Will Travel for College Football

Chris, our friends and I are big college football fans. Unfortunately, our alma mater has never had a football team (AU: still undefeated in football!), so Saturdays in the Fall has always been spent in front of the TV. However, in the past few years, we have been trying to travel to a different college football game each month throughout the season.

This year our plan is to hit up three or four different games:

Today, we went to University of Maryland vs. University of Connecticut  (Go Huskies!)

October – Penn State vs. Northwestern @ Penn State

November – North Carolina vs Georgia Tech @ North Carolina

December – Division 3 Football Championship (Salam, Va – always been my dream!)

The problem of traveling to these football games is that most times, we need to purchase hotel rooms to stay at and hotels near football stadiums are not cheap. For example, for our Penn State weekend, one of the only places available near State College was the Country Inn & Suites. The cost per night was $399 or 44,000 Club Carlson points. My friend asked, “why do you have these points if you aren’t going to use them?” Far point, but would you spend 44,000 points on the Country Inn & Suite in State College, PA:

or the Radisson Acqua Hotel & Spa Concon, Chile:

or Radisson Blu, Dakar, Senegal:

The Radisson Acqua Hotel & Spa Concon and Radisson Blu, Dakar, both charged between $350 to $375 USD a night. Therefore, the point per dollar value favors Country Inn & Suite, State College slightly. This brings up a big question, is point per dollar really the right mechanism to determine value. I think its a personal choice. For me, I think point per dollar is overrated. If the Country Inn & Suites is your only option, then spending 44,000 points is a great value. However, for that particular weekend, we will stay at a hotel further away from the State College and pay $200 a night, a much better value.

Oh, the final score of the game today:

Go Huskies! Oh, Maryland, you can keep Coach Edsall, we don't need him any more!