College Playoff

[methomps]

One: Bowl attendance is much more a function of how close the fan bases are to the bowl than how good the team is. Several of the "crap bowls" had fantastic attendance.

- Motor City Bowl (7-5 Purdue vs. 8-5 Central Michigan)
- Texas Bowl (7-5 TCU vs. 8-4 Houston)
- Liberty Bowl (10-3 Central Florida vs. 7-5 Mississippi State)

Second- and third-tier teams that had marginal seasons and were rewarded with third-tier bowls. Yet each of them packed in over 60,000 people for the game. Proximity is absolutely crucial. The Las Vegas Bowl overstuffed the stadium for the same reason (a little over 40,000 in a stadium that seats 36,000). Wake Forest helped bring 53,000 people to Charlotte for the MCC Bowl. Proximity is the thing.

Two: I'm sure there are plenty of Ohio State fans to fill up a venue. Once. Not four times. You're in Hawaii. Would you travel from Hawaii to San Diego to Hawaii to Orlando to Hawaii to New Orleans to Hawaii to Phoenix? Would a fan in Columbus do the same? Not damn likely. There is no precedent anywhere that says fans can do this. Even in March Madness, there are only three destinations, and the first two do not sell out, and they are in 20,000 seat arenas, not 70,000 seat stadiums.

I can't find all the attendance figures from last year's March Madness, but it is not hard to do some extrapolations. The total attendance was listed at 696,992. Florida's two Final Four games were attended to the tune of 51,458 and 53,510 - let's just assume Ohio State fans traveled just as well, so a total Final Four attendance of 157,452. 539,540 divided by 61 (the remainder of the games) is a whopping 8,844. Eight thousand. I do know that Florida's Elite Eight game pulled in about 25,000, so that average is going even further down. Do you need further proof that multiple neutral-site games will be very poorly attended?

A large portion of fans don't need to travel to multiple sites to fill every stadium. There are many many fans right now who would go to bowl games but for the price of tickets. With greater supply, the ticket price will drop until it hits the sweet spot with demand.

NCAA basketball is really no comparison. Those arenas often look empty because people buy passes for the entire day and then only go to see their team's game. That is just one variable that frustrates the comparison.

 

[HailToMichigan]

Show me the attendance vs. capacity figures for those games...

With pleasure:

Motor City Bowl attendance: 60,624
Ford Field capacity: 65,000

Texas Bowl attendance: 62,097
Reliant Stadium capacity: 71,500

Liberty Bowl attendance: 63,816
LB Memorial Stadium capacity: 62,380

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

With pleasure:

Motor City Bowl attendance: 60,624
Ford Field capacity: 65,000

Texas Bowl attendance: 62,097
Reliant Stadium capacity: 71,500

Liberty Bowl attendance: 63,816
LB Memorial Stadium capacity: 62,380

So where's that SEC speed now???


EDIT: originally multi-quoted with Nutria's post, but he relocated his temporarily missing SEC-speed and deleted his post before I finished typing.

 

[HailToMichigan]

NCAA basketball is really no comparison. Those arenas often look empty because people buy passes for the entire day and then only go to see their team's game. That is just one variable that frustrates the comparison.

That's not really relevant - paid attendance is what's always listed, not actual attendance, and paid attendance is always higher. That would make my figure of 8,844 per game the paid attendance. Still not even half-sold-out in the 20,000 seat arena.

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

That's not really relevant - paid attendance is what's always listed, not actual attendance, and paid attendance is always higher. That would make my figure of 8,844 per game the paid attendance. Still not even half-sold-out in the 20,000 seat arena.

And the acres of unsold seats in most bowls are better than that... how?

 

[Nutriaitch]

So where's that SEC speed now???

I must be spending too much time big y'all Big Ten fellers.

 

[HailToMichigan]

Acres of empty seats? By my count, the top 15 bowls* had 93.1% attendance.

