Is there a correlation between ticket sales and bowl motivation?
Coach-speak aside, not all bowls are created equal.
For all coaches and players say about how honored they are to be going to a bowl game, any bowl game, there’s a clear hierarchy. The New Year’s Six bowls, obviously, take precedence over any other offering. The Outback Bowl and Citrus Bowl, with their Florida locales and generally high-profile matchups, tend to be prized bids as well.
The rest of the bowls carry varying levels of attraction. Do ticket sales relate at all the motivation teams feel heading to their postseason appearances?
On Monday, TicketCity provided SDS with sales information, showing how many tickets fans had bought up to their teams’ bowl games. At the bottom of the list are South Carolina (Independence Bowl) and Florida (Birmingham Bowl), the 20th- and 26th-best selling tickets on the market out of the 38 bowl games.
As passionate as the two fanbases are — both South Carolina and Florida pack their home stadiums even in down years — fans don’t seem willing to travel to these games. Shreveport, La. and Birmingham, Ala., for all their charms, aren’t known as vacation hot spots around the holidays.
Neither South Carolina nor Florida has much to play for, either. The Gamecocks are simply trying to avoid a losing season, which would be the first in Steve Spurrier’s tenure, and they came out flat against Clemson in their final game of the season. Florida will be playing for interim coach D.J. Durkin. They gave a spirited effort in Will Muschamp’s last game against Florida State, and things will change drastically around the program when Jim McElwains takes control of the reins this off-season.
Fans likely know that, and it stands to reason that the motivation to spend their hard-earned money to see what could be a lackluster performances that are meaningless in the long term.
On the flip side are games like the Texas Bowl. Arkansas ended the season on a high note, with two shutout wins over ranked teams and a competitive effort against East champion Missouri. Bret Bielema has already made it clear how badly he wants to rekindle a Southwestern rivalry with Texas; his players have gotten on board and fans are following suit. The Texas Bowl is the top-selling bowl ticket, per TicketCity, and it’s nearing sellout status with nearly two weeks until kickoff.
The two Mississippi schools, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, both have plenty of motivation to end their seasons on a strong note. State just had its best regular season in 70 years, while Ole Miss returned to national prominence after more than a decade away from the spotlight. Punctuating their seasons with wins in New Year’s Six bowl games would go a long way to cement both of the schools as legitimate, nationally recognized programs instead of the SEC also-rans they’ve been for so long.
Fans have seized the opportunity to see their teams fight it out on national stages. The Peach Bowl (Ole Miss) and Orange Bowl (Mississippi State) are sixth and seventh, respectively, in TicketCity’s sales rankings. That’s despite a five-hour trek from Oxford to Atlanta and a 13-hour hike from Starkville to Miami, although selling someone on New Year’s Eve in South Florida isn’t all that tough.
To clear any confusion, none of this is to say that teams might go to a bowl game and not play their hearts out. Every team has seniors trying to go out on top, young players trying to prove their worth and top-notch competitors up and down the roster. To insinuate that a team would do less than play its hardest is an insult to those players and coaches.
Fans are another story. And if fans are honest with themselves, they might see that some bowl games aren’t worth traveling to, no matter how much they love their team.