The Stanford Daily put together a great article outlining one of the biggest non-playoff related problems with the BCS bowls*. Schools are required to sell a given number of tickets, and any unsold tickets must be paid for by the school. The schools have no ability to decide how many tickets they want to sell; that decision is up to the Bowl administrators. In the case of poor UConn, which got sent all the way to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl, those unsold tickets cost the school $1.7 million.
Ohio State (playing with five NCAA rules violators and a coach who covered it up) managed to make money, just under $300k. Other schools who gained profits from their trips? Wisconsin ($80k), Oklahoma ($9k) and Arkansas ($5k). Stanford “broke even” according to their AD, but as they and TCU are both private, they didn’t have to supply the figures for verification. The other money losers were Oregon ($300k), Virginia Tech ($400k) and Auburn ($600k).
The various school and conference heads may not be interested in switching to a playoff format, but they SHOULD be interested in telling the BCS bowls to take a hike on mandatory ticket sales. Schools should commit to an amount based on what they believe they can sell, not based on what the bowls tell them to sell. Going to one of these games is supposed to be a reward, not a financial burden.
*I am unaware of how the non-BCS bowls allocate tickets and whether schools are required to sell minimum amounts.
I took the liberty of changing “criminals” to “NCAA rules violators,” as I don’t believe there’s any allegation of criminal conduct by OSU’s players.
Now, criminal conduct by Fiesta Bowl officials is another story…
Non-BCS bowls have the same ticket requirements, perhaps on a smaller scale. San Diego Union Tribune article from December 2009 on the subject: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/17/tickets-guarantees-price-play/
Mike beat me to it. The big winners of the BCS system are the bowls (financially) and the teams/coaches/players (because so many teams get to play one more game, which the players like, and the teams get to practice for that game, which the coaches like). The viewers, the universities / athletic departments, and the fans all end up losers in the equation.
The viewers and fans are losers? How do you figure? Ratings for some of the lower tier bowl games beat out ratings for a couple of the elite 8/final 4 games this year. And fans? How do fans lose? Going to a bowl game is great for fans! Everytime I’ve been or talked to someone whose been they’ve had a good time, win or lose.
David, I’m comparing bowl ratings of what we have today in the BCS vs. what we would have in either the previous arrangement or in a playoff / bowl combo platter. As for the fans, for the specific people that attend bowl games, yes they have a good time, but overall attendance is weak — fewer fans are interested in traveling because the bowl games don’t mean as much anymore.
A playoff would make attendance worse, no way people are going to travel to multiple games over the holidays. UConn couldn’t even get a full compliment of fans to ONE game.
Every playoff scenario has early rounds played as home games of the higher seed. At some point, the games move to bowls, and then you finish with a national championship. Which one of those stages would be replete with empty seats?