At the time, my contact promised to send me bowl ratings and attendance figures for a future article. He came through a few weeks ago, and here we are, at "Inside the Numbers," to take a look.

In 1998, there were 22 bowl games. In 1999, that number increased to 23 (the Mobile Alabama Bowl was added), and in 2000, it went up again to 25 (with the advent of the GalleryFurniture.com and Silicon Valley Classic bowls).

For the 2001 season, the New Orleans Bowl has been added. It will pit Sun Belt and Mountain West teams against each other in the Superdome on December 18th. As of April 27, 2001, 25 bowls had received certification from the NCAA for the 2001 season. The MicronPC Bowl has not been recertified yet, but it is expected to receive recertification, which will make it the 26th bowl for 2001-2002.

But that's a sidebar. The purpose of this latest "Inside the Numbers" article is to see how well Virginia Tech did in both bowl ratings and bowl attendance during the 1998-2000 time period. We'll present statistics for TV ratings, attendance, and attendance as a percentage of stadium capacity to see how well the Hokies stacked up.

First, here's a reminder of how to interpret TV ratings.

Availability: Free over-the-air network TV (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox) reaches 100 million households. Cable and satellite networks (ESPN, ESPN2) reach 80 million households.

Rating: percentage of households that are watching a network out of those that could watch a network. For example, a 5.0 rating on CBS means that roughly five million households watched the game (5 out of 100). A 5.0 rating on ESPN means that roughly four million households tuned in (4 out of 80).

Share: the percentage of households watching a particular show out of the total number of households that have their televisions turned on at the time.

Households (HH): the number of "houses" that were actually watching, in other words a raw, numerical measure of the number of viewing households, as opposed to Rating and Share, which are percentages. Household data is expressed in thousands, so an HH=2500 is 2.5 million households.

Example: The 2000 Big XII Championship game aired in prime time on ABC, had a rating of 8.2, a share of 14.8, and the number of households was 8,366,000. This means that the total number of households that had a television on during that time was about 55,500,000 (8.3 million out of 55.5 million is about 14.8%), thus deriving an audience share of 14.8. (Exact percentages will be off due to rounding and actual number of households in the U.S.)

Tech played in the inaugural Music City Bowl against Alabama in 1998, wiping out the Tide 38-7 in a romp that kicked off the present-day Hokie hysteria. The 1998 "MCB," as it is affectionately called by Hokie fans, was played in Vanderbilt's stadium, which had a capacity of 41,000. The bowl has since moved to Adelphia Coliseum, the 67,000-seat venue that serves as the home of the Tennessee Titans.

Here are the TV ratings, attendance, and percentage of capacity figures for the Music City Bowl since its inception:

It's hard to say how many people would have attended the 1998 Music City Bowl had the stadium been bigger. Many Hokie and Tide fans could not obtain tickets, due to the huge demand from both schools. Given more space, it's not unreasonable to think that 50,000 to 60,000 fans would have attended the game. We'll never know.

Kentucky traveled very well to the 1999 Music City Bowl, so the attendance figures for 1999 are not a surprise, despite the presence of Syracuse, which travels very poorly. But why a Kentucky-Syracuse matchup drew better TV ratings than Virginia Tech-Alabama is a mystery. The games were both played on December 29th, which fell on a Tuesday in 1998 and a Wednesday in 1999, so the day of the week was not a factor.

For Sugar Bowl attendance and ratings are skewed by the fact that the Sugar Bowl was the national championship game in 1999/2000, but not in the other two years. So for this section, we'll take a look at the Sugar Bowl numbers, but later on, we'll look at national championship game ratings and attendance.

The great attendance and TV ratings for the 1999 championship game are no surprise, because it was the highly-hyped championship game, and it featured a marquee team in Florida State. The Hokies got down early but staged a stirring comeback, ensuring that viewers stayed tuned in.

The attendance figure for last year's Florida-Miami game is pathetic and reinforces the Canes' reputation as a team with fans that don't travel well. According to ESPN.com, the crowd of 64,407 was the smallest to ever watch a Sugar Bowl in the Superdome. Miami sold less than 10,000 of the 15,000 tickets both schools were required to take, while Florida sold all of theirs.

By comparison, the 1995 Sugar Bowl between Virginia Tech and Texas drew 70,283, which was perceived at the time as a low draw. But it was better than last season's Sugar Bowl by nearly 6,000 fans, and it even topped the 1998 attendance figure of 67,289 for Florida State-Ohio State.

This is a very interesting set of data, because the last three Gator Bowls have included Notre Dame, Miami, and Virginia Tech. This gives us a great chance to compare the drawing power and TV ratings power of the three schools.

