Turk, I agree with your post, and I live in the area.
Independent of the specific location, I hate the BCS playoff system, and much preferred college football focused on conference championships and regional rivalries with intersectional arguments settled occasionally through non conference games and sometimes by serendipity when 2 highly regarded teams were able to meet in a bowl. This sense of chance made a number of Bowl games memorable. The BCS is designed to create a media event that looks like the little brother of the super bowl, this year complete with a commercially hyped halftime show.
All that aside,
picking Santa Clara as the site is awful. While the stadium has amenities (shopping opportunities, high end concessions!) it is isolated, exposed to wind and sun, and built in a way that many of the seats seem miles from the field. The Bay Area is hard to get to and expensive to stay in, ensuring that many real fans are priced out of attending. It is a cold, sterile, corporate idea of what a football stadium and football game should be. The stadium have a huge number of corporate suites for entertaining customers and that, combined with the shopping mall aspects make it the epitome of what the BCS Championship Game is: a manufactured attempt to mimic the Super Bowl so media rights can be sold and dollars made by the NCAA.
