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Stewart Mandel offered an interesting article today:
Delany is on the move again. I don't really disagree with it either. I definitely would not mind seeing a tie in with the Holiday bowl or some bowls in Arizona as I have no desire (see: lazy) to travel to Florida every year.
We already know bowl attendance was down but I thought it was interesting to see Michigan's game with South Carolina drew one of the largest ratings in ESPN network history for a non-BCS game.
YESSSS!!!! More national probably means California. That's great news. For the record, I would also love the Holiday Bowl. Never a bad reason to go to San Diego, greatest city in the country.
I am ALWAYS excited to go to Vegas. Bowl games would be a great excuse to head out that way for a little while. I imagine many fans (college-aged and beyond) would feel the same.
I’m onboard the Bay Area Bowl train! Fursure!
Really? I'm seriously asking, can you give reasons (other than weather, ocean, women (which are all great, btw))? I've never been there...
Are Marines still prohibited from traveling to Tijuana because of the violence?
But as long as Portland, Oregon is still a city, no other place gets to claim having the best craft brew scene in America.
You pretty much summed it all up. Damnit I miss it.
Yes - those first three are all great reasons, but it does go beyond that. I've been to SD as both a young single guy and as a parent with my toddler, and it's great for both. There is both beachy nightlife and downtown nightlife not very far apart. The gaslamp district has great bars and restaurants of all kinds, and Pacific Beach has a lot of the board shorts and flip flops types of hangouts. Past that, Mission Bay park is great time too, great for kids, and close to Sea World, and La Jolla is one of my wife's favorite areas - good shopping and lots of restaurants with incredible views of the ocean and cove. You can grab a beer while watching the seals.
All of those things complement the weather and the ocean. It's never too hot, but almost always warm and sunny, everything is close to the ocean, and not too expensive (at least for California). And yes, there are beautifil women everywhere.
Is just a ride over the bridge and Hotel Del. The food scene in National City, the golf courses(Steel Canyon is my favorite)
Plus the train is actually reasonably priced and goes many of the places you'd want to. (Not Coronado, though.) I think I remember paying $5 for a day pass. Old Town is neat, kind of a Mexican-themed Mackinac Island if you will. With margaritas the size of a toilet bowl. I would never want to live in San Diego being more of a cold-weather, change-of-the-seasons kind of guy, but I've visited four times, and done different stuff every time and never not enjoyed myself.
of this message....let's just say I am a big fan of my home town.
There's a reason our motto is "Finest City in America"
Been to a couple of Holiday Bowl's including the 1994 win over Col St.
OB for life
I currently live in San Diego, and I agree with everything that WolvinLA2 said. I've lived all over the country, in many different states, and San Diego is incredible. I've even lived in Santa Barbara for awhile, which is awesome too, and I've lived in Malibu, LA, etc. All are great places, depending what you're into, but overall as far as big cities go, San Diego tops the list.
Everyone who replied. I love how this board is willing to go so far off topic for interesting cultural stuff. Great info...
With such a dearth of Anchorman references.
Depends what you're interested in. It's easy living for all the obvious reasons, but it lacks the breadth and depth of culture in big American cultural centers. Their best high end restauranteurs, for instance, ditch the place for a more vibrant scene once they prove they can run a shop ably. The same is true for music, comedy, etc. It would be less of an issue if SD were farther away from the gravitational pull of LA. You really have to prefer the said obvious stuff to culture to want to pass up LA or SF for SD, hence the state of affairs.
Why this is not true of the beer I have no idea. It is fantastic. It's also probably a significant part of the reason why SD is starting to come into its own as a "real" city, culture-wise.
Also, yes, this is for a given definition of culture. Pacific beach bros certainly have their own collective culture that they find very satisfying.
also world class zoo and wild animal park (puts the zoo to shame)
also world class zoo and wild animal park (puts the zoo to shame)
Please please please do this-
Yeah, beautiful El Paso, where you can get murdered by drug lords from Juarez.
Fiesta/BW3 Bowl is still in AZ so you have a risk of that with the illegal trash living in AZ.
