The 2015 Taxslayer (Gator) Bowl: Another dog game

[mtraininjax]

Nothing sells tickets locally like bringing mediocre teams together. Thanks Catlett!

[I-10east]

^^The whole bowl system is a crock dude, don't you get it? Since everything as all about 'maximizing payout to land that all-so elite bowl game' the holy grail down there in Orlando, the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl has Missouri vs Minnesota. Woohoo!!! Man, that's must see TV on New Years Day!!!

[I-10east]

The attendance at the main Florida Bowl games.

Citrus Bowl- (16)Mizz vs (25)Minn --48,624

Outback Bowl- (19)Auburn vs (18) Wisconsin --44,023

Orange Bowl- (7)Mississippi State vs (12)Georgia Tech --58,211

Taxslayer Bowl- Iowa vs Tennessee --56,310

Yeah, I'll say that Catlett did pretty damn good with attendance, considering two unranked teams and the current circumstances of all of these waning bowl games, that aren't named the Sugar Bowl or the Rose Bowl.   

[pierre]

No way there were 56k in attendance. Maybe the mythical "tickets distributed".

Either way, Tennessee brought the fans. Did not see much from Iowa.

[spuwho]

Dont forget the schools are required to purchase a minimum set of tickets as part of the appearance.

[I-10east]

Taxslayer's 'tickets distributed' number was over 60,000.

[Buforddawg]

The attendance is also down in the supposed 'marquee bowl games'. The entire thing has been oversaturated for years. There are only three 'postseason' games that matter for the most part, the two playoffs, and the championship game.

Those, the two playoffs, and the championship game, are the only Bowl Games that should happen.  Rotate them to the other Bowls each year.   Maybe once they start losing money things will change but until then watch as attendance decreases.

[I-10east]

^^^I like your rotation idea. There is already talk about expanding the playoffs to 4 games, probably won't happen no time soon though. A team like TCU definitely would have been in contention with a four playoff system. I generally agree with you about the other meaningless bowl games; They eventually will be milked dry.

Prepare for ESPN to beat "The BCS would've left both semi-final winners out of the national championship" into the ground for the next week and a half.

I know that it may be beaten to death, but you can't deny the importance of actual competition vs what some AP poll thinks. Bottomline, we wouldn't have had the best teams in there this year if it wasn't for the playoff; Further playoff expansion would further weed out any poll mistakes.

[JaxJersey-licious]

Yea, playoff expansion is inevitable especially after seeing the ratings the two semi-final games got and what the final game can possibly get. With those numbers, ESPN will charge ad rates off the roof for next year's game and whatever major football conference doesn't get one of their teams in on the pot will cry foul so there you go. They'll probably consider forcing the Big 12 to create a playoff game and give all conference winner an automatic birth or some stupid shit like that just to appease them.

[spuwho]

I wonder how much hotel room availability impacts our ability to acquire larger contestants or events?

When I went to the Gator Bowl Parade in 2011, several Michigan fans told me while on the Skyway that they ended up in the Gator Lodge on Philips because every hotel for 30 miles was sold out. After I warned them of the neighborhood and why they had rooms available, the light bulb went off but they said they had no choice otherwise they would have been staying in Daytona Beach.

So it makes me wonder, even if every ticket got distributed, where would they all stay? We have torn down or repurposed all of those classic high density hotels downtown. Many of the newer ones are all out in the "Edge City" with no easy way downtown.

Those Michigan fans didn't have a rental car. They walked from the Gator Lodge to the Kings Avenue Garage to jump on the Skyway.

Maybe the transition of the Laura Trio to a high end Marriott is coming at a good time.

I would be curious to know if that is one of the factors that is "holding us back".

[ProjectMaximus]

I would be curious to know if that is one of the factors that is "holding us back".

It definitely is, but I'm not sure that we can subsidize more hotel rooms to sit empty for most of the year just so we have a greater capacity on 3 or 4 nights a year. It's got to just come with time, greater concentration of activities downtown, larger population, etc.

[spuwho]

Ok, so we are short of rooms. We have hosted a Gator Bowl for many years. Has greater Jacksonville lost that many hotel rooms in the last 25 years?  The crowds at previous games were the same or larger than the current one.  What changed?

[edjax]

Ok, so we are short of rooms. We have hosted a Gator Bowl for many years. Has greater Jacksonville lost that many hotel rooms in the last 25 years?  The crowds at previous games were the same or larger than the current one.  What changed?

Not sure what you asking in what changed? Why crowds are less now? Answer is the quality of teams. We now have 6-6 teams playing versus 9-3 and 10-2 teams.  Teams with better records and winning teams have more people willing to spend the money to attend a bowl game.

We were just lucky this year one of the teams has been mega crappy for years and there fan base decided to support a quasi crappy team.

[ProjectMaximus]

I don't follow your question/point either, spuwho. I thought you meant what is holding us back from bigger events like Super Bowl, World Cup, etc.

As for attendance dips that edjax talked about, I'd also add that many bowls sell tickets to folks in the region who aren't necessarily fans of either team but are attracted to the game. Not necessarily happening for Tenn vs Iowa at ~.500.

[spuwho]

What do I mean?

The Gator Bowl Committee petitions for much larger events than the TaxSlayer Bowl. It was known as having tried to acquire one of the BCS playoff games and the championship itself. Totally rebuffed.

We have struggled to acquire large sponsors even though the stadium can accommodate some of the largest crowds of any of the bowls. Lots of paying eyeballs.

Collectively we have injected $63 Million in upgrades to the facility, have a new named sponsor of the facility (EverBank), yet we still can't win a bid to draw a national event.

So my question is why?  Is it the lack of nearby hotel rooms? Or something else?

I have had friends go to the Fiesta Bowl for many years. Glendale (Phoenix Metro) has all of the same issues. Not enough hotel rooms within proximity of the facility, yet they constantly are able to score sponsors, events with high cache and visibility, why?

The Fiesta Bowl didn't even exist until 1971 and even then, it was created just to give Arizona State a chance to play for prestige.

The "demotion" seemed to occur when the Bowl Coalition formed in the 1990's and made the Fiesta a "Tier 1" bowl game and it pushed the Gator to a "Tier 2".

The Orange, Sugar, Cotton, and Fiesta Bowls were "Tier 1 Bowls" under the Coalition agreement, and the Gator, John Hancock Sun, and Blockbuster were "Tier 2 Bowls."

So why, even today, can we not successfully win bids on Tier 1 events in the new BCS Playoff format?