• New here? Register here now for access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Plus, stay connected and follow BP on Instagram @buckeyeplanet and Facebook.

NCAA committee approves 34 football bowl games

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
MililaniBuckeye;1176257; said:
That's exactly my point. "Way back when", in other words when I was a kid over 40 years ago, there were relatively few bowls and it was a really big deal to make one. There weren't shit bowls like the Motor City Bowl, Poulan Weedeater Bowl, etc. Still, even when there was a small expansion of bowl games, you still had to have a pretty good season to make one (10-2 or 9-3, finishing in the top two or three of your conference). Now, with the bowls now numbering 34, all you have to do is have a .500 season and you're a "bowl team". Fuck that.
Click to expand...
Still, the fans continue to show up. Over 90% capacity in places like Mobile, Boise, and Detroit. (And the Motor City Bowl is in an NFL stadium.)

People may say they want a playoff. But they're still voting with their feet and wallets and filling up stadiums to watch Bowling Green get steamrolled by Tulsa. And if one of the main arguments for a playoff is that "the fans want it" on bodies of evidence like unscientific online polls and letters to columnists, then it's specious to argue against extra bowls when the evidence is in the seats.
 
Upvote 0
HailToMichigan;1176417; said:
Still, the fans continue to show up. Over 90% capacity in places like Mobile, Boise, and Detroit. (And the Motor City Bowl is in an NFL stadium.)

People may say they want a playoff. But they're still voting with their feet and wallets and filling up stadiums to watch Bowling Green get steamrolled by Tulsa. And if one of the main arguments for a playoff is that "the fans want it" on bodies of evidence like unscientific online polls and letters to columnists, then it's specious to argue against extra bowls when the evidence is in the seats.
Click to expand...

The Bowl game in San Diego every year is pretty much free admission and still there's less than 30% of the place full. Even though the almighty matchup between TCU and Norther Illinois was so highly regarded. Seriously, they were giving tickets away if you spent 50 Bux at some stores.
 
Upvote 0
OCBucksFan;1176422; said:
The Bowl game in San Diego every year is pretty much free admission and still there's less than 30% of the place full. Even though the almighty matchup between TCU and Norther Illinois was so highly regarded. Seriously, they were giving tickets away if you spent 50 Bux at some stores.
Click to expand...
[insert comment about fairweather football so cal fans] :p
 
Upvote 0
HailToMichigan;1176417; said:
Still, the fans continue to show up. Over 90% capacity in places like Mobile, Boise, and Detroit. (And the Motor City Bowl is in an NFL stadium.)

People may say they want a playoff. But they're still voting with their feet and wallets and filling up stadiums to watch Bowling Green get steamrolled by Tulsa. And if one of the main arguments for a playoff is that "the fans want it" on bodies of evidence like unscientific online polls and letters to columnists, then it's specious to argue against extra bowls when the evidence is in the seats.
Click to expand...

How much are tickets to those games? Mobile and Boise don't exactly have cavernous stadiums. In fact, Boise's Bronco stadium holds only 30,000 while Mobile's Ladd-Peebles Stadium holds just over 40,600. The GMAC Bowl had 36,932 people in a 40,600-seat stadium, and the MPC Computer Bowl had 27,062 in a 30,000-seat stadium...having almost 10% of the seats empty for bowl games in venues that small hardly supports your case. And there probably ain't a whole lot else to do in Boise or Mobile (I've been to Mobile several times) that time of year. By the way, Ford Field (Motor City Bowl) seats 70,000 for football and had only 60,624 for this past game (which was their all-time high for that bowl), which is nowhere near 90% capacity.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
MililaniBuckeye;1176439; said:
How much are tickets to those games? Mobile and Boise don't exactly have cavernous stadiums. In fact, Boise's Bronco stadium holds only 30,000 while Mobile's Ladd-Peebles Stadium holds just over 40,600. The GMAC Bowl had 36,932 people in a 40,600-seat stadium, and the MPC Computer Bowl had 27,062 in a 30,000-seat stadium...having almost 10% of the seats empty for bowl games in venues that small hardly supports your case. And there probably ain't a whole lot else to do in Boise or Mobile (I've been to Mobile several times) that time of year. By the way, Ford Field (Motor City Bowl) seats 70,000 for football and had only 60,624 for this past game (which was their all-time high for that bowl), which is nowhere near 90% capacity.
Click to expand...
It only seats 70,000 for football when the game is the Super Bowl, because then the stadium is allowed to remove all the handicapped seating on the premise that the Super Bowl is a "private party". Normal capacity for a Lions game or for the bowl game is about 65,000.