Points return after national signing day.
Actually El Paso iirc is the safest city in the country.
But, I like your enthusiasm! Would be nice to spread the B1G love around the country a little. Show us West Coast wolverines some love here and there too! How about a game in the new 49ers stadium? I'll swing by on my way home from work!
Just FYI, both the Cotton and the Chick-fil-A will almost certainly be part of the new BCS lineup starting in the 2014/15 season, so there is only one more year that either of them will have a conference tie-in of any kind. They will then become "Access Bowls" and host BCS at large teams 8 of the next 12 years, hosting a semifinal the other 4 years.
Also, the Chick-fil-A is one of the only December bowls that doesn't want to upgrade their conference tie-ins right now; they are perfectly happy with the SEC and ACC.
With at least 14 members in the B1G by 2014, and with no signs of the # of the bowls decreasing, the conference will probably average 10 eligible teams a season.
Wait a second. You don't think Delany is doing this to secretly help the recruiting efforts of MSU do you? A national bowl tie-in seems to be a perfect fit for their national recruiting efforts.
Damn it. I KNEW dad liked little brother better.
I think you are thinking too small. Delany's tie in inquiry to the Mos Eisley Cantina Sandstorm Bowl on Tatooine would fill MSU's intergalatic recruiting.
just as long as you don't have 3 games going on at the same time on Jan 1 i'll be happy.
And this year it was actually four - Neb/Georgia, Michigan/SCar, Purdue/Okla. St, and Northwestern/Miss. St. all started between noon and 1 EST.
keep the sec bowls. we need to beat these guys. i think the big ten performed above expectations this year in terms of its bowl games, especially against the sec. i bet most of the country expected south carolina to beat us handily, and for georgia to blow out nebraska.
It makes no sense for the Big Ten to beat its head against the wall every year against a bunch of SEC teams. Let them play one or two, but let them play some other conferences, too. It would improve the bowl record while still giving opportunities to beat the SEC.
You cite two losses to the SEC as progress, which says something.
My favorite city is San Francisco, so hopefully the Kraft Fight Hunger will be elevated to BCS status soon.
How about not scheduling three bowls games that all have Big Ten teams in them at the same time? Maybe it is not more national, but should definitely help ratings.
And this year it was actually four - Neb/Georgia, Michigan/SCar, Purdue/Okla. St, and Northwestern/Miss. St. all started between noon and 1 EST.
This. Let's start by undiluting New Year's Day, and then go "National"
Does anyone else think the problem with attendance is because there are no good bowl games in the northeast. If the BCS match ups are at least decent on paper, I think tickets would either sell out or the numbers would be at least better. Out west the sports following is no where near the same as the northeast so even if a game is a matched up well if their team isn't in the game they most likely aren't going. I understand that you want to have vacation destinations as bowl hosts, but people can't afford to travel to California every year. If south teams are going to complain about cold weather then make all the northeast bowl games in domes. There are plenty of quality dome stadiums that could be available. I could care less about vacation spots the ultimate goal is for them to sell tickets.
A California bowl would do very well with a Big Ten team, because there are tons of Big Ten alumni out here who don't want to travel three time zones to see their team play. If the Big Ten picked up the Holiday Bowl, I promise the game would be sold out every year for at least a decade, unless it was the same teams going all the time.
And it terms of travelling to California - it's not much more expensive than travelling to Florida for most, and San Diego is a much more exciting destination than anywhere in Florida not named Miami.
My last rose bowl was 2007.... :-(
I wish there were more quality bowl games for the BIG in Cali!!! FYI I hate 12:00 and 3:30 kick off est because drinking before noon is rough
the glass is not always half empty.
I am not meaning to gripe about the California games so much I just hate how every big bowl game minus the rose bowl is usually played in SEC country. I know that a UM game in California is good because it usually means Rose Bowl and UM fan base doesn't have these ticket issues usually. I guess my thinking is just people are die hard sports fans on this side of the country and I would be willing to contemplate going to a BCS game if it was in Indianapolis or somewhere similar even if UM wasn't in it. I should have better worded that the California games don't really bug me as much, but the Florida games are just annoying to me at this point.
