(08-02-2018 02:49 AM)_C2_ Wrote: I still somehow doubt that. Even for you people up north that are used to that type of weather. Maybe you'd sit for a few minutes before the health effects start to take effect or even just the uncomfortability.
I think one reason cold-weather games are valued in college football is because even up north, they are rare: For most teams, the season ends in late November, before the real snowy months start. College football is a fall sport, not a winter sport. Heck more games are played during the summer than the winter. It's not like the NFL, which plays throughout December and January.
Also, while the NFL is much more geographically balanced, college football skews to the south - the SEC, Big 12, and ACC are largely southern conferences, and the PAC has mild coastal weather as well. Only the B1G is a northern conference. And in the G5 the same holds true - only the MAC is a real northern conference. For southern schools, college football is more of a summer sport than anything, as a Houston fan you know that it can be 80+ at kickoff all the way through October, most of the regular season.
Bowl season is really the only time of the college football year where wintry conditions - harsh cold, ice, snow - are a strong possibility, and then because of that, the games are played mostly in the deep south.
So there is a novelty factor to playing up north during bowl season. I know one reason I've enjoyed going to the Military Bowl in Maryland the last few years is the cold weather.