UConn lost $1.8 million on Fiesta Bowl

[East Coast Mustang]

http://www.dailycampus.com/news/uconn-l ... -1.2043100

How do they only sell 2,000 of 17,000 allotted tickets? Unbelievable.

[ponydawg]

I'm sure the fiesta bowl was a sellout. Why not buy them and resell them? It's going to look terrible either way, but at least one way you don't eat 1.8

[ObeyMyDog]

I've said it once and I will say it again. If, for some reason, anybody has not read Death to the BCS, then you should go pick up a copy right now. It is a quick read and explains (among many other absurd things) the non-sense involved in how a team can go to one of the BCS bowls and still hemorrhage huge sums of cash.

It will boggle your mind if you have an ounce of business sense in your brain. How an organization (that claims to celebrate the beauty of college football and every institution invovled) treats the vehicles for its profit like they owe them something and slap them in face with a 1.8M bill defies all logic.

[Stallion]

a monopolized market restrains economically competitive choices among bowls, schools or fans. Why would a fan of an average bowl team want to fly to Arizona to attend a football game they are not likely to win and don't deserve. Schools all across the country are flushing bowl payouts down the toilet for similiarly poor bowl matchups created by conference bowl alliances which do not make sense. The conference bowl alliances are one of the most idiotic aspects of college football and are very probably illegal restraints of trade.

[ObeyMyDog]

Stallion, that is the best argument the book makes in my opinion. There is so much crap involved with the conference bowl tie ins and conference commissioners that it isn't really even worth starting to get in to it. I really do not understand how it isn't illegal/a restraint of trade. I have to believe it is just a matter of time before somebody presents a legally valid argument that takes it down. Otherwise, a lot of really important people are getting nice chunks of money for not getting involved.

Basically, what sums it up was the the comment made by, I believe, the Michigan AD a few years back....

He was being interviewed after a bad season and said one positives was the football team actually made money that current year. When asked how a bad season could be the first season in awhile to generate revenue, he simply said they made money "because we didn't go to a bowl".

If a school with as large a fan base and passionate a following as Michigan can't make money by going to a lower to middle tier bowl, then nobody can. And that makes no sense.

[RGV Pony]

ultimately, who is making the money w/ regard to the BCS? If there was a suit, who would be named as defendants other than 'the BCS'?

[Stallion]

Most likely the 68 or so BCS schools. But it would depend on what aspect of college football the plaintiff was claiming was monopolized. Arguably the plaintiffs could be non-BCS schools, TV Networks or even non-BCS Bowls(ie Cotton Bowl at Jerry's World might well have an argument that it has been excluded from the market of producing premier BCS Bowls). The Defendants could be BCS schools, BCS Conferences, the BCS itself.

One aspect that I think needs further exploring is a possible theory of illegal restraint on trade by the BCS Conferences which allow them to force all bowls to exclusively deal with them and exclude non-BCS schools. See link for an interesting recent article published in a Harvard Sports and Entertainment Law Review which outlines various theories and conclude that the NCAA is still subject to antitrust violations although not as patently illegal as it likely was prior to the changes in 2004.

I'm not sure many of these articles focus enough on the power of the BCS Conferences themselves to forclose competition in the "tied market" for all NCAA Bowls-not just BCS Bowls. There are essentially no definite BCS/non-BCS Bowls left except at the bottom of the totem bowl and even those try to screw the non-BCS conferences if possible. The Big 10 and the SEC might get their 9th placed 6-6 team into a quality non-BCS Bowl rather than a Top 15 undefeated non-BCS Conference Champion. Under established NCAA precedent, the schools not the conferences own their TV rights and arguably their rights to select bowl games.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cac ... _JeQzKkSUw

[SMU Pony Mom]

Very sad as UConn is my alma mater. It just defies logic that you achieve one of your major goals (whether deserved or not) of going to a BCS bowl and then you lose an absurd amount of money. Something has to change!

[ponyfan08]

to add insult to injury thay got their arse kicked by the big red machine!

[East Coast Mustang]

or even non-BCS Bowls(ie Cotton Bowl at Jerry's World might well have an argument that it has been excluded from the market of producing premier BCS Bowls).

Is the Cotton Bowl going to become a BCS bowl in the near future, or not? What's the status of that?