Another factor to consider: Bowl game selections are made by a committee interested in just one thing: Cramming as many butts into seats as they can. Therefore the teams are chosen based on how many people they'll bring, making attendance high. The Peach Bowl, for example, should have selected Boston College over Clemson based on deserving teams. They selected Clemson, because the school is just two hours away, and stuffed the joint to the gills. A playoff would seed teams with little regard to travel concerns for the fans. The Peach Bowl would not have been sold out if Boston College had gone.

I am willing to bet that the Sweet Sixteen did not make it to 93% attendance. Further, the Sweet Sixteen is played over just two weekends, whereas the football would have to be done over four, further stretching the attendance problems.

To me, all this is an absolute mountain of evidence that a football playoff spread over neutral sites will be poorly attended. A playoff is only workable if played at home sites.

*I have made a butt-ton of assumptions for this. A 16-team playoff using neutral sites would use 15 bowls. I picked 15 using the "prestige" of the teams in them: Title game, Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange, Citrus, Peach, Sun, Gator, Cotton, Music City, C****s S****s, Alamo, Holiday, O*****k. All games played entirely between BCS-conference teams, with the exception of the Sugar. I can't find the Fiesta attendance figure, so I assumed 3/4 of the stadium. And I assumed that the title game will sell out.

Edit: Also, the lower-tier bowls will be the lower-tier bowls, playoff or no playoff. These are the bowls that a playoff would use.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

With pleasure:

Motor City Bowl attendance: 60,624
Ford Field capacity: 65,000

Texas Bowl attendance: 62,097
Reliant Stadium capacity: 71,500

Liberty Bowl attendance: 63,816
LB Memorial Stadium capacity: 62,380

Motor City Bowl: 93% of capacity
Texas Bowl: 87% of capacity
Liberty Bowl: 102% of capacity

The Liberty Bowl is impressive, but The Motor City Bowl is just good and the Texas Bowl is just so-so for a bowl game featuring two teams from the same state in which the bowl is located. Now, if it were Texas and Texas A&M playing in the Texas Bowl, you seriously think there'd be only 62,000 people there? Didn't think so. Or Michigan vs. Notre Dame in the Motor City Bowl there would be only 60,000 people? While the relatively short travel distance may have allowed the lower-tier teams to bring in more fans than if the travel distance was significant, distance has show to not be a real factor when the big boys play (witness the Ohio State-Notre Dame 2006 Fiesta Bowl). Oh, yeah, the MCB had a Big Ten team in it (Purdue) and still was 4,500 short of capacity.

Here's some games that disprove your claim that distance is the biggest factor in bowl attendance:

New Mexico Bowl (New Mexico vs. Nevada, at University Stadium, Albuquerque, NM)
Capacity - 37,700
Attendance - 30,223

The bowl game was fucking played on New Mexico's home field and they still had 7,500 empty seats (20% of the stadium empty). Small programs bring small groups of fans.


Las Vegas Bowl (UCLA vs. BYU at Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas, NV)
Capacity - 40,000
Attendance - 40,712

Over capacity despite the teams being 6 and 8 hours away by car respectively. Bigger programs bring more fans.

Alamo Bowl (Penn State vs. Texas A&M at Alamodome, San Antonio, TX)
Capacity - 65,000
Attendance - 66,166

102% capacity despite PSU being over 1,600 miles away.

Sun Bowl (Oregon vs. UCF at Sun Bowl, El Paso, TX)
Capacity - 51,500
Attendance - 49,867

97% capacity--way better than both the Motor City Bowl and Texas Bowl--despite both teams being about as far from San Antonio as they could be.

 

[HailToMichigan]

Motor City Bowl: 93% of capacity
Texas Bowl: 87% of capacity
Liberty Bowl: 102% of capacity

The Liberty Bowl is impressive, but The Motor City Bowl is just good and the Texas Bowl is just so-so for a bowl game featuring two teams from the same state in which the bowl is located. Now, if it were Texas and Texas A&M playing in the Texas Bowl, you seriously think there'd be only 62,000 people there? Didn't think so. Or Michigan vs. Notre Dame in the Motor City Bowl there would be only 60,000 people? While the relatively short travel distance may have allowed the lower-tier teams to bring in more fans than if the travel distance was significant, distance has show to not be a real factor when the big boys play (witness the Ohio State-Notre Dame 2006 Fiesta Bowl). Oh, yeah, the MCB had a Big Ten team in it (Purdue) and still was 4,500 short of capacity.

