In the college football world, we saw Argentina play in Kyle Field and at Jordan-Hare Stadium for the World Cup warm-up matches. Naturally, we college football fans had to say how awesome it would be to have the World Cup in college football stadiums.

FIFA states that stadiums must have a capacity of at least 40,000, stadiums hosting quarter-finals or semi-finals must have a minimum of 60,000, and those hosting the opening ceremony or final must have a capacity of at least 80,000. Basically every single Power Conference team is still alive here except a few I will list here. If you want the full guidelines for FIFA hosting, I’ll link them here.

Also, this basically rules out the G5 from hosting. However, some G5 schools and a few FCS make it past this capacity barrier. (If I missed one or two, I will update.)

The college football world has plenty of capacity and stadiums to meet the 14 required stadiums for capacity for hosting the World Cup. Also, in addition, stadiums must have a minimum number of television camera stands and media areas and also be free of advertising throughout the World Cup. I think the college football world could pull this off, but it may be tough to remove all branding, and don’t worry, the FIFA Brand Redactor can help.

For reference purposes, the peak requirement for each host city in relation to accommodations for the general public represents 20% of the stadium capacity. This number is then divided by two, based on the assumption that, on average, there will be double occupancy of guest rooms. Accordingly, the approximate minimum number of guest rooms required during peak time in each host city in relation to general accommodation is the following:

Now, I am not even getting into the part of how many four or five star hotels or airports they require, we’re just going based on hotel room numbers ONLY. Also, we’re not going to get into the required public transportation because this apparently has not really mattered for this World Cup going on right now. See Kansas City and others. Also, not even thinking about how many seats you’d have to rip out to make a field fit either.

Keep in mind the hotel rooms have to hit a capacity ratio determined by FIFA, which I am not doing all that math right now. There are World Cup games on right now.

All numbers were pulled from https://www.meetings-conventions.com/ and/or the cities tourism websites.

So there you have it, 46 College Football Stadiums and Cities (with 4 actually hosting this year) could potentially host World Cup games. This is before you had to please all the folks at FIFA and then bend over backwards to promise so many things before they even came to look at your city. Then look at 4-star and 5-star hotels and so many amenities, etc., etc. Maybe I will whittle this down further later to knock out some cities, but you could probably figure out which ones don’t have 5-star hotels yourself. 

Also, I counted Rutgers, Maryland, Stanford and Cal who can claim bigger cities nearby for hotel capacity. Would FIFA allow it? Who knows this is just a silly little hypothetical.

Charlottesville and Virginia were just short on hotel rooms by around 300-ish. So, they could build a hotel or two to get them there. . Additionally, New Orleans and Charlotte could host but not on the campuses of Tulane and Charlotte, respectively, you’d have to use the NFL Stadiums there.

The main point of this is that we COULD potentially have a World Cup hosted exclusively in college football stadiums and cities. It’s nice to dream about it.