A group including Melbourne Stadiums Limited CEO Paul Sergeant is putting together a proposal to bring a college football bowl game to Australia.
According to ESPN, the proposal is for a Mountain West team to play one from the Pac-12 in Melbourne's Etihad Stadium as soon as the end of 2016. Sergeant and three others reportedly traveled to Phoenix this week to discuss the possibility with league officials.
College football has played games outside the U.S. for more than 100 years and there were two games last season played at an international site. Penn State beat UCF at Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland on Aug. 30 and Western Kentucky beat Central Michigan in the Bahamas Bowl on Dec. 24.
"If it was up to us, we're good to go for 2016," Sergeant told ESPN. "But there are many other moving parts involved. From our perspective we are 100 percent (committed), but we're only one player in it."
Several stadiums of major division I college football teams more than double Etihad Stadium's 53,000+ capacity, but Sergeant does not see that as a problem. He said he expects the attendance to be mostly domestic, with some Americans sprinkled in.
"We would expect visiting fans (from the United States) in the hundreds, not the thousands," Sergeant said. "We're basing having a capacity crowd on the domestic market.
"The key element is there's no risk for the conference or the teams."
Leadership for the Pac-12 and Mountain West Conferences were noncommittal in their public remarks. A spokesperson for the Pac-12 indicated the conference is always open to discussing bowl game opportunities.
"The necessities for a bowl game seem to be in place (there), including a solid management team," Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson told ESPN. "A stadium, local support and an appetite for college football."
