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In marathon terms, right now we’re nearly at mile 21. With a little more than five to go, your body is going to do one of three things: break down and refuse to continue, blister and slow your pace from an 8.5-second mile to an agonizing stroll, or find a second wind that will carry you gratefully over the finish line.
Thirty-one college football bowl games down, four to go. The fresh workout of the NFL Playoffs leading to Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis beckons. From fans to college administrators, bowl sponsors to ESPN’s weary College GameDay crew, I think we’re all ready to move on. Except, of course, for those SEC nuts gearing up for Monday’s Allstate BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans between the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University—and the biggest days-long party this side of Mardi Gras.
Let the schools rake in their bowl takes. Let the coaches collect their postseason bonuses. For better or worse, let these four remaining bowl games begin.
Bowl Number Crunchers Pin Their Hopes on Monday and Beyond
West Virginia’s 70-33 win over Clemson in Wednesday night’s Orange Bowl was the biggest blowout in Bowl Championship Series history. It was also one of its worst ratings duds. Nielsen indicated the game’s ratings were down 46 percent from the comparable bowl game last year. Despite dramatic Rose and Fiesta Bowls this past Monday, in fact, ratings through four BCS games this year are down 13 percent from a year ago.
Bowl attendance this season has fared even worse. While Orange Bowl attendance increased slightly from last year, seats on StubHub.com were “selling for as little as $11” the afternoon of the game, according to the Miami Herald, while 50-yard-line seats could be had for less than $300 on the Orange Bowl website’s ticket resale board. The night before, the announced crowd of 64,512 at New Orleans’ Mercedes-Benz Superdome for the Allstate Sugar Bowl was nearly 12,000 seats short of capacity, highly unusual for a Sugar Bowl game.
A full dozen college bowl games were played this season before one sold out—the Champs Sports Bowl on Dec. 29. Overall, total attendance for the 29 bowl games prior to the Sugar Bowl is “nearly 2 percent lower this season than it was last season,” as reported by USA Today, and average bowl attendance for the season will likely “fall below 51,000 for only the second time since 1979.”
What to blame—the economy, the matchups, or the BCS calendar, which scheduled all four of its bowl games on the new year’s first few back-to-work-and-school days? Or the ever-mounting pressure on schools to sell out their ticket allotments and make the whole bowl endeavor less of a financial black hole than it actually is? While it’s undoubtedly a confluence of factors, you can bet good money on one thing: We’ll not see any fewer bowl games played in the near future. Until they start losing serious money for the likes of ESPN and CBS, the games are here to stay.
The glimmering light at the end of the bowl tunnel this year, of course, emanates from New Orleans, where Mercedes-Benz Superdome operators and local merchants have much to be hopeful about in the new year. Not only is the BCS National Championship game and its average secondary ticket price of almost $2,000 back in their laps, the facility and its environs can also look forward to hosting the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Final Four in the spring and Super Bowl XLVII next year. For now, the Superdome and the city prepare to welcome the hard-partying fans of Alabama and nearby LSU. “This is going to be comparable to a Super Bowl, or even bigger,” longtime New Orleans resident and Sugar Bowl committee member Ronnie Burns told CBS, alluding not only to game attendees but also to the 100,000 fans expected to show up in the French Quarter just to be part of it all. The economic impact of hosting two BCS games in seven days is expected to reach $400 million, an important marker for a city that hasn’t yet gotten over Hurricane Katrina.
