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If college football is so popular, where are the fans?
Christian Science Monitor ^ | Jan 4, 2017 | By the Monitor’s Editorial Board

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: athletics; campingworld; collegefootball; football; minorleaguefootball; sports
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To: Fiji Hill

I’m with you. I think the playoffs ruined College football.


21 posted on 10/08/2017 2:04:20 AM PDT by Cowboy Bob
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To: Cowboy Bob

It’s a new variant of the Everything Is For Sale Bowl.


22 posted on 10/08/2017 2:34:50 AM PDT by Mmmike
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To: lee martell

Overexposure is a problem.

I think it was about twenty years ago I read that there were 122 teams in division IIA and 29 bowl games that year.

I have hardly watched any college ball the last five years and stopped watching NFL probably seven years ago.


23 posted on 10/08/2017 2:48:35 AM PDT by x1stcav (We have the guns. Do we have the will?)
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To: Cowboy Bob

It used to be the Gator Bowl, I believe.


24 posted on 10/08/2017 3:07:52 AM PDT by BwanaNdege ("The church ... is not the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience" - Luther)
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To: dfwgator

Good points. Comparisons of attendance figures at bowl games over time don’t really make sense. For one thing, you had to be a conference champion just to get invited to some of these bowl games (SEC for Sugar Bowl, Big 10 and Pac 10’for Rose Bowl, etc.). Secondly, you have so many stupid bowl games these days that it seems like every Division I team with six wins gets invited to one.


25 posted on 10/08/2017 3:31:01 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("Tell them to stand!" -- President Trump, 9/23/2017)
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To: 11th_VA

Missouri alums don’t want to watch snowflakes who might boycott practice. They are poorly coached because no decent coach would go there after the protests.


26 posted on 10/08/2017 3:38:23 AM PDT by nonliberal (Sent from a payphone in a whorehouse in Mexico)
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To: lee martell

The bowls are a scam. The schools are FORCED to buy the tickets. The only reason college teams go to the lower tier bowls is it allows them 6 extra weeks of practice and they get ahead for next year.


27 posted on 10/08/2017 3:42:39 AM PDT by personalaccts (Is George W going to protect the border?)
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To: 11th_VA

They are expensive, game tickets, airfare, hotels, food plus just things in general when you are there gets pricey quick. Then depending on where you go, you are surrounded by obnoxious drunk foul mouthed people, ruins the experience.


28 posted on 10/08/2017 4:19:06 AM PDT by TexasM1A
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To: ssaftler

No, they want every last buck. Also when they pan the crowd they want to show advertisers (not sponsors) this is a popular game.


29 posted on 10/08/2017 4:50:43 AM PDT by scrabblehack
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To: Cowboy Bob

The reason they went to playoffs is that TV ratings were declining...I think the playoffs helped for a couple of years but now they can’t raise the ante.


30 posted on 10/08/2017 4:53:10 AM PDT by scrabblehack
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To: DIRTYSECRET

But the students have class the next day!....

/sarc


31 posted on 10/08/2017 5:00:44 AM PDT by fishtank (The denial of original sin is the root of liberalism.)
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To: Cowboy Bob

If in Jax then it’s orobably the Gator Bowl successor

Which used to be one of the few bowls in the Sixties


32 posted on 10/08/2017 5:03:41 AM PDT by A_Former_Democrat ("I am SpartaLee" Hey, NFL, why didn't you any of you bold guys hire Kaepernick? #GoodbyeGoodell)
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To: Snickering Hound
Too many post season bowls.

Bingo -- We have a winner. Hard to get excited about an 8 and 5 team playing a 7 and 6 team unless you have some connection to the college, and even then... Slash the number of bowl games in half and stop rewarding mediocrity and attendance will roar back.

33 posted on 10/08/2017 5:08:27 AM PDT by Labyrinthos
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To: pepsionice

Most of the bowl games are for strictly for entertainment value as to serve as the last chance to get the football fix before the only thing left is the NFL playoffs.


34 posted on 10/08/2017 5:12:42 AM PDT by mazda77
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To: 11th_VA

I suspect it is because there are too many bowls and the number seems to grow each year..

Are there any sum totals of all bowls, year by year, to compare?


35 posted on 10/08/2017 5:20:40 AM PDT by elpadre (AfganistaMr Obama said theoal was to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-hereQaeda" and its allies.)
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To: pepsionice
You might enjoy this..
Bowl games ranked by the absurdity of the names and sponsors.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/12/ranking-all-40-bowl-games-by-the-absurdity-of-its.html
36 posted on 10/08/2017 5:24:23 AM PDT by Waverunner (I'd like to welcome our new overlords, say hello to my little friend)
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To: 11th_VA

Anything associated with Camping World will be ignored by our household.


37 posted on 10/08/2017 5:26:05 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
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To: 11th_VA

I happened to catch a half-time Temple University advertisement for the school.

They bragged that one of the great attributes of the university was that it was teaching the students to advocate “social change”.

Yup—a change is coming—and they are not going to like it.


38 posted on 10/08/2017 5:30:28 AM PDT by cgbg (Hidden behind the social justice warrior mask is corruption and sexual deviance.)
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To: dfwgator

Bingo.


39 posted on 10/08/2017 5:35:24 AM PDT by Mr. Lucky
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To: Mr. Lucky

Kutztown and Villanova bump


40 posted on 10/08/2017 5:42:08 AM PDT by foreverfree
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