Houston Bowl: No More...?

[MrMustang1965]

from the Houston Chronicle:

Strapped by financial problems and sagging attendance, the Houston Bowl could cease operations as early as next week, a college football official said Tuesday.

The six-year bowl is currently without a sponsor, and the Big 12 and Mountain West conferences have yet to receive the full payout of $1.2 million each for participating in last year's game.

All 28 bowl games are scheduled to be reviewed by the NCAA bowl sub-committee as part of the renewal process next week. The Houston Bowl is currently in talks with its current bowl partners. But if a majority of the bowl's problems are not resolved by then, the Houston Bowl is unlikely to be renewed and the 2006 game would not be held, the college football official said on the condition of anonymity.

"The clock is ticking," the official said. "Nobody wants to see the Houston Bowl go through what happened with the Bluebonnet Bowl. You would hate to see Houston out of the (bowl) mix."

The Bluebonnet Bowl was played at Rice Stadium and the Astrodome for 29 years before ceasing operations in 1987 amid poor attendance.

Shawn Bouley, executive director of the Houston Bowl, declined comment. As recent as last May, however, Houston Bowl officials were discussing a possible increase in its $1.2 million payout to make the bowl more attractive for inclusion in the lucrative Bowl Championship Series rotation.

The Houston Bowl reached a four-year agreement with the Big East, Conference USA and Notre Dame to pair a team against the Big 12 last December. The deal runs through the 2009 season.

The bowl's three-year sponsorship with internet provider EV1.net the bowl began in 2000 as the galleryfurniture.com Bowl ended after the 2005 game between Iowa State and TCU at Reliant Stadium.

Bob Burda, the Big 12's assistant commissioner of communications, said Tuesday the league is closely monitoring the situation and is willing to work out a payment structure for the money still owed. The bowl payouts are usually due by April 1.

"We're aware of the financial difficulties the bowl is experiencing," Burda said. "We are watching to see what's going to happen in terms of whether the bowl is going to be re-certified for next year and future years."

The Big 12 and Mountain West have received roughly half of their guaranteed payouts.

The Houston Bowl has been plagued by attendance problems throughout its history, averaging 41,276 for the six games. Last year's game between Iowa State and TCU drew 37,286 and the Colorado-UTEP game in 2004 drew only 27,235.

In recent years, bowl officials struggled with a mid-week date during the final week of December and a lack of community and civic support. The Houston Bowl Foundation, which was formed last fall, also inherited debt dating to 2002. C-USA member Southern Mississippi is still receiving payoff installments for playing in the game.

Also, the Southeastern Conference failed to qualify enough teams to send a representative to the bowl game during its three-year contract that expired in 2005.

"We're optimistic and hope all these financial matters get resolved between the Houston Bowl., Mountain West and Big 12 will come to a resolution to these financial matters," TCU athletic director Danny Morrison said. "It was a great experience for TCU."

Among the possible concessions that could help the Houston Bowl stay afloat is the participating conferences agreeing to a lesser payout, the bowl official said. Presently, the Independence Bowl has the smallest payout among Big 12-affiliated bowls at $1.1 million. Another possibility is a restructuring of the current agreement to add or subtract conferences that are affiliated with the game.

The Houston Bowl is an inviting destination for participating conferences because of its regional appeal and as a recruiting hotbed. The current conference affiliations — particularly the addition of C-USA — allow the Houston Bowl to possibly feature a regional team such as Rice, Houston, SMU or UTEP.

"Houston certainly has the assets to support a major-college bowl game," C-USA commissioner Britton Banowsky said. "The market is very important to us."

[MustangStealth]

If you watched the game last December, they pretty much said the same thing during the broadcast. They talked to the President of EV1.net and he said right there that they were done supporting the game and it's future was in jeopardy.

[SMU Football Blog]

I'll be shocked if Gallery Furniture doesn't bail it out.

[White Helmet]

Matress boy does have more money than he needs. Gallery furniture is the one footing the bill for all the tennis tournaments down here and the masters tournament that moved away a few years back. Not to mention Max himself paid for all the white towels given out at the World Series games.

[NavyCrimson]

nevertheless, the the whole bowl structure is becoming more of a joke with no playoff structure intact along with the bcs-bs

who really cares - period!!!???

[Flatlander]

If a tree falls in the forest without anyone around????

[BrianTinBigD]

Back to my theory of the Love Bowl. Sign up Southwest Air as the sponsor and play the thing at Ford. Pack 38,000 fans into the stadium and you are doing better than most bowls out there. Also, you can probably get a premium for the tickets at a smaller venue. You can easily get 20K fans from the Big 12 to show up in Dallas. Not sure if the same could be said of Houston. You can count on 10K from the TCU/CUSA teams and then 8K from the SWA employees that will attend. You then have a sellout and all you need to do is raise about $3million a year to support the bowl.

Assume the following financial needs:
Bowl Sponsor - $2Million(Southwest, American, Dr. Pepper, EDS, JC Penney, Frito Lay, Cingular, Sprint, Exxon, Gamestop, Kimberly Clark, Blockbuster, Brinker, TGI Fridays, YUM Brands, CompUSA, Zales, and I am sure a few others out there)
Ticket Sales - 35,000 at $30 = $1.05 million
Other sponsors - $100 to 300K
TV deal - ???(anyone know what ESPN pays to broadcast the Ft. Worst bowl)
Open up the BLVD for tailgating and you can probably get a beef bowl war going between Lawrey's and Bob's or Del Friscos as the beef sponsor of our new bowl.

Offer a $1.4 million payout to teams. This leaves you about $500K in yearly support costs from salaries for a bowl director $300K, office space of around $40K and other costs of $60K year round and another $100K to support extra staff around the bowl in Nov and Dec. Just play the thing a few days before Xmas and you will not experience a whole lot of competition with the money you offer and you can get really good attendance as well.

[Flatlander]

BrianT-

I like the scenario that you presented, although you've got one major issue to jump first (but not impossible): getting the Cotton Bowl to sign on. Since most of the corporate dollars already commit to thre 70+ years of tradition, it's tough to sell it without their blessing andtougher to double dip those sponsors. Still the CBAA Pres, Rick Baker, has ties with SMU and other cities have two bowls ( Phoenix, San Diego, NOLA) as well as tying a CUSA team to the deal (instead of the Ft Worth Bowl perhaps?)......

But still, well thought out post.

[RGV Pony]

I think another obstacle to Brian T's well thought-out post would be getting the city of Highland Park to sign on.

[CA Mustang]

...and then 8K from the SWA employees that will attend.

8,000 SWA employees? You'd probably only get that many if they were GIVEN tickets. A more realistic number would be 800.

Now if you can sell 5,000 - 10,000 tickets in the DFW area from folks unaffiliated with the two schools playing, then you may have something.

[BrianTinBigD]

I would like to state for the record that this was not a well thought out post but I would like to thank Flatlander for thinking that it was. Also, I would like to thank all the really half [deleted] posts that appear in the spring that make this post look well thought out.