Going the Extra Yard for Teachers

Leveraging the reach of the College Football Playoff National Championship to celebrate and empower educators

In 2015, college football’s annual championship game moved away from the BCS Bowl Game to a brand-new playoff model: The College Football Playoff National Championship.

The board of directors of the newly minted championship game allocated the proceeds of its merchandise sales to fund the College Football Playoff Foundation (CFPF): an entity dedicated to elevating the teaching profession by inspiring and empowering educators.

As the CFPF considered its first steps, the leadership team approached Ensemble to ideate, strategize, and build a signature event to celebrate educators in the host cities where the National Championship Game would be played each year.  The evolution of those conversations led to the creation of the Extra Yard for Teachers Summit.

The Summit has evolved from market to market, from TED-styled talks, to serving as a community hub for teachers and their families, to celebration, and more. In six years, we reached more than 6,500 teachers across Dallas (2015), Phoenix (2016), Tampa (2017) Atlanta (2018), San Jose, CA (2019), and New Orleans (2020) – and thousands more with online content posted from the conferences. We’ve worked with hundreds of speakers, entertainers, artists, and community partners to build out programming to make the teachers the real winners of the CFP National Championship Game weekend. 

At the Summit, we’ve flash-funded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of DonorsChoose.org teacher projects, facilitated classroom makeovers, helped connect teachers to down payments on homes, produced music videos, and had so much fun along the way!

SCOPE OF WORK

Event Concept and Execution

Speaker Curation and Program Development

Stage and Production Management

Video Production

Graphic Design Management

Sponsor/Partner Benefit Fulfillment