saturday, the stadium plays host to tens of thousands of football fans on hand to witness something new: the first college bowl game in Washington history.
Despite a tight timeline and a declining economy, organizers of the EagleBank Bowl said they expect about 40,000 fans to attend the inaugural game, which pits Navy against Wake Forest.
The game represents the first entry by the District into the college football postseason and the most high-profile football game to be played at RFK Stadium since the Redskins moved to the suburbs in 1996.
And, yes, the game will be played in football weather.
Temperatures are expected to be in the high 30s at game time, but officials from DC Bowl Committee Inc. said late this week that they have sold more than 30,000 tickets and anticipate several thousand more in walk-up sales despite the cold.
That total would be similar to the typical attendance at the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, where Navy played in 2005 and 2007.
The bowl has secured at least 15 major sponsors, including the six-figure title sponsorship from EagleBank and a deal with Northrop Grumman.
The bowl received NCAA approval only this spring, forcing organizers to play catch-up in putting the event together. The announcement of Wake Forest as Navy’s opponent came less than two weeks ago, making for a hectic stretch of days leading up to the game.
“Everybody’s really come through these last few days,” said Steve Beck, the bowl’s executive director. “So far, everything’s come through without a glitch.”
Several local companies — SIGAL Construction, law firm Leftwich & Ludaway and architecture and engineering firm McKissack & McKissack — signed on as founding sponsors in the past few weeks, and other companies have purchased blocks of tickets. In all, the bowl is expected to bring in between $750,000 and $800,000 in sponsorships.
Bowl organizers credited officials from the D.C. Sports & Entertainment Commission for helping to boost local business support in the past month. Many of the recent sponsors were companies that have done business with the commission.
“They really opened doors for us and put us in front of a lot of business leaders in the city,” said Bob Treseler, the bowl’s director of corporate development and sponsorships. “It gave us a chance to get access and really get the word out.”
The idea for the game was conceived more than a year ago by Sean Metcalf, a former staffer for D.C. Council member Jack Evans, and Marie Rudolph, the director of government and community relations at George Washington University.
Not until recent years has the notion of bowl games staged in cold-weather cities taken hold. Traditionally, bowl games have been played in warm-weather climates such as Florida, Texas and Southern California.
But in recent years, colder-weather cities such as Boise, Idaho, and high-altitude Albuquerque, N.M., have hosted games.
That trend gave an opening to Mr. Metcalf and Miss Rudolph, who saw the bowl as a way to boost tourism in the District at what typically is a slow time of the year while simultaneously enhancing the city’s status in the sports world.
An NCAA subcommittee approved a license for the bowl in April, leaving organizers seven months to put the event together. Nationals Park was considered as the site for the game, but the bowl committee was unable to reach a deal with the Nationals for use of the ballpark.
The committee announced in September that RFK Stadium would host the game, and EagleBank signed a five-year title sponsorship deal.
Organizers saw Navy as a natural tie-in early on, and the academy agreed to participate if it earned the six wins necessary to play in a bowl game. The ACC also agreed to a tie-in if at least nine teams from the conference were eligible to compete in a bowl, and Wake Forest committed to the game earlier this month.
Bowl week has been a busy one for the teams. Both held parties at ESPNZone during the week. On Thursday, Navy players visited fellow service members at the National Navy Medical Center in Bethesda, and Wake Forest players took a tour of the U.S. Capitol and met members of Congress.
On Friday, the teams took part in a luncheon for charity, and Wake Forest players visited Children’s National Medical Center. Navy hosted a pep rally next to the Navy Memorial in the District.
Both schools will host tailgate parties outside RFK Stadium on Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, workers at RFK spent the week painting lines and the bowl logo on the field, installing signage and painting railings at the 47-year-old facility that for 36 seasons served as a home to the Redskins.
The EagleBank Bowl marks the first football game to be played at RFK since a meeting between Salisbury and Frostburg State in 2001, and Saturday’s crowd is expected to be the largest in the stadium for football since the Redskins last played there in 1996.
City officials said they hope the game shows the stadium remains a viable venue for major events.
“This stadium isn’t dead,” said Erik Moses, chief executive officer of D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission. “It’s not dead by a long shot. When you see the field, it makes that real clear. Everybody’s running around, we’re sprucing things up and doing some buff and scrub. It’s helpful to the city if people see that.”
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