Posted on 10/07/2017 9:58:39 PM PDT by 11th_VA
JANUARY 4, 2017 —Fans in the stands at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans Jan. 2 might have wondered where everybody went.
The announced crowd of 54,077 fell far short of the seating capacity of the cavernous Mercedes-Benz Superdome, which holds more than 76,000. Vast swaths of seats sat empty. The attendance figure was the lowest for the Sugar Bowl since 1939.
But it was hardly alone. The Camping World Independence Bowl, held each year in Shreveport, La., brought just under 29,000 fans through its turnstiles, its worst attendance since 1988. The Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic in Arlington, Texas, drew a respectable 59,615, but that was the lowest number since 1998. The TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla., counted 43,102 occupied seats, the fewest for that event since 1958.
And it wasn’t just bowl games. For the sixth consecutive season attendance at regular season major college football games dropped as well, down about 7 percent since its peak in 2008, according to an analysis by CBS Sports.
Declining interest in college football would come as a big surprise to fans of the University of Alabama and Clemson University, whose teams will clash in a sold-out, nationally televised championship game Jan. 9. But the national championship playoffs themselves, which involve only three of the more than 40 bowl games played from mid-December into January (two semifinal games and a championship game), may be part of the problem: They turn the other bowl games into essentially meaningless exhibitions, except to their most ardent fans.
Many traditional football powerhouse schools have seen no decline in attendance. But other teams in major conferences have. Attendance at University of Missouri games was down 20 percent compared with 2015, for example; at Minnesota, it was down 16 percent; and at Kentucky and Stanford 12 percent...
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The problem with the playoffs is now it’s “Playoffs or Bust”, and once a team in out of the running, nobody cares.
It used to be winning your Conference Championship alone made for a great season, but now that’s not enough. Plus the sense that it’s always going to be the same teams every year, it’s just a matter of who Bama gets to play in the Championship Game.
Meanwhile, they are stripping away the traditions that made College Football great.
Overexposure was already a problem, even before the kneeling.
I know I am in the minority, but I am totally opposed to playoffs for a college football national championship.
Each of the post-season bowl games has its own traditions and pageantry. Don’t turn them into mere playoffs. Let pollsters, statisticians and sports journalists contend over which team deserves to be the national champion.
I’m wondering what effect Las Vegas will have as well - large crowd events are becoming more dangerous ...
Too many post season bowls.
>>The down side of diversity ... I have a feeling these colleges don’t have a clue ... good news for those wishing the demise of NFL football though !!! <<
Agreed. Just look at what entailed at the University of Missouri — a big drop-off in the fan base.
There are a total of 39 different bowls....the vast majority for teams with marginal win records. I think when there were just six to eight bowls...people had more interest. Did anyone really care about last year’s Las Vegas Bowl (Houston vs San Diego State)?
Without playoffs it has become a question of which SEC teams will be chosen—as you point out—to play in the “championship game”.
Until conference champs play one another, the NCAA football national championship game is a joke.
Number have bowls have doubled over the past 20 years thanks to ESPN writing the checks.
Money is running out though.
3-4 conferences are worth watching. I sat move them to Sunday and to hell with the NFL.
Schools actually lose money on going to the lesser bowl games taking into considering the costs of moving the team/band, etc. for the game.
NO more concussions after age 22.
Coaches and players get the extra weeks of practice for them that they otherwise wouldn’t be eligible.
Those pre-Christmas bowls are for the diehards.
Since most of the bowls now have corporate sponsors, as well as the big contracts from the networks, the organizers could care less if they played in front of 5 people or 50,000 people. I'm sure that they still get their cash.
In all likelihood, the organizers prefer the smaller live crowds, saves on overhead of personnel required to feed and secure us unwashed masses.
Most non-p5 do. But the P5’s usually have a distribution of funds for the bowls. A certain amount of every bowl game goes to the conference and member schools. So let’s say the Sugar pay out is 15 mill. 10 mill goes to the SEC of which the sec keeps a mil for itself and then the rest goes into a pool that gets added up with the other games and then split equally. So Oklahoma would get 5 Million+its bowl share from the other games. I am pulling numbers out of my but and I am not certain how every conference does it but that’s been the standard practice for conferences for awhile.
No way. Yeah the bowls exposure is there pay off for the sponsors but the cities want people to come and stay at hotels, eat their restaurants etc. Plus watching a game with hardly any fans is boring TV IMO.
I agree with you. Way too many bowls and they aren’t cheap either.
A few weeks ago Pitt was getting thrashed at home by Oklahoma. To keep the Heinz Field from emptying at halftime, they offered a free coke to anyone still there at the end of the game. Pretty comical really. some fans took a power nap the second half.
I never heard of the TaxSlayer Bowl growing up.
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