Why Husky Stadium? WIAA leader explains reasons for moving state football championships

The price of hosting Washington’s high school state football championship games at the Tacoma Dome kept soaring higher and higher, while the fan experience worsened. The price at Husky Stadium, though? It looks just right.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) is moving the 2023 state football championships to the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium, years after moving away from the Tacoma Dome.

“When (the UW) did the bid last year, it was remarkably better than anything we had seen,” WIAA executive director Mick Hoffman told The News Tribune on Tuesday morning.

Since the WIAA left the Tacoma Dome after the 2018 football season, the championships have been hosted by three Pierce County high school venues: Sparks Stadium in Puyallup, Mount Tahoma in Tacoma and Harry E. Lang Stadium in Lakewood.

Moving the championships to high school stadium was largely viewed as a stopgap until the WIAA could find a larger venue to call home. Since the spring of 2019 — when it made the decision to move away from the Tacoma Dome — the WIAA has been working to reach a deal with a larger venue that made financial sense.

After its initial bid was too costly, Hoffman said UW came back this year with a bid that made sense. Hoffman said the WIAA is still negotiating some small details on the contract and isn’t ready to share the cost yet, but did say there’s a ceiling in place.

“It will be no more than double our cost of the high schools,” Hoffman said.

The total costs for using the three Pierce County high school stadiums was around $35,000 annually, according to Hoffman. That means the one-year contract with Husky Stadium shouldn’t exceed $70,000.

That’s probably less than the WIAA would pay to use the Tacoma Dome these days.

The last three-year contract agreement with the Tacoma Dome cost the WIAA $45,000 in 2016, $52,500 plus an additional $1 per ticket surcharge in 2017, and $62,500 in 2018, the final year of the contract.

That was a hard pill to swallow, considering the Dome’s renovation resulted in poor sight lines for fans. From many of the seats, fans couldn’t see players on the sidelines. There were also safety concerns using the Tacoma Dome’s dated artificial turf in an era of heightened concussion awareness.

“We were highly doubtful after this many years, how it had been stored — we’d probably need a new surface in there,” Hoffman said. “The Dome can’t afford that. There were other factors, as well.”

The condition of the turf at Husky Stadium shouldn’t be an issue.

It’s clear that the UW’s athletic department wanted to host the event. Since 2018, WIAA assistant executive director Andy Barnes has been in regular contact with UW athletic director Jen Cohen and Dan Erickson, UW’s director for events and facilities.

“It really got legs with Jen Cohen being highly motivated to have high school football there,” Hoffman said.

HUSKY STADIUM AN ‘AMAZING SITE’

On the shores of Lake Washington, the 70,000-plus capacity Husky Stadium is one of college football’s premier venues. While Pierce County’s high school venues were suitable for championship games — Hoffman went out of his way to compliment the schools, administrators and volunteers who sacrificed time and effort to host the championships in Pierce County the past few years — playing at high school stadiums can’t compare to sprinting out of the tunnel at Husky Stadium.

“Getting to play at Husky Stadium, where NFL legends have played as college players, most people don’t get that opportunity,” Hoffman said. “It’s phenomenal.”

Still, there are concerns. Friday and Saturday traffic in the Seattle area is generally a nightmare, although the Link light rail’s connection to Husky Stadium should alleviate some of those concerns. There’s also no covered seating in the stadium’s lower bowl, which would leave fans soaked and cold if the December weather doesn’t cooperate.

The positives will most likely outweigh the negatives. The experience for student-athletes will be special and unforgettable. Plus, it makes the state football championships a one-site venue again. For now, fans with multiple rooting interests won’t have to worry about scurrying across town to try to catch multiple games on the same day.

Another bonus: the WIAA will be able to use its preferred ticketing vendor, GoFan, at Husky Stadium, which should keep ticket prices reasonable. The Tacoma Dome requires usage of Ticketmaster, which adds additional fees that some consider burdensome.

“Our (fees) are less with GoFan,” Hoffman said. “We don’t anticipate a significant increase.”

Dean Burke is president and CEO of Travel Tacoma – Mt. Rainier Tourism and Sports.

Burke told The News Tribune on Tuesday he understood the decision to move the games to Seattle.

“While we are sad to see it go, we’ve been prepared for this for some time now. The state football championship games, while still at the Tacoma Dome, went from attracting as many as 39,000 spectators back in the years leading up to 2012, to a steady decline, down to about 10,000 by the time they left the Dome,” Burke said. “Those numbers were on a steady down-cycle long before the venue had seen any renovations, and remained at around 10,000 when they moved back into outdoor stadium venues.

“Hopefully, moving to UW will give the championship an injection of excitement and create the sustainable boost it needs to thrive. But overall, the decline in spectatorship has followed the overall shift in youth football participation seen in so many states. If this helps them reach a new level of success, then we can only wish them the very best on this. Maybe one day it will make sense for it to return.”

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

The deal with Husky Stadium is a one-year deal, effectively a trial run for both parties. Hoffman said the WIAA wants to align the next contract with its next four-year reclassification cycle. The current cycle ends in the 2023-24 school year.

“We’re aligning all our tournaments with those four-year cycles,” Hoffman said. “Our board just gave us a go to put out to bid all our tournament formats.”

Could another venue come into play? Lumen Field, home of the NFL’s Seahawks, is intriguing large-venue option in Seattle. Memorial Field, in the shadow of the Space Needle in Seattle, is expected to undergo a renovation at some point. A much-needed facelift could transform it into a viable championship venue.

The WIAA talked with the Seattle Seahawks, but the talks never amounted to a bid.

“Their recommendation was to focus on the Huskies,” Hoffman said. “There wasn’t budget capacity to do what the Huskies were going to do. They told us they weren’t going to be able to match what the Huskies were going to be able to do.”

If for some reason everything falls apart, the WIAA could revert back to using high school stadiums in the future.

“If we have to go back to high school sites, that’s going to be a bummer,” Hoffman said. “We hope we don’t have to do that.”

He reiterated how much the WIAA appreciates the work from the Pierce County schools that hosted the football championships, from people like Puyallup School District athletic director Jim Meyerhoff and Tacoma Public Schools athletic director James Neal.

“We really want to emphasize how much we appreciate the schools that have hosted,” Hoffman said. “This is not a reflection of their effort, or even their sites.”

Staff writer Debbie Cockrell contributed to this report.