Bowl Analysis -- South Florida

[T-Man]

Because they are the  U, and want2be thugs across america buy their gear and wear them all over...  I would venture to guess that they are one of the top sellers of gear....  The fight with FIU only helped the thug mentality..

[Bobcat99]

2. Miami doesn't travel well -- heck, they practically never sell out the OB -- but bowl committees still invite the Hurricanes.  Any ideas why?

Miami actually travels very well -- they just don't have the best home attendance. There's a few reasons for this, mainly that as a private school, Miami's alums are generally more widely spread geographically to the degree that it's not easy for them to make weekly trips back to Coral Gables but the annual bowl game is a natch.

This is what I feel really burdens us. We do not have a long history of alumni supporting the football team as we do not have a long history of football, period. It's not a matter of success or failure, it's a matter of the potential supporters not identifying their USF affiliation as being one that involves football.

The second problem is the nature of USF, insofar as we are a very regional university, and one that, frankly, seems to suffer from a bit of a pride problem. What do I mean by that? For many students/alumni, from my observation of having worked here for three years now, consider their USF education to be but a tool toward advancing a career. (This is the case with most commuter schools, and it's nearly impossible to overcome; you simply can't indoctrinate people to worship at the altar of alma mater when they're only on campus for classes). This is why you get a lot of the FSU or Gator apparel on campus.

This will, of course, get better as the years advance and more students who grew up attending USF football games graduate. However, it's not going to change the fact that most of our alumni stay in the vicinity, and this will hamper our bowl crowds for a while.

The solution, of course, is to change admissions practices and admit fewer local students and more from other states/regions, but that's the exact opposite of what's happening, and perhaps it is rather insane to demand admissions changes in order to increase attendance at mythical future football bowl games.

[Guest]

2. Miami doesn't travel well -- heck, they practically never sell out the OB -- but bowl committees still invite the Hurricanes.  Any ideas why?

Miami actually travels very well -- they just don't have the best home attendance. There's a few reasons for this, mainly that as a private school, Miami's alums are generally more widely spread geographically to the degree that it's not easy for them to make weekly trips back to Coral Gables but the annual bowl game is a natch.

They sold less than 10,000 tickets to the Peach Bowl against LSU... Miami fans only go to BCS games... if they play in the Meineke Car Care Bowl against Navy, they won't send much more than 5,000 fans.