Agreed - that it's not totally a function of proximity. I just said proximity had more to do with it. Of course Texas A&M would have been a bigger draw to the Texas Bowl than TCU, but take a look at last year's Texas Bowl. 10,000 fewer people for #12 Rutgers vs. Kansas State. Hometown teams, bigger crowd.

Same for the Motor City Bowl. Record number this year. Last year was also a record crowd at 54,113 - and again, CMU played in the game. Typically the Motor City Bowl brings in about 44,000 for teams like Cincinnati, Bowling Green, and Toledo - schools whose fanbases are close but not literally in Detroit like CMU's is.

On the flip side, the Gator Bowl attracted 7,000 more people last year for Georgia Tech vs. West Virginia. Same caliber teams, only they were closer to Jacksonville.

 

[CookyPuss]

I'm not sure why you guys are spending so much time arguing about ticket sales. Corporate sponsorship and tv deals are where the big money comes from.

 

[HailToMichigan]

I'm not sure why you guys are spending so much time arguing about ticket sales. Corporate sponsorship and tv deals are where the big money comes from.

Well, I don't know that there's much of a difference. The Peach Bowl sold its soul for $22 million over 5 years. (Link.)

That's $4.4 million a year. I don't know what ticket prices were, but $50 a pop sounds about right. (That's what the cheap price was for both MC Bowl and Gator Bowl tix was. So there's definitely seats that cost more than that.) So ticket sales brought in at least $3.7 million. If fans spent an average of $20 each on concessions, programs, promotional shit, etc. that's an extra $1.5 million or so, boosting the take from fans to $5.2 million....minimum.

So it's crucial to get the attendance, being that ticket sales probably do make more money for the bowls than the sponsorship, if the stadium is at least 3/4 full.

 

[CookyPuss]

So it's crucial to get the attendance, being that ticket sales probably do make more money for the bowls than the sponsorship, if the stadium is at least 3/4 full.

I'd say it's the opposite. With the guaranteed money from the sponsorship and tv, anything over 3/4 full is icing on the cake. They basically will turn a profit if the stadium is half full. My point is that ticket sales is one of the least important factors in the whole playoff vs. bowls argument.

 

[Nutriaitch]

So it's crucial to get the attendance,

Which is exactly why they didn't take Boston College.There was an article about it on ESPN around the Bowl Selection time. The ACC Championship was a joke from an attendance standpoint, so it REALLY hurt the losers rep as far as how well they travel.

 

[HailToMichigan]

Which is exactly why they didn't take Boston College.There was an article about it on ESPN around the Bowl Selection time. The ACC Championship was a joke from an attendance standpoint, so it REALLY hurt the losers rep as far as how well they travel.

Agreed - that was shitty. Another reason why the early rounds of playoffs wouldn't be well-attended.

In the interest of full disclosure, it's been pointed out that the SEC and Big 12 championships were well-attended and more useful as a playoff comparison since they had a direct bearing on who went to the title game. Still, the Orange Bowl is no small potatoes, and even further away than Jax is, and I believe both fanbases were holding onto their money anticipating a trip to Miami. Hell, BC's folks traveled better to Orlando for their bowl game - and the same is definitely true for VT.

On the other hand, that empty stadium, I believe, is first and foremost a reflection on two things: 1) why having the game in Jacksonville is dumb, and 2) BC will not travel well anywhere because they're a small school tucked away in a corner of both the country and the conference. Atlanta and San Antonio are geographically closer to the majority of those conferences than Jacksonville is for the ACC. The ACC title game needs to be in Charlotte for maximum attendance.

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

...The ACC title game needs to be in Charlotte for maximum attendance.

I can't believe I'm about to defend the ACC, but...


In their defense, I don't think they foresaw the imminent, overwhelming suckitude of both FSU and Miami when the chose the conference championship game site.