College Playoff

[methomps]

Originally Posted by HailToMichigan

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]

Originally Posted by MililaniBuckeye

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]

Originally Posted by HailToMichigan

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]

Originally Posted by methomps

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]

Originally Posted by HailToMichigan

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]

Originally Posted by DaddyBigBucks

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.