College Football Bowl Season 2018-19

Death to the BCS, a book that came out a few years back, did a great job of outlining the obscene amounts paid to bowl directors and the ridiculous expenses teams incur to play in these things.

Virginia Tech's expense sheet for the 2009 Orange Bowl was an eye opener: they had a traveling party of band and cheerleaders (and their staffs, presumably) of more than 400 people for a week in south Florida? More than 130 people in the official party, probably including hangers-on, flunkies etc.? Almost $150K in awards and equipment?

Doesn't anybody at these schools look at this stuff?

 

It's one of the reasons I don't weep when athletic departments talk about their lack of money. Don't buy watches or rings when your team wins a podunk bowl. Also - don't reward your coach and his staff for getting to a podunk bowl - that's why they are paid what they are paid. Conferences could rein this in a lot as well, by capping travelling parties and costs at set limits.
As it is most bowls payouts are little more than a projected cut of the gate. But its worse than that. Say a team qualifies for a bowl with a $1 mil payout per team. That factors in they sell probably 10-20,000 tickets at $75 a pop or so ($200 or more for the playoffs), they are also required to stay at the designated hotel (which I doubt gives them that great of a rate, for whatever reason), pay for their arranged transportation, pay for most of their meals, and pay for travel. I don't know what the per diem rules would be and who would get them and the cost - so add that on as well.

 

Listening to P.J. Fleck talk about how his Gophers won a championship last night was laughable.

 

I wonder what would happen to the lesser bowls if all teams were allowed the same extra practice days the four playoff teams get, or until Dec. 23 anyway. I'm pretty sure BC took a bath yesterday, and it's not a program that can shrug off six-figure or more losses.

 

Imagining P.J. Fleck in any line of work other than coaching while I listen to him talk is what makes me laugh. He's essentially the manager at Arby's who takes his job too seriously, except he found a place in life where it's rewarded handsomely.

 

I was driving on the southbound 110 freeway in LA yesterday around 1:00 (near USC) and there were probably 4 or 5 University of Washington buses travelling with a CHP escort. Three motorcycles and a CHP car. God knows what for. This was a nothing Wednesday a week before the Rose Bowl. Since they had to be coming from Pasadena, and were not stopping in South Central, that had to be a 30 mile commute one way, wherever they are staying.

How much does a week's worth of CHP escorts cost?

 

One school stays at the JW Marriott at Staples Center/LA Live, while the other school stays at the new Intercontinental in the Korea Air Tower.

Edit: They practice at StubHub, according to the Interwebs. BTW, Stubhub's new name is Dignity Health Center or some such. Because a not-for-profit hospital chain should be sponsoring sports arenas.

 

Got it. They were heading to Stubhub.

They were driving on the ez pass.

 

They were also at Disneyland yesterday.

 

The one counterpoint to that would be that some of the hangers-on and flunkies might be big-money donors who will eventually more than recoup the cost of their trip in gifts to the university. Kind of like the casinos comping rooms and meals for whales who will lose a hundred times that gambling.

The real problems come when, like DanOregon said, you have a deadly combination of factors -- a small fan base, a high-priced ticket, and a bowl game on the other side of the country. IIRC, Connecticut famously took a bath on playing in the Fiesta Bowl one year because they couldn't sell their allotment of tickets and had to eat the cost.
That's one of the reasons the SEC is set up so well. The fans are more passionate about football and will go to one extra, meaningless game because almost all of the conference's bowl cities are in its footprint. They can drive to them, spend the night or weekend, and come back home without shelling out thousands of dollars. The smaller bowls also have more affordable tickets. I wonder when the last time was that an SEC team didn't sell out its allotment for a minor bowl or come very close to it?

 

Is tnoight the Lawry's prime rib eating contest?

 

Oh, no question I figured donors would be included in that but there were probably plenty of other staffers who didn't need to be there and just added to the expense.