Detroit will know in a couple of weeks if it will host the 2019 college football national championship game played at Ford Field.

“We are still tracking on a decision in early November — most likely on Nov. 4. All nine candidate communities that submitted responses back in late May remain in consideration,” said Michael Kelly, COO of the organization behind the title game, College Football Playoff, and former senior associate commissioner for the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Kelly was part of a contingent that toured Ford Field and Detroit in July as part of a series of trips to cities vying for 2018-20 college football national championship games.

The Detroit Lions and the nonprofit Detroit Sports Commission submitted a bid in May, and the title game’s executives looked at the 64,500-seat stadium and the downtown area to determine if the city and its facilities fit the game’s requirements.

The group organizing the title games, known as the College Football Playoff and run by Irving, Texas-based CFP Administration LLC, issued an RFP in March for cities to bid on those years, Dave Beachnau, executive director of the Detroit Sports Commission, told Crain’s in May.

Other cities bidding on some or all of the years up for grabs include Minneapolis; New Orleans; Atlanta; Miami; San Antonio; Charlotte, N.C.; Houston; and Santa Clara, Calif.

Detroit opted for 2019 because it was the only one of the three years that didn’t conflict with the media preview days for the annual North American International Auto Show at Cobo Center.

Detroit’s bid estimates it will cost $13 million to stage the national championship game. That cost, which could increase, includes travel, housing and renting different venues for the various events staged around the game, such as concerts and fan fests.

The sports commission hasn’t generated economic impact numbers, but last season’s game in January was estimated to have created $300 million in economic activity in and around Arlington, Texas, for Ohio State University’s 42-20 victory over the University of Oregon to win the inaugural title game in front of 85,689 fans at AT&T Stadium.

While it awaits a decision on its bid, Detroit’s sports commission began to organize a committee to oversee a possible championship game in Detroit. A chairman has not yet been selected.

Detroit’s winter weather isn’t expected to be a hindrance to its bid. Kelly said if winter weather was a fatal factor, the College Football Playoff would have noted that in its RFP.

If Detroit’s bid is successful, it would be host of the fifth championship game under the current format.

The 2016 game will be played at University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona and the 2017 game will be at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium.

Last season was the first year the NCAA held a four-team playoff and championship game for its large-school division.

Previously, the national championship game rotated among a group of bowl games and was based on polls for the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (which for many years was called Division I-A). Now, a 13-member committee selects and seeds the teams for the two semifinal bowl games, which contractually rotate among the Rose, Sugar, Peach, Cotton, Fiesta and Sugar bowls.

The national title game is played on the first Monday that is six days after the semifinal bowls. In 2019, that would be Jan. 7.

ESPN has a 12-year, $7.3 billion deal to air all of the semifinal and championship games.

The College Football Playoff organization is run by an 11-member board of managers who are university presidents and chancellors. It is not operated by the NCAA.

The nonprofit Detroit Sports Commission markets the city for amateur and college sporting events, acts as a go-between for media and corporate relations, and provides organizational services. The organization is a subsidiary of the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The Lions, who have a long-term contract to manage publicly owned Ford Field, are involved because of the team’s interest in college football. Last year, the Lions launched their first college bowl game, the Quick Lane Bowl, at the stadium. The game replaced the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, which had been run by separate organizers.