Volunteers key to successful CFP championship
INDIANAPOLIS (Inside INdiana Business) — After a successful game between Georgia and Alabama, the 2022 College Football Playoff Indianapolis Host Committee this morning passed the ball to Los Angeles, which will host the big game next year. For years, Indianapolis has received kudos for its ability to host big time sporting events and once again, a key element of the effort is being singled out. “Mostly what people will remember about this city is the incredible volunteers,” said Bill Hancock, executive director of the CFP.
During a news conference this morning, Hancock expressed his admiration for the Indy’s volunteer corps.
“It seemed like there was a volunteer on every corner who had a smiling face and every answer. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Hancock. “And people of Indianapolis, don’t take this for granted. This is what you are about. This is what your people are about and we’re just delighted at the College Football Playoff that we were able to spend a nice, long weekend with you.”
For the CFP, organizers took a different approach to building the volunteer corps by mixing veteran volunteers with new ones.
“[We wanted] to bring some new energy, some new creativity and innovation to folks who might not have been overly influenced by things we had done in the best,” Mark Howell, chair of the Indy CFP host committee told Inside INdiana Business last week. “[We wanted] to continue to increase our bench strength with knowledge transfer. So, as we get more and more championship events, we’ve got more and more people who can bring previous event experience to those.”
Mel Raines, president and chief operating officer of Pacers Sports & Entertainment, tells IIB reporter Mary-Rachel Redman the city’s volunteers are the “secret sauce” that makes major sporting events in Indy so special.
“I’ve been to a lot of other major events in other cities and they can’t deliver the volunteer corps that we can and I will tell you, from the Super Bowl, the NFL would often tell us that our volunteers were better than any paid staff they had in any other city,” said Raines. “It was just such a success for the city and it was because of those people.”
As for a return to Indy for the CFP? Hancock tells our partners at the Indianapolis Business Journal that it’s too early to tell if and when that will happen.
“It’s too soon to say about the future—we haven’t really started talking about it,” Hancock said Monday. “But I know Indianapolis has impressed a lot of people this weekend.”