For those interested...bowl game attendance

[TaleofTwoDogs]

The top 15 bowl games official attendance (not including playoff and the Rose Bowl)

1 Gator 67,383
2 Orange 63,912
3 Alamo 62,730
4 Sugar 60,437
5 Cheez-it 61,520
6 Cotton 55,329
7 Texas 53,251
8 Liberty 52,847
9. Celebration 49,670 (HBCU SWAC vs MEAC)
10 Citrus 42,791
11 Music City 42,312
12 Sun Bowl 41,104
13 Duke's Mayo 37,228
14 Holiday 36,242
15 ReliaQuest 35,797

If you think we don't travel well, there's North Carolina State in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. The bowl is played in Charlotte, NC. Several of the top bowls had boosted attendance because of an in-state team or a classic match-up.
Most of the other "smaller" bowls (about 25 of them) had attendance between 10K and 25K.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

Monday January 2nd is a tough day for a bowl game and the opponent for MSU sucked.

 

[AstroDog]

I was at the game and from a visual check, it looked like Illinois had about 20K and we (MSU) had about 15K. Definitely more Orange in the stadium vs Maroon/Black. Upper decks on both sides basically empty and Illinois outnumbered us primarily in one endzone. It was my first time in that stadium and the 3 things I liked about it compared to say....the Liberty Bowl was the weather is usually warmer than Memphis (not always though), they had all chairbacks, and lots of escalators which helped my bad knee from having to go up a lot of steps/ramps. However, our games in the Liberty usually double our crowd size resulting in more excitement/crowd noise, the drive to Memphis is shorter for most our fans (costs are much less), and for me (with no kids)....the beaches did nothing for me and I would just have rather been down at Beale St. throwing down some barbeque, beer, and listening to some Blues at BB Kings or Blues City Cafe. And if the Grizzlies are in town for a game that week, it's an added bonus for the fans and especially our players. Tampa has no NBA team. (would have to drive a couple hours to Orlando to see some basketball). Payout is higher for the Tampa bowl, but after you figure in all the team travel expenses, etc., we end up with about equal take home, since costs are so much less at the Liberty. I had a good time in Tampa and would like to make the rounds to different bowls every year if we could.

 

[greenbean.sixpack]

Monday January 2nd is a tough day for a bowl game and the opponent for MSU sucked.

No doubt, I had several friends who would have gone had it been late December. Several folks are busy at work to kick off the year.

 

[Maroon13]

Excuses excuses. State fans attended home games poorly this year. We had as many fans at the Egg Bowl as Tulsa had in Oxford for their game. Something was off last year.

I dnk if people just didn't like this team or to easy to sit at home. I tend to believe the underlying problem is older alumni are in fact getting old and attending less with no younger alumni stepping up. Younger alumni are choosing to do other things, watch on tv and root for other teams.

 

[FlotownDawg]

Excuses excuses. State fans attended home games poorly this year. We had as many fans at the Egg Bowl as Tulsa had in Oxford for their game. Something was off last year.

I dnk if people just didn't like this team or to easy to sit at home. I tend to believe the underlying problem is older alumni are in fact getting old and attending less with no younger alumni stepping up. Younger alumni are choosing to do other things, watch on tv and root for other teams.

I really think a lot of fans just didn’t like the Air Raid offense because it is so different than the “culture” of football in Mississippi, which is run the ball/smash mouth. I don’t think I’d ever seen so much bitching about a team that won nine games and will finish ranked in the top 20 in all my life. Also, MSU has a small fan base and it’s a long way to travel to a Florida bowl game. We usually have much better attendance at the Liberty or Music City bowls because they’re closer and lots of folks can drive to them.

 

[aTotal360]

Monday January 2nd is a tough day for a bowl game and the opponent for MSU sucked.

They traveled better than we did.

 

[FlotownDawg]

Our lack of attendance for bowl games might hurt us when it comes to future bowl selections. The two Outback/Reliaquest bowls we have played in are the two lowest attended in their history. If it’s possible for us to get passed over in the future, we probably will for a team with a larger fan base that travels well.

 

[Leeshouldveflanked]

They traveled better than we did.

Illinois Population 12.5 Million
Mississippi Population 2.9 Million

 

[Maroon13]

I think we always get screwed regarding bowl selection. See 1994 and maybe there is more recent examples.

But my question is, was the Mullen era the exception regarding our home attendance? I remember the first real drop off in home attendance was the KState game in 2019. 11am, hot... very poor crowd.

I can't remember the Croom years. I think I purposely blocked those out. But I remember the 80s and we had about 20k a game. Obviously the Jackie years that number went way up for most games but still only a few sell outs here and there.

