and too many players are opting out of the games. The only real story is the final 4. This is why I think the committee will go to an 8 game playoff in the near future. Let's face it, when the attendance is down the spending is down, and the bottom line is, it is all about money. I know T.V. is paying the bills , but viewership is also down, which means it is harder to get sponsors who will pay for all the T.V. ads. Have a Great News Year.
The Bowls are becoming an afterthought. Attendance is really down
- Thread starter walleye38
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Have some Mad dog 20/20 and enjoy them.
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anon_is9z1n0h3zblb
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A good chunk of the bowls are owned by ESPN and are to fill programming in a slow December, especially between Xmas and New Years. They don't care about attendance.
This is what happens when you impleiment a mere fragment of a college football championship playoff plus we are a nation of wired couch potatoes.
But they'll care if companies decide to quit throwing their money away on what amounts to a bunch of glorified Spring games.
What teams like West Virginia and Michigan showed up with on the field, and the way Houston quit like a bunch of sissies against an athletically inferior team that decided to punch them in the mouth with some good, old time football, makes me wonder why I waste my time.
And as far as the fake Southern "Playoff" is concerned, when regular season NFL games get better television ratings, and both "semi-finals" get almost the same tv rating as the SEC Championship game, you may have already started to convince advertisers that the only people that give a sh!t about ESPN's linear owned SEC/ACC Network Beauty Contest are the big spenders that root from their trailers in places like Alabama and South Carolina.
The ancillary result of ESPN's rigged Beauty Contest is that it has started the trend to a very dangerous place for all of college football.
TV ratings drive this machine. They could replace expensive statium seating with tv screens of fans and pump in crowd noise from our homes (after all Corporate America eves drops on us 24-7 aready so the technology already exists). They would just have to develope expletive recognition and deletion software for the pumped in crowd noise from home..... or, perhaps not, as the combination of all the noises would sound just like crowd noise. Heck, they could even charge for us to have the opportunity to be a home crowd participant.... We are, after all, simple creatures that will spend money on anything related to sports. (tic) (I think).
You're right. "TV ratings drive this machine", which is why this "machine" is starting to trend downward. If you see a bunch of guys decide to sit out the Rose Bowl today, you'll see fans like me turn off their sets, which will make advertisers think twice about throwing their money away. If the players don't think a game like the Rose Bowl is important, neither will the fans.
I bet I could get 1,000,000 SEC fans every year to buy into my 'look at me fan-by God-avision' package for $100 a head for 6 meaningless bowl games. Pitt-Stanford may not work so well. You forget the advertisers .... advertise to the TV audience first and foremost... not the people in the stands.
In a watered down Bowl System, mostly just fans of their respective teams will really care and tune in. Me, I'll watch them all because I love football.
I guess this means you won't be watching the Citrus Bowl today.
I agree that there are too many bowls but I certainly don't think all but the playoff games are an afterthought. I've always thought there should be an 8 team playoff with 4 bowls in the 1st round which would be played on New Year's Day. The next 16 teams would play in 8 bowls that would be played between Christmas and New Year's Day. The top 24 teams would play in bowls. That would be a nice reward for a good season and I think 12 bowls would have a decent following.
Unfortunately the money supports a lot more. I think we now have 78 teams which is amazing. I guess the cable channels are willing to pay to cover these things but you are correct that a lot of seats are empty. Some of the bowls only pay $300k per team so I assume the school/conference is willing to subsidize them.
I thought the same thing when the PSU men's basketball team played in the Cancun Challenge. I watched the game and most high school games have better attendance. Worse yet, they have a woman's Cancun Challenge.
So far we have been lucky. But I guarantee you if we ever pull a West Virginia or a Houston, and lose to a team we should beat, this Board will melt down in a hurry. There's lots of people that won't be happy about us throwing a game.
“Becoming”?
No one has been going to most of these games for years.
They serve one primary purpose - - - provide (relatively) cheap programming filler for ESPN
Other than that? Not much.
1A) Give College Football Coaches and their staffs a reason to collect on a bonus for “making a bowl”
1B) Provide a nice, free Holiday Trip for bloated suit douchebags - - - The Barrons, Barbours, Cliffords, Dunhams, Sims, Guadagninos, of the land - and their entourages.
In the meantime..... a bunch of kids get to spend 3 more weeks practicing football in exchange for a Fossil Watch and an XBox.
And a free education. I know lots of kids in debt up their ears that would love that XBox and watch right now.
I just saw a video of the PSU players at Universal Studios. They said they've never been there and feel blessed. They're gettin a lot more than an x-box.“Becoming”?
No one has been going to most of these games for years.
They serve one primary purpose - - - provide (relatively) cheap programming filler for ESPN
Other than that? Not much.
1A) Give College Football Coaches and their staffs a reason to collect on a bonus for “making a bowl”
1B) Provide a nice, free Holiday Trip for bloated suit douchebags - - - The Barrons, Barbours, Cliffords, Dunhams, Sims, Guadagninos, of the land - and their entourages.
In the meantime..... a bunch of kids get to spend 3 more weeks practicing football in exchange for a Fossil Watch and an XBox.
