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Officials apologize for long lines outside college football championship game

Some fans who attended the College Football Playoff National Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Monday night voiced their frustration over the security lines to get into the stadium.

“It’s just been a cluster,” fan Everett Stubbs said.

People said they waited in line for 90 minutes to get in to see the game they paid thousands of dollars to attend.

"This line is, like, a mile long to get in. I don't understand it. Same number of people coming to this that were coming to the SEC championship. Why can't we get in?" fan Lara Long said.

College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock said it was a perfect storm of thousands of fans showing up at the same time as President Donald Trump.

"I'm very sorry. When you have a president visit, security trumps everything, so to speak, and we're just very sorry that people were inconvenienced," Hancock said.

Unlike other big games, the Secret Service ran the security show, cranking up the sensitivity on metal detectors, among other things.

"The Secret Service people are very professional. They were good to work with, but there were some curveballs that we did not anticipate," Hancock said.

One of those curveballs was a nearly hourlong closure of one of the stadium's main gates before and during President Trump's arrival that sent stadium leaders scrambling.

"In real time, we were looking at it, saying, 'OK. Here's what we can do now. Boy I wish maybe we did this differently,'" said Mercedes-Benz Stadium general manager Scott Jenkins.

Jenkins said stadium officials will work to make sure it doesn't happen again.

"We'll learn and make some adjustments next time, but we really are dependent on the Secret Service and how they want to manage the president's arrival, so if it happens again, next time we will certainly be reminding them of the impacts it has to our guests," he said.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service sent the following statement.

"(The agency) created a screening plan that was reflective of presidential-level security for the college football championship game. By kickoff, all fans who'd arrived with enough time to allow for screening were inside the venue."

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