So.... is a 70-80% full stadium the best we can do? (With a 60k stadium)

 

[GloryDawg]

Both fan bases were 12 hours plus away. The airlines were being shut down due to cold. It was a Monday 2nd game. The citrus bowl only had what 7 thousand more. They were in the exact situation. They also had the parks as a incentive to attend.

 

[Ranchdawg]

I really think a lot of fans just didn’t like the Air Raid offense because it is so different than the “culture” of football in Mississippi, which is run the ball/smash mouth. I don’t think I’d ever seen so much bitching about a team that won nine games and will finish ranked in the top 20 in all my life. Also, MSU has a small fan base and it’s a long way to travel to a Florida bowl game. We usually have much better attendance at the Liberty or Music City bowls because they’re closer and lots of folks can drive to them.

Sorry, gotta call bs on this. I went to the Orange Bowl during the Mullen years and we had less than about 10k at that game. If you are only going to support a team because they run your style of football then you aren't really a fan. You are a narcissist that expects everyone to honor your will or else. We don't need fans like that and some of them have started pulling for other teams.

I agree that we have more fans show up at closer bowls. A lot of people ended up working on the 2nd or they worked on the 3rd and travel was difficult. Speaking for myself, we didn't go because we we low on cash due to the higher cost of groceries, fuel, medical and electic bills. We talked about going but the costs were prohibitive when we ran the numbers. It seems that we are being squeezed financially on all sides lately. Everywhere you look companies are increasing their prices to offset their costs.

 

[Walkthedawg]

Monday January 2nd is a tough day for a bowl game and the opponent for MSU sucked.

For attendance it is. I would have been there with bell in hand if it was NYE or NYD. But there was no way I could swing making it back in time for the office reopening

I’ll just have to plan better next year if it looks like the bowl could be in the same time slot.

 

[kired]

Monday January 2nd is a tough day for a bowl game and the opponent for MSU sucked.

Any other day before Monday and my family would have been there. This is the first bowl game I missed (other than 2020) since I enrolled at MSU. Wife had to be at work Tuesday morning so I'd have had to drive literally all night to get back home. Hate we had to miss it.

 

[MSUDC11-2.0]

I think we always get screwed regarding bowl selection. See 1994 and maybe there is more recent examples.

But my question is, was the Mullen era the exception regarding our home attendance? I remember the first real drop off in home attendance was the KState game in 2019. 11am, hot... very poor crowd.

I can't remember the Croom years. I think I purposely blocked those out. But I remember the 80s and we had about 20k a game. Obviously the Jackie years that number went way up for most games but still only a few sell outs here and there.

So.... is a 70-80% full stadium the best we can do? (With a 60k stadium)

There were a lot of things we did EXTREMELY well in terms of marketing during the Mullen era that we don’t do as well at anymore (we at one time had both Byrne and Stricklin on our staff so it makes sense we could market well then). Granted, I do think it’s harder for everyone to fill their stadiums than it was 10-12 years ago.

 

[Seinfeld]

Monday January 2nd is a tough day for a bowl game and the opponent for MSU sucked.

Completely agree. Between the date, location(not many can just drive to Tampa), and the fact that it wasn’t exactly a sexy matchup, I’m pleased with the number

 

[L4Dawg]

Excuses excuses. State fans attended home games poorly this year. We had as many fans at the Egg Bowl as Tulsa had in Oxford for their game. Something was off last year.

I dnk if people just didn't like this team or to easy to sit at home. I tend to believe the underlying problem is older alumni are in fact getting old and attending less with no younger alumni stepping up. Younger alumni are choosing to do other things, watch on tv and root for other teams.

Going to a game is a chore. Every move we have made to do with the game day experience over the last 15 years has made it more of a chore, and a more expensive chore at that. If you keep putting obstacles on a path, fewer people will choose that path. People have more choices today.

 

[HomeBoyDawg]

I think the reality/perception that the Dawgs have given a half @SS effort in several bowl games over the past say 10 years impacts attendance.

 

[Dawgbite]

There were a lot of things we did EXTREMELY well in terms of marketing during the Mullen era that we don’t do as well at anymore (we at one time had both Byrne and Stricklin on our staff so it makes sense we could market well then). Granted, I do think it’s harder for everyone to fill their stadiums than it was 10-12 years ago.

I think a lot of the attendance problem is that the University Administration has discouraged fans from attending home games, much less bowl games. For twenty years I never missed a game and this year I didn’t attend a single one. It wasn’t frustration with the team or the coaching style, it was aggravation at how the university and BDC treat the fans. I think Cohen really dropped the ball and destroyed the excitement that Byrne and Stricklin had built among the fan base. It may just be a coincidence and Covid and inflation definitely attributed to it but a lot of people have checked out of the in person game experience.

