Empty Seats Logic
Tuesday, March 27, 2007 at 01:02PM An email from the always watchful Burrill Strong:
While I was watching the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament, I couldn't help but notice how many empty seats there were. And I couldn't help but think of the complaint from some playoff proponents about the low-level football bowl games that don't sell every available ticket, and how playoffs would solve that "problem".
I'm not sure how valid that thought is, but I really couldn't help thinking wait, I'm seeing way too many empty seats in the first round of what is supposed to be the Amazingly Thrilling and Popular Playoffs.
Yep, Kevin Durant couldn't even draw a full house in lovely Spokane.
Fans are a huge part of the game in both college basketball and college football. The obvious drawback about the postseason for both is the removal of the student sections to make room for first-come seating for whoever ponies up the cash to be there. The difference happens to be that in college football the fans generally continue to show up and make noise at bowl games and create a festive atmosphere whereas that just dies in the basketball tournament in front of half-empty arenas.
The NCAA tournament becomes a television event, where college football bowls have maintained an in-person connection to the fans in spite of the draw of television. I think that's due, in part, to the fact that we believe the bowls to be a part of our season. They have credibility with the fans and they still want to make the trips to follow the teams (at least with the more name-brand bowls) where there's a certain numbness and disconnect to college basketball's postseason with the fans. It's no longer in their control and they sit idly by at home filling out brackets and chewing their nails hoping their team advances but having no other stake in the affair. They are no longer shareholders once the conference season ends, which naturally devalues the worth of the regular season share they can hold.
Psychologically the NCAA tournament belongs to CBS and the NCAA and we're now under their roof where with the college football postseason there isn't that feeling. It's a moneymaking venture but the fans are a part of it.
That control and connection to the postseason will likely evaporate if we go that road. I feel a certain sadness watching the NCAA tournament and maybe this is why. I certainly don't have that weird gloom when watching the bowls. Rather, I feel invigorated and involved. That is how it should be, no? Every game counts, just as much on January 1 as on August 31. There's a return on the investment that NCAA basketball simply cannot match because of its tournament.
Reader Comments (6)
The Gator, Cap One, and Outback in sunny Florida attracted an average of less than 65,000 people last season. If anyone saw the Gator Bowl, the 67,700 announced crowd was generous to say the least. Kevin Durant might not draw in Spokane, but there were plenty of people dressed as empty seats in Jacksonville when Pat White and Calvin Johnson shared the same field this January.
The Cotton Bowl had its lowest attendance in six years with mighty Auburn and Nebraska playing. Crowds for these games are typically 20-25,000 for this team, a little more or less for that team, and then whatever tickets the organizers can distribute in the local community. As you mention, without the students, there is little to no intensity in the crowd.
Those are all somewhat-prestigious traditional bowls played on Jan. 1. We're not even talking about the BSC games - Before Santa Claus.
The non-BCS bowls that typically do well have some sort of local connection. The Peach, er, Chick-fil-A Bowl almost always sells out due to the proximity of most SEC and ACC teams (and a rabid local base). The Alamo Bowl did well when Texas played there.
I know that CFR isn't the biggest fan of the BCS system. It has made the other bowls no more "part of our season" than spring exhibition games. Without the BCS, the Citrus Bowl could hope to play a part in the national title discussion as it did in 1990, but now the Capital One Bowl won't in the near term mean anything but reasonably good SEC and Big 10 teams playing an exhibition. Only one game really counts for anything now.
Some of the less occupied bowls are the newer ones that I have railed against on here. I don't want bowl expansion which is one of the few problems with the NCAA postseason. Those are the minority of bowl games however.
Almost every bowl is HARDLY just a television event. They're cash cows for the towns hosting them and draw at worst several thousand fans from the various schools, a far greater number than the several hundred that make trips to almost every NCAA basketball tournament game that is not the championship game itself.
"most people do not care about the games themselves or who wins unless it's their team or conference or because of who they selected in their bowl pick 'em pool."
That's just pure nonsense. BTW I don't know a single person who does bowl pick-em pools. That's for casual fans (just like the NCAA brackets) who are not a normal fan of the sport should NOT have a say in the game's outcome.
The Cotton Bowl's decline is well documented (decrepit facility, mismanagement, cold venue) and they've done something to address that starting in 2010. That will quickly rebound.
"The Gator, Cap One, and Outback in sunny Florida attracted an average of less than 65,000 people last season"
Those are orders of magnitude larger sets of fans than these basketball tournament games. You're making my point for me - the fans are INVESTED in the product and show up to these places instead of just watching on TV.
"Only one game really counts for anything now"
Only one NCAA basketball game "counts for anything" either, under that logic. That's NOT the issue. The issue is having a compelling and meaningful season and a compelling and meaningful postseason that the game's fans can take ownership of. EVERY game counts in football, even for the 0-10 team. College football fans continue to be invested in the postseason because it doesn't delegitimize the regular season and is still fun.
Nobody ten years from now will talk about say, the UNC/G'Town game but I betcha we'll still be talking about Texas Tech's comeback against Minnesota. It's because every game is important in some way with football, right down to some lesser bowl game.
Part of the difficulty with an in-depth comparison is that the NCAA sells each weekend as a package, not each game. So Notre Dame fans bought a weekend of basketball and, after the first round, found themselves with tickets featuring teams that weren't ND. This is interesting, and a bit odd, and it's hard to figure out exactly how it manipulates the ticket sales (would each game sell out if sold individually, or would there be fewer sellouts?). But ultimately, I don't think it invalidates the larger point that playoff games can and do feature empty seats as readily as do some bowl games. So the notion of boosting attendance is a shaky playoff argument.
And yes, there are a few too many bowls. But really, there are a few too many basketball tournament games, too, so the sports are even there.
Again -- what bowl games have you been watching? With the exception of 10 or so games, bowl game attendance is poor. Just because you say fans are invested more in bowl games than basketball games does not make it so.
Remember too that CFB fans have 2-4 weeks to plan a bowl game trip while CBB fans have less than a week for tourney games. That makes a big difference, especially in the first week.
I'm not arguing that CBB or it's fans are better than CFB or it's fans, I'm just not buying these comparisons you keep making between the basketball tournament and a football playoff.
A common argument I see made in support of a D-1 football playoff is that it will magically (I say that because no one making that argument ever seems to provide any proof in support of it) enhance fan enthusiasm.
The issue here isn't that there are empty seats at lesser bowl games. It's that there are empty seats for March Madness, recently described by one idiot journalist as "the most perfectly conceived sporting event since the World Cup." If you can't put fannies in the seats for something that sublime, why should we expect things to be different for a football playoff?