The problem with the "bowls don't mean anything anymore" argument is that it suggests there was a time when all the bowls except one or two meant any more than it does today. I don't see it. The '87 Fiesta Bowl decided the MNC between PSU and Miami; no other team had a shot. How was that year's Sugar Bowl, (or Orange or Rose, etc.) any more meaningful than they are now? Sure there were a few years when, thanks to conference agreements with bowls, you could have teams with MNC claims playing in different bowls. Even then most of the bowls meant nothing beyond a better record and a trophy. As for players sitting out, by the "bowls don't mean anything" logic, one wonders why they kept playing after their team was eliminated from NC or conference championship contention. It's not like their regular season games mattered any more than the bowl; they don't.
That's not a bad thing. When the bowl games totally implode then there might actually be some reform. Perhaps a 16-team playoff.
30-some bowls. Mediocre teams. A lot of one-sided games. Why would anyone outside their fan bases care? The bowls used to mean something because there weren't very many of them. The Rose, of course, along with the Cotton, Sugar and one or two others was about it for years. It used to be you either won the Big Ten and went to the Rose Bowl or you didn't go bowling at all. I remember as a kid watching a Northwestern team in '62 that finished 7-2 and was actually No. 1 for a couple of weeks until injuries caught up with them. Didn't win the conference, so they sat home. Nowadays, they'd be a candidate for New Year's bowl.
I agree there are too many bowls, but that's been a problem for 30+ years. It doesn't bother me particularly because no one is forcing me to watch, but I'd be fine if they went down to about a dozen. My point was more on the downplaying of games like this year's Sugar, Rose, or Fiesta bowls because they don't impact the MNC. For the most part, it has always been a the case.
I honestly have no clue how some of the December bowls make any money whatsoever.
Semifinal ratings were down too so that hasn’t been the full drawing away. As far as expansion, the 3/4 seeds are 3-7 (and one of those was Alabama) in the semis and 5-8 seeds would obviously be far worse records. By the end of season there are 3 teams that legitimately can actually win the championship; this year there were two. It does underscore though that playoffs minimize the real college football - regular season and bowls to an extant. I think it’s silly to try to turn cf into a mini-NFL, it’s its own thing developed over 130 years.
It also doesn't help that the airlines raise airfare to gouging levels. I looked at flights to Orlando...$1,700 for 3 people not counting bags. And that's to fly a dump airline like Allegiant. No way i'm pay that nonsense.
I don't completely disagree with you, although I find the Rose is often one of the better bowls because it usually pits two actual conference champions against each other.
I watch few bowl games. Oversaturation and way, way too many commercials. Pretty much focus on Penn State games and ones where I hope for an upset over a team I dislike.
When Alabama plays, and i've noticed this the last 4 games, there are less commercials.
This isn't true. In 2016 there were at least 5. With a true playoff surprises will happen and I'll take the favorite winning outright for a decade for a rare chance of a lower seed winning instead of these awful bowl games.
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anon_is9z1n0h3zblb
Guest
Companies are getting their monies worth by the 4 hour commercial and all the mentions of Company X Bowl in print, web and every sports show/podcast that mentions the bowl game. There is no shortage of bowl or bowl sponsors .
But they won't be willing to pay as much for it if no one is watching.
"Ya. We'll sponsor your glorified lame Spring game with all the best players sitting out. But it's on OUR terms, not yours. "
59,000, fabs at the Citrus Bowl and my soar throat from yelling tell me that bowl games are fun and very relevant.
As long as these games keep getting better ratings then whatever else ESPN would be airing, which they do, they "make money" specially with the whole "the teams are on the hook for X thousand tickets" rules most of the bowls have.
For the most part these games, even the 6-6 Subbelt - MAC games, earn better ratings then December NBA and NCAAM Basketball games, thus ESPN is content.
For the most part these games, even the 6-6 Subbelt - MAC games, earn better ratings then December NBA and NCAAM Basketball games, thus ESPN is content.
I understand how you can confuse smart and cheap in this situation but stupidity is generally pretty easily identifiable. Congratulations for standing out
more bowls mean more teams in bowls. so more teams in bowls mean more teams in bowls year after year. so money to travel does come into play. going to a bowl game once every few years your team gets in is affordable, every year not so much. regular season tickets/parking continue to increase so again back to money and people only wanting to spend so much on football. if it cost another $500-$1000 to go see your team playing during the regular season, then less money to spend on a bowl. finally...money. plane tickets cost a lot more now than they did a few years ago. you used to be able to get to most places, especially florida really cheap, like $200 cheap. those tickets don't really exist much anymore so again, more money to see a bowl game then 10 years ago.
2019 Citrus Bowl attendance was around 59k with a max seating capacity of 65,000 at the Camping World Stadium. Both sides had very vocal fans at times.
SouthWest BWI to Orlando was just over $300 round trip when I bought them on the Sunday the bowls were announced. Was able to use airline points to buy 2 of the 3 seats we needed.
Agree. Way too many bowls. Remember when it was just Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Gator, Sun, Bluebonnet, Peach, Tangerine, Holiday, and Fiesta Bowl. And Conference champs went...
