The Bowl Game Problem

The initial idea of having a bowl game was to have an end of the season match up between teams with winning records. There were plenty of side benefits to this as these bowls typically took place in destination cities in warmer climates. This would allow fans of different teams to head down to these cities and get a small vacation while watching their team compete in the bowl game. There were benefits for everyone.

The current bowl system is crooked.

This is without even discussing the BCS or a playoff system. This is about how teams are chosen as well as the ticket distribution and pricing. Currently, tickets are too expensive and the onus of selling tickets is too great, especially when you factor in the secondary market supply.

In the current system, the teams are allotted a certain number of tickets. It made sense in the beginning when the cities and bowls wanted to guarantee a certain number of people traveling into town and the schools wanted to ensure that they had a baseline number of people supporting them. Motivated by money, the system is now failing everyone.

Ticket prices are too high, and as a result, the schools are having trouble selling their allotment of tickets. If a school doesn't sell its allotment, it has to eat the costs. For smaller schools like UConn with less support for the football program, making a bowl can be a costly endeavor. The initial idea was to use the games to get people to come down. While the people may still come down, the schools pay the price.

One of the biggest emergences of recent years is the secondary ticket market. In many of these games, there is a surplus of tickets. This drives down prices. The fans are aware of this, so there is less incentive to buy from the school when ticket prices in the secondary market are cheaper. The incentives are now misaligned. The city doesn't suffer, the bowl might not suffer, but the schools do. That's not the way it should be.

Bowls should be to give these football programs a spotlight to shine. There can be some benefits for the city and the bowl, but they shouldn't be raking the schools over the coals in the meantime. The NCAA needs to take a deeper look at this and find a way to better protect the schools from this disadvantageous system. A bowl should be beneficial for everyone. Let's get back to the principle of the game.