Usually by now we know exactly who's coming to town for the Allstate Sugar Bowl, but now with the expanded College Football Playoffs, it is a little different.
Because of the new 12-team format, we don't know who will be paired with the Georgia Bulldogs come New Year's Day.
Georgia will take on the winner of Notre Dame and Indiana. That game will be played in South Bend on December 20.
Sugar Bowl CEO Jeff Hundley says that makes the planning workload is bigger this year.
"We're already doing site visits this week with three teams instead of two," said Hundley. "That's one of the big differences, so we'll just go through the process and work with both Notre Dame and Indiana."
Next season, the Sugar Bowl is a semifinal game. Hundley says that means they won't know exactly who's participating until a little more than a week before game time.
"We'll be communicating throughout the month of December with all the potential teams and we'll just have to be very organized and buttoned-up, but we're excited," he said.
And being a more consistent part of the college football playoffs means a lot rides on the Sugar Bowl, and the teams and their fans will be fully engaged, unlike the off years they used to have.
"The in-between years, we often were getting teams that had just missed out on the playoffs," and he said that killed some of the excitement.
"And oftentimes you had players opting out, which didn't help ticket sales at all," he said.
