Thursday at The Student Section, we gave you a compilation of various links and statistics which (hopefully) offered you a much fuller picture of the reality of declining bowl attendance.
This piece is an attempt to offer a solution to college football’s power brokers, specifically the people in charge of the College Football Playoff and the New Year’s Six bowl games.
It’s too late for the coming season and very likely for the 2016 season as well, but one would like to think that if the next two seasons hurt the sport in terms of TV ratings — which are coming to acquire more importance than ticket sales — college football might reconsider the ways in which it is scheduling both the playoff and the New Year’s Six. This is not so much a single recommended change as it is a general recommendation to be aware of the calendar in each particular bowl season. If college football would just pay attention to some basic details, its scheduling of the playoff semifinals and the NY6 could be so much more fan-friendly.
*
First, let’s not hide from you the depressing short-term reality of the playoff and New Year’s Six:
PM RT: For at least four of the next five years, CFB semifinals will be on New Year's Eve. Plan accordingly. http://t.co/w7NH6V0osu
— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) January 9, 2015
It’s really rather astonishing, as Matt Yoder of Awful Announcing and many other commentators have observed: College football gets two 15-plus ratings for New Year’s Day playoff semifinals and proceeds to… move the semifinals to New Year’s Eve for most of the next five seasons. This sport just can’t leave well enough alone, but perhaps this foolishness — which is certain to hurt TV ratings but is also likely to hurt ticket sales as well — doesn’t have to last beyond the 2016 season. Perhaps the 2017 season and beyond could witness a permanently adjusted schedule in which college football gives each of the NY6 bowls the best possible chance to draw the biggest possible crowd.
The most basic point college football’s bowl schedule makers must absorb in order to boost bowl attendance — especially at the NY6 — is to look at the nuances of the calendar each season. The cover photo for this story shows the upper deck of the Georgia Dome during the Peach Bowl, a game which snapped the event’s 17-year sellout streak. An announced crowd (tickets distributed) of just under 66,000 is nothing to sneeze at for a 12:30 p.m. local time start on a non-holiday Wednesday, but if college football organizers had looked at the calendar, this crowd could have been a sellout.
*
Each year, college football bowl schedulers need to look at the calendar and act accordingly. In 2014-’15, New Year’s Eve fell on a Wednesday. This meant New Year’s Day was a Thursday. This meant Jan. 2 was a Friday after a holiday, a natural day for a four-day weekend for a lot of families and individuals. That last point is the key here.
In any bowl season when Dec. 31 is on a Wednesday or Thursday, playing New Year’s Six games on Dec. 31 seems to make no sense. Folks want to party on New Year’s Eve. Certainly when Dec. 31 is a Wednesday, it makes total sense to put the New Year’s Six games on Jan. 1 (Thursday) and Jan. 2 (Friday). The arrangement of the NY6 could have taken a few different forms: The preferred setup probably would have been to have New Year’s Day just as it was (Cotton early, Rose at 5 Eastern, Sugar at night), and to then put the Dec. 31 lineup (Peach early, Fiesta late afternoon, Orange night) on Jan. 2.
It’s true that the biggest reason for depressed attendance at the non-playoff NY6 games was Georgia Tech being contractually slotted to the Orange Bowl due to the event’s counterproductive and onerous contract with the ACC. If Georgia Tech had been able to play in the Peach Bowl, the Orange could have taken Michigan State to play Mississippi State, and the Cotton could have put Baylor against Ole Miss. That trio of matchups would have drawn more fans if all three games had been staged on Dec. 31.
However, for purposes of this discussion, it’s essential to emphasize this point as well: If that same trio of games had been played on Friday, Jan. 2, you probably would have seen an increase of at least 15,000 fans — not per game, but collectively, shared by all three games. That’s pure speculation, but it hardly seems like an unreasonable guess. Michigan State would have brought more fans to the Orange. Ole Miss fans would not have minded traveling to Arlington. Georgia Tech sold out the Peach Bowl in 2000 against LSU (attendance: 73,614), so it’s not as though enabling the Jackets to stay in Atlanta — and getting a successful event — would have been unprecedented.
This was a bowl season in which Jan. 2, not Dec. 31, should have had three non-playoff NY6 games.
This next season — December 2015 and January 2016 — New Year’s Eve is on a Thursday. The playoff semifinals will be on New Year’s Eve, which — as many have said and would all agree — is pure idiocy.
What’s the solution? Jan. 2 should once again be an outlet for NY6 games if the weekend is involved, especially since the NFL plays week 17 regular-season games on Sunday, Jan. 3 of 2016.
With the NFL playoffs not starting until Jan. 9 of 2016, college football had an easy fix to the NY6 problem next season: Keep the Sugar and Rose in their New Year’s Day slots on Friday, Jan. 1, and then put the playoff semifinals on Saturday, Jan. 2, a day with no professional football. The pieces were right in place, but college football somehow refused to use a BARREN SATURDAY, a day on which no major pro football games will be played. Putting those bowls on Saturday, after a holiday on Friday, would naturally have created greater attendance. Instead, college football will have three major bowls on Dec. 31, one of them a playoff semifinal starting in the afternoon.
It is so easy, but college football’s history is marked by avoiding the easy thing and insisting on doing things the hard way. After all, the sport stuck with the Bowl Championship Series for 16 years instead of realizing, after the absurdly chaotic 2001 season (and the end of the first four-season BCS rotation) that a playoff was a natural way to not only resolve disputes, but create extra big-money TV draws.
*
As we continue to emphasize the calendar, let’s realize that there ARE years in which it makes sense to play NY6 bowls on Dec. 31. Remember, this is not about insisting that Dec. 31 is never a good day to stage NY6 bowls; this is about looking at (and adjusting to) the calendar in each given year, based on how the days align.
Let’s consider what college football should do when Jan. 1 is an NFL Sunday. Naturally, the college game has to step aside then, as it regularly has in history. Bowls on Saturday, Dec. 31 would make plain sense, followed by three more NY6 games on Monday, Jan. 2, the observed New Year’s holiday.
If New Year’s Day fell on a Saturday, with Sunday reserved for the NFL, it would similarly make sense to play three NY6 games on Friday, Dec. 31, which would be part of a holiday weekend for fans.
If New Year’s Day fell on a Tuesday, New Year’s Eve — being on a Monday and therefore part of a four-day weekend for many — would again be a natural slot for the non-playoff NY6 bowls. You can see that the calendar sometimes lends itself to Jan. 2 NY6 games, sometimes to Dec. 31 NY6 games. The point is to adjust to the calendar, but this is something college football hasn’t done.
Maybe, just maybe, two years with smaller crowds and lower ratings for the playoff semifinals could lead to re-drawn contracts and a better arrangement of these showcase games come 2017.
This is America, the country that put a man on the moon. Surely, we can schedule major bowl games in ways that are likely to create higher crowds. These methods are available — the sport just has to adopt them.