According to ESPN attendance at bowl games for 2011-2012 was down a little more than 2%. I wondered where the Big XII teams stood in the bowl attendance arena so I looked em up. Pretty impressive overall except for TCU's sad showing in San Diego. (We did, at least, sell our allotment though)

http://espn.go.com/college-football/bowl...attendance

Big XII Bowl Attendance:

1. Kansas St. - Cotton Bowl - 80,956.
2. Okla. St. - Fiesta Bowl - 69,297
3. Texas A&M - Meineke Car Care Bowl - 68,395
4. West Virginia - Orange Bowl - 67,563
5. Baylor - Alamo Bowl - 65,256
6. Texas - Holiday Bowl - 56,313
7. Oklahoma - Insight Bowl - 54,247
8. Missouri - Independence Bowl - 41,728
9. Iowa State - Pinstripe Bowl - 38,328
10. TCU - Poinsettia Bowl - 24,607

Despite not being a BCS bowl, the Cotton Bowl won the attendance race for this group, IMO, because it was a good regional matchup and both fan bases could easily drive to this bowl from their respective areas. Bowls like the Poinsettia that matched a Texas team and a Lousiana team in California start off with several strikes against them.

I just wonder what a 16 team playoff with home field going to the higher seed would generate in attendance?

Yeah the Poinsettia match up was stupid in terms of trying to drive ticket sales. That is a expensive time to fly to San Diego, and few (compared with some other schools) TCU or Louisiana Tech fans live in California. Like you said, at least TCU sold their allotment. I was surprised Louisiana Tech didn't outnumber TCU in fans.

TCU and Louisiana Tech would have sold out the Independence Bowl.

(01-09-2012 01:01 PM)tcufrog86 Wrote:  Yeah the Poinsettia match up was stupid in terms of trying to drive ticket sales. That is a expensive time to fly to San Diego, and few (compared with some other schools) TCU or Louisiana Tech fans live in California. Like you said, at least TCU sold their allotment. I was surprised Louisiana Tech didn't outnumber TCU in fans.

TCU and Louisiana Tech would have sold out the Independence Bowl.

La. Tech does real good to draw an actual 20,000 real butts in seats even in Ruston so I don't know if we would have sold out the I Bowl or not but certainly 25,000 or so TCU fans would have made the trip. The I Bowl was the game that I was hoping for TCU to get but one last screw over from the MWC was in order.

Being in the Big XII next year just opens all kind of attendance doors for TCU. We already averaged 42,000 before the stadium renovation so I wouldn't be surprised to see a sell out at AGC a regular occurance. Thanks to the teams of the old Big 8 that supported our entrance to the conference and to DeLoss Dodds who acted like he did too after the other members told him we were coming anyway.