I don't know what ticket prices are for most games....for the Motor City Bowl this year I think we paid $45 per ticket. It doesn't really matter - the point is that there's interest in the games. And yeah, the venues are small....but for the most part they are also thousands of miles from the (relatively small) fanbases.
 
Upvote 0
I suspect that when the NCAA decided to move the BCS games to later dates it was in anticipation of adding more bowls. I hate having to wait so long to watch the Buckeyes play. I am not looking forward to the day when the NCAA moves the National Championship game to the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday. The layoff would be tremendous for some teams and will probably result in sub-par performances by rusty players.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
HailToMichigan;1176482; said:
And yeah, the venues are small....but for the most part they are also thousands of miles from the (relatively small) fanbases.
Click to expand...

Purdue isn't a small fan base and they aren't thousands of miles from Detroit. You can try to spin it anyway you want, but when your biggest attendance percentages among all mid- and low-tier bowl games barely breaks 90%, it shows just how meaningless many of these bowls are.
 
Upvote 0
MililaniBuckeye;1176516; said:
Purdue isn't a small fan base and they aren't thousands of miles from Detroit. You can try to spin it anyway you want, but when your biggest attendance percentages among all mid- and low-tier bowl games barely breaks 90%, it shows just how meaningless many of these bowls are.
Click to expand...
Whether or not they're meaningless, they undeniably draw enough interest that the market for them wasn't saturated as of the '07 season. That's the point here. "Fans want a playoff" is at least one of the acceptable arguments for having one, but if that's the case, then more bowl games falls right in line.

Besides, 90% attendance is in many cases better than the showing at these teams' regular season games, which are cheaper, close to home, and closer to the opponent. Clearly there's something special about the bowl game.

And what makes them meaningless anyway? More money, exposure, and practice time for the program is not meaningless. On the flip side, what makes, say, the Cotton Bowl or even the Orange Bowl meaningful to a Bowling Green fan? What's the threshold for a meaningful game?
 
Upvote 0
HailToMichigan;1176526; said:
Whether or not they're meaningless, they undeniably draw enough interest that the market for them wasn't saturated as of the '07 season. That's the point here. "Fans want a playoff" is at least one of the acceptable arguments for having one, but if that's the case, then more bowl games falls right in line.
Click to expand...
Dude, playoffs and bowl games are two totally distinct things. Many fans want a playoff because they think the current BCS system sucks, that being they feel that the two best teams don't always play in the NC game. As for "interest", when you have a bowl game in a city of 4 million people and one of the teams is a Big Ten team from less than 200 miles away and you still can't sell it out, they ain't a whole lot of "interest". It may do well enough to barely turn a decent profit and earn the broadcasting media advertising revenue, but fan desire isn't the reason most bowl games exist.

HailToMichigan;1176526; said:
And what makes them meaningless anyway? More money, exposure, and practice time for the program is not meaningless. On the flip side, what makes, say, the Cotton Bowl or even the Orange Bowl meaningful to a Bowling Green fan? What's the threshold for a meaningful game?
Click to expand...
So, just because bowl games mean income and increased exposure for the participating teams the bowl games aren't meaningless? Well then why don't we just have a bowl game for every single team in I-A? If you can't discern the difference in meaning or value of the Rose Bowl versu the Toilet Bowl, then you have issues. You're probably one of those folks who see nothing wrong in participation medals and pre-school "graduations".
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top