[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.