"According to one source, the conference collaboration Delany speaks of may consist of a format like this: Over a six-year cycle, the Big Ten and Big 12 might share spots in the Holiday (San Diego) and Kraft Fight Hunger (San Francisco) bowls, with each league playing three seasons in both."
Something like this would be nice for a conference like the Big Ten that, while in the Midwest, had a sizeable West Coast alumni / alumnae base and fan following and probably would therefore increase attendance. Right now, I believe that the Big Ten's tie-ins include three bowls played in Florida and two in Texas, among others, and there's no reason that they couldn't agree to at least one closer to larger pockets of fans, I would think. Going to where the demand likely is would help to mitigate the issues with eating the costs associated with ticket guarantees too, if they place these games within easy reach of more likely audiences. The distribution of the games is one thing I never understood in comparison to where many schools have large concentrations of alums and fans.
I especially like the rotating venues aspect of it, so we aren't going same bowl all the time.
We are taking over the world!!!
Yes, please. Dump the Gator and bring back the Holiday Bowl.
we get B1G bid in the Peach Bowl. Cheap flight and watch the Peach drop after the game.
Yes. This. Small stadium but it would be nice to see some Big 10 teams out here. Navy looked like a pee wee football team this year.
So according to the report Florida teams suck balls at travelling for their team because they're so used to playing bowl games in Florida. I wonder if the B1G will try and boost attendance at bowl games by, you know, hosting bowl games in B1G country?
Michigan would travel incredibly well anywhere in California. There's a metric ton of alumni out here.
Pinstripe Bowl and Kraft Hunger/Holiday Bowl in, Gator Bowl and Heart of Dallas Bowl out is my guess.
Finally an idea by Delaney that I can get behind. The Florida bowls are nice but we don't need three of them. California is hugely attractive to Michigan alumni. Let's add San Diego and or something in LA.
It would also be cool to see more Big 10 teams in Midwest bowl games. The only caveat being it is nice to go somewhere warm in the winter.
There are just too many bowls period. The product is spread way to thin. There is a reason the NFL has overtaken baseball. Limited season, and not every county has a team. I like all the post season games its almost to the point of being a season in itself but the glory is not what it once was. Unsold tickets? Maybe its a shitty bowl period??
There are more teams in the NFL (32) than there are in MLB (30), and more teams make the NFL playoffs (12 to 10). I don't think limited availability is really the issue. There's just been a movement toward faster-paced sports in general over the last 30-40 years. MLB is still a strong #2 among American sports.
"In a telling example, the network's Dec. 15 Arizona-Nevada New Mexico Bowl broadcast drew a higher rating (1.9) than Butler's overtime upset of No. 1 Indiana on CBS during the same time window (1.5). It doesn't affect ESPN, which owns and operates the New Mexico Bowl, that only 24,610 fans attended the game in person."
it would be nice to have a middle-tier bowl tie in somewhere on the upper east coast. Like somewhere between DC and NYC. There are so many Michigan alums over here. It'd be a nice consolation price for finishing 4th-6th in conference to be able to play in front of mostly Michigan fans out here
Could not agree more with this. I guess the weather sucks on the east coast in dec/jan but there is a massive big ten diaspora in the dc/Phil/ny area.
We didn't have OSU or PSU and I think everyone is underrating that fact.
#1 - They're going to draw because they're OSU and PSU
#2 - Because they were out, many (all) B1G teams got "bumped up" a notch or two on the bowl scale. This left us with TERRIBLE matchups. You add them in and you get much more competitive matchups.
Personally, I think conference tie-ins should be completely eliminated. Rank the bowls and have a draft. You can't pick a matchup of teams in the same conference or who have already played this season. Teams have the right to decline 1 invite each.
Broadcast the Bowl Draft live and see where the chips fall.
Now Sparty can play in Idaho more. This will help them recruit internationally. Many network broadcast signals from Boise reach foreign Canadian soil.
