[Husker] End of the Season

[Mike Jaixen]

There's much more money in this if you play these
playoff games at campus sites instead of in bowl
games.  First of all, if you look at the capacities of
college stadiums, they are usually much more than the
bowl stadiums.

Ohio State   101,568
LSU           92,400
Va Tech       66,233
Oklahoma      82,112
Georgia       92,746
Missouri      68,349
USC           92,000
Kansas        50,250

Rose Bowl     92,542
SuperDome     69,703
Miami Stadium 76,500 
Phoenix Stad. 73,719

When you consider some of the other traditional powers
not on this list (Michigan, Tennessee, and Penn State
all have capacities near 110K, Florida over 90K,
Nebraska and Texas over 85K), the extra attendance at
each game could add up to another $1 million or more
in revenue.  In the case of Kansas, they might look to
move the game to Kansas City and Arrowhead if they
thought they could sell the extra 30,000 tickets,
especially if it meant another $3 million in revenue.

Then, start questioning the commitment of fans to
travel to three games at last minute, holiday
airfares.  A USC game at the Rose Bowl won't have any
problem selling out, much like an LSU game at the
Superdome.  Those are easy drives.

The NCAA basketball tournament survives at neutral
sites because of the event itself; local fans buy the
tickets with no knowledge as to who is playing.  The
Omaha games for this year's tournament are already
sold out, for example, with only a few hundred tickets
held back for fans of each team.  That model simply
isn't going to scale for a college football playoff
system.

The bowl system works because fans have weeks to work
out travel plans and make a nice vacation out of it. 
Multiply the number of trips fans have to make and
signifcantly reduce the timeframes to make plans, and
it folds faster than Cosgrove's pass defense.


--- jon johnston <jon.johnston at gmail.com> wrote:

> Don, thanks for posting. It's good to have more
> voices. I have one  
> HUGE problem with playoff scenarios. They tend to
> placate the bowls by  
> keeping them in place.
> 
> So.... think about *your* team in that playoff. In
> consecutive weeks,  
> Nebraska would have to play at the Sugar bowl, then
> at the Rose bowl,  
> and then at the Fiesta bowl or the Orange Bowl to
> win a championship.
> 
> In other words, three road games that are basically
> home games for the  
> Florida schools, the SEC, and the Pac-10. That would
> be nearly  
> impossible, and as an alum of a cold-weather school,
> I'd rather start  
> the riot by lighting the torches than have that
> happen.
> 
> People complain that Div IAA, Div II and Div III all
> have playoff  
> systems, but those levels all play on a home-field
> advantage basis.
> 
> We've have 100 years of cold-weather schools going
> South and playing  
> those teams in their home environments. If we're
> going to tear college  
> football apart, then let's see Miami, Georgia, or
> LSU come up to Ann  
> Arbor or Columbus, Ohio and win a game in December
> or January.
> 
> This won't happen. There's too many people getting
> rich off the bowls.  
> There's too many college presidents who love taking
> their families,  
> buddies, and servants on a paid-for vacation to warm
> weather areas for  
> any of this to change.


Mike Jaixen
Blog: http://huskermike.blogspot.com


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