What an odd way for a journalist to handle writer's block...
The Hoax may have 20k or more at the game but, according to their fans, many are buying from sources other than the ulm due to the poor seats allocated to them by the I Bowl.
I would hope that if given an invite to he I Bowl we negotiate either a guaranteed payout or better seating allotments.
The bowl committees' reasoning for picking the cellar dwellars in the "big" conferences was because they travel so well. Well, maybe they don't and we have done a good job of disproving that theory. I am going to look at all the bowl games this year to see about doing a comparison of total attendance and team attendance breakdowns. Two things to note: schools are obligated to a certain number of tickets and they are not selling them; but the tickets sold will be included in the total number. Also, we do travel very well to New Orleans ... we won't do that well elsewhere ... at least not for the next few years until we have a dedicated home crowd over 30k consistently.
This is where CAJUN NATION gives us some leverage ... we now have improved our resume and, like you said, hopefully we can use that to negotiate a better situation with the I-bowl for in the future. And if they don't budge, it's back to New Orleans and a SELLOUT!
It's no accident that Bad Company and the Beach Boys played this year. Last year's success in the NO Bowl allowed them to provide better entertainment this year ... they had to make these preparations long before they knew we were coming back. With this years increased success, I expect next year's New Orleans Bowl to be even bigger and better; moving up the bowl chain!
Did we break even? Lose money? Or did we somehow make money with this terrible new SBC rule?
They actually choose the super conference members, even with .500 records, because they are a national TV audience draw. In addition, regardless of how poor their fans travel, the majority of lower conference programs aren't going to travel any better or sell more tickets. If you matched Georgia (in a down year) with Florida State (in a down year)... neither school may sell large numbers of tickets, but the bowl may sell local tickets at a good clip, and TV audiences (ratings) will still be large.
UL is currently unique. We're hungry for seeing our football catching some limelight. We will travel massively to "local bowls" and we are likely to travel fairly well to moderate distance bowls. Our leadership needs to recognize that the NO Bowl situation has some conditional repeatability, and they must capitalize on what we achieved over the past two years... immediately.
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