Kansas City Wins Bid for NCAA D-II Football Title Game

The NCAA announced Wednesday that the Division II football national championship game will be held at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kan. from 2014 through 2017. 

Bentonvile’s Tiger Stadium was one of three sites being considered. The winning bid was submitted by the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletic Association and the Kansas City Sports Commission. 

The Bentonville Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Great American Conference — an NCAA Division II conference headquartered in Russellville that includes 11 schools from Arkansas and Oklahoma — were behind the effort to bring the event to Northwest Arkansas.

Braly Municipal Stadium in Florence, Ala., has hosted the game — which caps the Division II football playoff — every year since 1986, the second longest period that any NCAA championship has remained at one site. The only other championship that has been at the same site longer is Division I baseball, which has been played in Omaha, Neb., since 1950.

Sporting Park, home to Major League Soccer franchise Sporting Kansas City, seats 18,467, not counting suites and club seating, but has yet to host a football game.

Braly Municipal Stadium, home field for the University of North Alabama, seats 14,125, though the championship game historically draws a crowd less than half of that. The average game attendance from 1996 to 2010 was a little more than 6,700, according to the NCAA.

The NCAA on Wednesday announced 523 sites have been awarded as hosts for 82 of its 89 championships for the 2014-18 seasons, making it the largest collection of host site announcements in association history.