 

[UpTheMiddlex3Punt]

There were a lot of things we did EXTREMELY well in terms of marketing during the Mullen era that we don’t do as well at anymore (we at one time had both Byrne and Stricklin on our staff so it makes sense we could market well then). Granted, I do think it’s harder for everyone to fill their stadiums than it was 10-12 years ago.

I think we were one of the first, if not the first, to put a hashtag on the field (#hailstate in the end zone). People thought it was cheesy at the time but it was very forward thinking.

The AD's office also read the Pack back then.

 

[Car Ramrod.sixpack]

I would have been there if the game wasn't on the 2nd and it seems like a lot of fans were in my shoes. In order to make the bowl in Tampa we needed to take at least one vacation day in 2023. It's hard for me to burn a day this early in the year. If the game would have been on NYD or earlier we would have been there. I held onto my last 2 vacation days to either go to the Vegas bowl or the Texas bowl but would up going hunting instead.

 

[doglegs]

Illinois Population 12.5 Million
Mississippi Population 2.9 Million

They also have a much larger student body and alumni base. I think 55,000+ enrollment compared to 22,000+ for us.

 

[lazlow]

The top 15 bowl games official attendance (not including playoff and the Rose Bowl)

1 Gator 67,383
2 Orange 63,912
3 Alamo 62,730
4 Sugar 60,437
5 Cheez-it 61,520
6 Cotton 55,329
7 Texas 53,251
8 Liberty 52,847
9. Celebration 49,670 (HBCU SWAC vs MEAC)
10 Citrus 42,791
11 Music City 42,312
12 Sun Bowl 41,104
13 Duke's Mayo 37,228
14 Holiday 36,242
15 ReliaQuest 35,797

If you think we don't travel well, there's North Carolina State in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. The bowl is played in Charlotte, NC. Several of the top bowls had boosted attendance because of an in-state team or a classic match-up.
Most of the other "smaller" bowls (about 25 of them) had attendance between 10K and 25K.

Damn, that many LSU & Purdue fans showed-up for a blow-out game that had the same crappy day & time slot we had? Impressive.

 

[Perd Hapley]

I was at the game and from a visual check, it looked like Illinois had about 20K and we (MSU) had about 15K.

This tracks almost exactly to what our attendance and Iowa’s attendance was in 2018.

We have a base attendance for bowl games of about 15k that will be at any bowl game anywhere. But for anything that isn’t Memphis, Nashville, or (heaven forbid) Birmingham, and maybe Houston….the base is about all we are going to get. Has nothing to do with “traveling well”, marketing, who won the Egg Bowl, or any other nonsense. We just don’t have a huge fanbase and there’s no getting around that.

 

[The Cooterpoot]

We lack leadership in the athletic dept, costs have soared, bad date, terrible offense, and yes, we suck as fans a bit. There's no denying it. But, we sold our allotment of tickets from what I was told. Allotments weren't huge.

 

[Fishsqeezer]

People just have not returned to attend games in the numbers prior to Covid, people found other things to do in 2020. I think I’ve read it’s a trend for most of college football

 

[LordMcBuckethead]

Excuses excuses. State fans attended home games poorly this year. We had as many fans at the Egg Bowl as Tulsa had in Oxford for their game. Something was off last year.

I dnk if people just didn't like this team or to easy to sit at home. I tend to believe the underlying problem is older alumni are in fact getting old and attending less with no younger alumni stepping up. Younger alumni are choosing to do other things, watch on tv and root for other teams.

Lack of Hope for something good to happen in our games. When you come out and are completely flat for 6 games of the year.... fans don't want to spend money and more importantly their time on that crap. Even if you live in the town.

 

[aTotal360]

Illinois Population 12.5 Million
Mississippi Population 2.9 Million

That’s part of my point. They have almost as many grads students as we have undergrad. I find it hilarious that MSU wants to blame the opponent when we are likely the weakest link.

 

[FlotownDawg]

Lack of Hope for something good to happen in our games. When you come out and are completely flat for 6 games of the year.... fans don't want to spend money and more importantly their time on that crap. Even if you live in the town.

Lack of hope in a team that won nine games, won the Egg Bowl on the road and will finish in the top 20 in the country. My God. Please go cheer for Alabama or Georgia.

 

[Darryl Steight]

Illinois Population 12.5 Million
Mississippi Population 2.9 Million

So we really had nearly 4x as many people there, per capita. Impressive!**

 

[TaleofTwoDogs]

So we really had nearly 4x as many people there, per capita. Impressive!**

Good point.

 

[maroonmania]

With all the opt outs and transfer portal guys and everything else going on in college football its hard to blame any fan that bypasses an exhibition bowl game played with whatever roster for the team is still available. If I was going to ding someone it would be for not attending regular season home games versus not attending a bowl game. At this point, if you aren't in the CFP, then the bowl games are somewhat meaningless other than filling up TV time slots. When the 12 team playoff hits it will get even worse.