'Embarrassing' Crowd At Historic College Football Bowl Game
College football officially has an attendance problem when it comes to the postseason.
More and more, we're seeing fan bases get tired of traveling in December and January. We noticed it at the conference championship games at the start of the month. We've noticed it with the initial bowl games. And now, we're noticing it with the major bowl games around New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
Ticket prices for one College Football Playoff quarterfinals game are "tanking." An argument could - and probably should - be made that the College Football Playoff should host all games on campus until the national title game. But there's too much money to be made for the bowl games for that to happen.
Still, the College Football Playoff isn't the only ones affected by a lack of attendance. On Tuesday, we had a historic bowl game matchup between two iconic programs, with Michigan taking on Alabama in the Reliaquest Bowl in Tampa, Florida.
The crowd was "embarrassing."
This was the crowd in the first quarter.
Mike Rodak/X
Mike Rodak, an Alabama staff writer for 247Sports, shared a photo of the sparse crowd on Tuesday afternoon.
There were several factors at play here, obviously.
It was a bad weather day in Tampa, Florida. Heavy rain impacted the game for most of the first half.
This was also the second time in a year that Alabama and Michigan played each other. The two historic programs met at the Rose Bowl in the College Football Playoff last season. If you traveled to that game, would you really want to travel to this one, too?
Michigan and Alabama both had disappointing seasons. The Wolverines did finish the year strong, beating Ohio State, but there wasn't a ton of excitement about their bowl game destination.
The same could be said about Alabama. The Crimson Tide went 9-3, missing the College Football Playoff in Year 1 of the Kalen DeBoer era. It's safe to say that few, if any, Alabama fans were thrilled about the Reliaquest Bowl against Michigan.
The bowl games still do monster TV ratings, and that's where most of the advertising money is, but you have to wonder if bowl games will start to get played at smaller venues moving forward.
