This is just a sign that there are too many damn bowls. I know its all about the money, but still, when you have an Idaho Potato Bowl, you know you've gone too far.

Not a big deal, Cal games where on groupon last year when they played at AT&T Park, and so was the Kraft Fight Hunger bowl. Tickets were still too expensive, and nodbody went.

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-cal-bears

http://www.groupon.com/deals/gl-kraft-fight-hunger-bowl

As a bonus, here is the write up: 

Sports played with spheroids are easier to master than rectangular sports, such as Rubik's cubing and throwing bricks into windows. Watch circular savants at work with today’s GrouponLive deal: for $36, you get one ticket for sideline-bleacher seating to see the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl between the UCLA Bruins and the Illinois Fighting Illini on Saturday, December 31, at 12:30 p.m. at AT&T Park (a $60 value; with all ticketing fees included, the value is $73.75). Gates open at 11 a.m.

and : 

Like open-heart surgery and jousting with yardsticks, football is a game of inches. Measure out some field-side fun with today’s GrouponLive deal: for $59, you get twopremium-sideline Section A, B, or C tickets to the California Golden Bears' home football game against the Presbyterian Blue Hose at AT&T Park on Saturday, September 17 (up to a $130 value). Kickoff is at 2:30 p.m.

There are GLI tickets on groupon. Not surprising or anything. Just adding that to the conversation.

When i was stationed out there while in the Army we used to get free tickets every year. The stadium was never very full.

If I were going to be in Hawaii on December 24th about the last place I'd like to spend 3.5 hours is in that concrete behemoth watching Fresno St. vs SMU.

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My wife is from Hawaii, and I've been to this game before.  The only time they can sell tickets to it is when UH is in the game, and they are ALWAYS in it if they're over .500 (unless of course they win their conference and have to go to the Holiday Bowl -- or whatever game the winner of their conference goes to now -- or if they go undefeated again sometime in the next 100 years and wind up in a BCS game like when they got routed by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl 4 years ago). 

Here's an interesting ESPN piece from early in  the year that is most relevant for this thread - (LINK). 

Long story short, it talks about how overall bowl attendance was down 2.1% last year due in part to economic concerns, but also admittedly less-than-thrilling matchups. It uses the Hawaii Bowl as an example actually - 19,411 people watched Southern Mississippi play Nevada last December, less than half the attendance of the year before (when it was Tulsa vs. Hawaii). I assume Fresno State and SMU may struggle to match even that much interest. I imagine this is part of the reason for the Groupon deal, trying to get people to Hawaii and get them to consider perhaps this game at the almost no-consequence price of $9 (compare to what you would pay to actually get to the islands, of course). 

What is sort of intriguing was the discussion on bowls that got it right by adding teams closer to the site and with fans that would be willing to make the trip.  Purdue in the Little Caesar's Bowl, for example, and that bowl's 14,000-person jump in attendance.