2009 Bowl Attendance Visualized

Now that the CFB season is over, we can start to look back at the season that was. In this post, I’ll look at the bowl attendance from this year compared to last year.

2009 Bowls

Jay Christensen over at The Wiz of Odds has gone to the trouble of publishing the attendance figures over here. I took the numbers, converted them into a usable data file (here) and threw together a couple of heatmaps to show the results. Obviously, this is based on two years, so take any trends with a grain of salt.

Change in Attendance

Below you’ll find the attendance figures sorted by largest negative loss to largest positive gain. Purple indicates larger positive values while blue indicates larger negative values. White is the middle of the pack.

The first thing you’ll notice is the giant drop off in attendance at the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Pitting the #3 Big East team vs. the #5/#6 ACC team, the bowl saw a loss of almost 20k people. This is despite pitting a 9 win Pittsburgh team vs. an 8 win UNC team. Quite a surprise considering that the 2009 MCCB pitted the same UNC team vs. West Virginia. There could be several reasons for the drop. The increased proximity of the West Virginia fan base to the bowl, the fatigue of UNC fans of attending the MCCB again or even the

On the other end of the spectrum is the Gator bowl. While typically hosting the #2 Big East ( or ND ) and the #3 ACC team, this year the bowl was able to play host to an historic event. That’s right, Bill Stewarts 3rd straight bowl game. Oh, and it was also Bobby Bowdens 31st bowl appearance and his last game as the head coach at Florida State University. This made the Gator bowl one of the prime non-BCS attractions.

Something else to notice that that the lower tier bowls seemingly did better this year than several of the BCS bowls. Aside from the BCS title game, which saw a 20% increase in attendance, the other 4 BCS bowls either saw minimal increase (Fiesta & Rose ~1% ) or almost a double digit decrease. The Fiesta bowl figure is interesting when you consider two non-BCS teams played for the first time ever in a BCS bowl. Any increase over the 2009 Fiesta that featured national powers Ohio State and Texas is impressive.

The Alamo bowl no doubt benefited from the off field drama surrounding the Mike Leech / Texas Tech story. Also, if the Cotton Bowl wants to be included as a 6th BCS game, it’s going to have to improve it’s attendance figured. Having the 5th largest decrease in attendance, despite playing in the larger Dallas Cowboys stadium, isn’t going to cut it. In fact, you could make the case that the Capital One bowl should be the 6th BCS bowl, should a spot be created.

Too Many Bowls?

With 20 bowls increasing attendance and two bowl showing less than a 1% decline, it looks like the bowl system shows no signs of slowing down. Since there’s already more bowls lined up for the future, it looks like the only thing that will slow down the bowls is the lack of a suitable venue.