BCS Teams Expected to Lose Money This Year

for their tickets. That hardly seems fair. They get really good seats, too.

At some point, this system is going to crash of it's own weight. I won't pretend to have a solution, but this is only going to get worse.

How do they need 529 and 539 seats for their bands? The drumline probably would need more than one seat per person for them to have room to play. I don't know how much our band is taking, I would guess a little over 300 seats because not all of them travel? Their whole band must travel. I really don't know, but over 500 seems like a lot. 

EDIT--Quick research:
-We have around 375 members, 275 in performance block that will go + some extra members that will come on the trip as well.
-LSU has 325 members
-Alabama's Million Dollar Band website says it has has 400 members, wikipedia says 425.

If Alabama only requires 10 more seats and has 100 more people, maybe LSU bought too many or the 325 doesn't count colorguard or something. I don't know, it still seems like a lot.

And with the National Championship and all the other BCS bowls, the loss of money is worth all the recognition they are getting.  

The board of regents of a University would make the decision regarding whether they would let their team participate in a bowl game. I think it actually happened at Ohio that they were invited to a bowl and the regents decided not to let the team participate. Unless the prestige and secondary benefits significantly outweigh the costs, I think we will start seeing this again, especially with the more marginal bowls.

Question then, if a school does manage to sell out of the tickets that they are forced to purchase at face value where does the profit even come from? Clothing and other things purchased bowl related?

It is nice to have the national exposure for all of these schools but at what cost is it really worth it to some of the smaller schools?

The real kick in the nuts is that their is a guy making over half a million a year just to plan this bowl game. One game, all year, let that sink in.

Main problem is secondary ticket markets. While great for fans the schools get raped by the bowl suits. No way most schools can sell their tickets when fans get them for half price on stub hub. 10 years ago or more this problem did not exist, now it's basically extortion.

The Clemson AD basically made this out to be an investment opportunity more than anything, a chance to get the name out there, and I would think that's how a lot of ADs either see it or  force themselves to see it, at least for a few weeks. Still, I can see a time where costs start to force schools to decline invitations, and at that point, losses beget losses for the bowl committees unless the Plan B "at large" is more financially able than the original choice (and even then, that school may lose money, but perhaps they could afford to do so). 

It's a marketing opportunity for the schools in general expressed as a football game, but it  seems to me that either costs need to moderate or the BCS bowls will have trouble filling stadiums and even getting teams to come in the near future. I could see a scenario where a clearly undeserving team  is in  a bowl because they can afford to go instead of the original pick (and not because of the selection process itself). 

When big colleges start to lose money, the system will fail for sure.

It really seems that BCS schools are starting to realize that their timeshares aren't generating as much revenue as they anticipated.

Instead of having your entire band travel, they should just have one guy come w/ a giant boombox and play the bands songs off a cd.  

Boy, this is nuts.  There are some things I like about the bowls.  I like that it's kind of a vacation for the players at the end of a long, grinding seaon, and in a way it's nice that you get 30-some happy teams at the end of the year (the ones that won their bowl) instead of just one in a playoff system.  But the finances are just scandalous.  They need reform.

the bowl money (or lack thereof) is chump change.

The value comes from selling more seats (at higher prices) during the season, attracting larger TV revenue and market share, and donations.

Anyone who thinks the schools are really upset about bowl finances is probably wrong. The conferences, particularly the Big 10 and SEC hold all the power in bowl contract negotiations and they're willing to accept the arrangements. The Big 10 and SEC could easily refuse to have a tie-in with any bowl that forced ticket blocks on the schools or that charged for band seating. The bowls would have no choice but to capitulate, because the matchups make the bowls.

If the SEC and Big 10 decided to match each conference's champ in Boise every year, that game would immediately become the most lucrative game. Conferences choose to pay for ridiculous ticket blocks, they aren't being forced into anything.

This is just more of the same crap we have seen for years. The WSJ article was right; the bowls are extracting money from the general funds of the schools and putting it in the pockets of "insiders."

I'm still trying to figure out how students benefit from this.

Now imagine we go to the popularly propose playoff system. How much money would be lost then?



I myself prefer the pre BCS era. I know no clear 1 v 2 game, but how that match up hasn't been without controversy.