2024 National Championship in Houston: Preparations underway for the big game

HOUSTON - Preparations are underway in Houston for the 2024 College Football National Championship game.

The big game is now less than three weeks away and will be played at NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans.

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"It’s crazy to think we’ve been planning this for a year and it’s finally here," said Leah Mastaglio, Senior Assistant GM for NRG Park. "Our entire team is really excited to get things going."

Right now, the field and stadium are covered in everything Texans and will be through New Year’s Eve. The Texans final regular season home game is December 31. After the game, crews will work to get the field and stadium transformed into the venue for the National Championship game on January 8.

"It’s quite a big process," said Mastaglio. "We’ll use our exact same playing field. We’ll just be switching out the paint. We’ll be extracting all of the NFL marks and repainting everything to the college football championship specs."

The National Championship Game will feature the winner of Alabama vs. Michigan against the winner of Washington vs. Texas.

"Tens of millions of dollars of economic impact," said Michael Heckman, President and CEO of Houston First Corporation. "We don’t exactly know what that will be until the game is over, but if you look at the four teams left, any of those four travel really well."

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Houston recently hosted the Final 4 NCCA Championship in 2023, Super Bowl LI, and several World Series games. In addition, the World Cup will go through Houston in 2026.

"You have people coming in, they’re spending money on airlines, hotels, parties, restaurants, there’s a ripple effect throughout our economy that ultimately supports jobs and leaders to higher wages," said Heckman. 

We won’t know who is playing in the game until after the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl semifinal games on January 1.

"We just have to wait on those teams for some last-minute additional paint colors and stencils to paint the field. Other than that, we’ll be ready to go," said Mastaglio.