 

Gator Bowl TV Ratings and Attendance, 1998-2000
Season	Capacity	Teams	Attendance	% Cap.	Rating	Share	HH
1998	76,940	Notre Dame - Georgia Tech	70,791	92%	6.4	13.4	6333
1999	76,940	Georgia Tech - Miami	43,416	56%	3.8	8.3	3865
2000	76,940	Clemson - Virginia Tech	68,741	89%	4.8	9.8	4943

This table is more proof for two widely-held theories: (1) Notre Dame does very well in the television ratings; and (2) Miami doesn't travel well at all. Actually, I'm going to promote item #2 from "theory" to "fact."

The attendance figures from the 1998 ND-GT matchup show that not only is Notre Dame a good draw for their own fans, but they draw fans from the other school, as well. When GT was matched up with the Canes the next year, attendance plummeted, due to Miami's inability to bring fans and the fact that GT was playing in the game for the second year in a row. Not to mention that Notre Dame and Georgia Tech both have long, storied football traditions, and to the average GT fan, that holds more appeal than a matchup with Miami.

The Clemson-VT game was well attended for obvious reasons. Number one, it was perceived as a great matchup between Virginia Tech QB Michael Vick and Clemson QB Woody Dantzler (it turned out to be a mismatch instead). Number two, both sets of fans travel well, enjoy playing against each other, and have mutual respect for each other's programs. Number three, Michael Vick was playing in the game (hence, the good TV ratings).

All in all, there are no surprises in the Gator Bowl data.

Now let's put the 1999 Sugar Bowl (VT-FSU) up against the 1998 Fiesta Bowl (UT-FSU) and the 2000 Orange Bowl (OK-FSU). I realize I'm misstating the bowl years, but I'm referring to the seasons they applied to, not the actual calendar years they were played in.

Again, no surprises here -- great TV ratings and jam-packed stadiums. The BCS championship game appears to be building momentum as it gets older and ABC/Disney gets better and better at hyping it (they should just rename the ESPN network to BCSPN during the month of December, the way the boys in Bristol constantly hype the college championship).

As an aside, I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty bored with watching FSU play for the national championship. I'm also having trouble getting over the fact that Tennessee figured it out in 1998 and Oklahoma figured it out in 2000, but the Hokies didn't figure it out in 1999. What's "it"? How to beat FSU for the national championship, of course.

Yep, that lost Sugar Bowl game still haunts me.

The remainder of this article is three tables showing the following figures for the last three years: (1) top 20 bowl crowds (number of fans) of the last three years; (2) top 20 bowl crowds (as a percent of capacity) of the last three years; and (3) top 20 rated bowls (in terms of TV households) of the last three years.

Please note when viewing the following tables that the three-year span covered includes 70 bowl games.

The top 20 game crowds break down to 3 each of the Rose, Fiesta, Orange, and Peach Bowls; 2 each of the Sugar, Cotton, and Gator Bowls; 1 Citrus Bowl; and 1 Outback Bowl.

The only team to appear in the list for all 3 years is FSU. Teams appearing twice are Tennessee, Wisconsin, Michigan, VT, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Mississippi State, and Texas.

Virginia Tech's 1998 Music City Bowl with Alabama, which was viewed by 41,000 fans, came in 50th on the list.

A quick scan of the top 10 reveals what games are consistently packed:

1.) National championship games
2.) Texas in the Cotton Bowl
3.) The Rose Bowl
4.) The Peach Bowl

After that, it's a hodge-podge populated by teams that travel well, big-name bowls, and bowls with small capacities that happen to hit on a compelling regional matchup.

Virginia Tech appears twice on the list for the 1998 MCB and the 1999 Sugar Bowl. The 2000 Gator Bowl, at 89% capacity, finished at 39th out of 70 bowls.

As expected, the three national championship games are at the top, winning by a significant margin. They all pulled Ratings in the 17's.

What happens next is interesting: the Rose Bowl games (none of which have been national championship games -- next year's Rose Bowl will be the first time it rotates through as the championship) form a second tier (4-6) Rated in the 13's and 14's. They are matched in that second tier only by last year's Sugar Bowl between Florida and Miami, with a 13.0 Rating. It finishes #7 on our list.

I find that interesting because it supports the notion that the Miami Hurricanes draw good television ratings. That's not to discredit the Florida Gators, because they're a good TV draw, too, and that Sugar Bowl was helped by the fact that Miami had an outside shot at the national championship. But nonetheless, I think it's noteworthy that last year's Sugar Bowl was the only non-championship, non-Rose-Bowl game to pull a Rating of 13 or higher.

After that, bowls 8-10 form a third tier of BCS bowls that pulled Ratings around 11. From that point on, bowls 11-20 all have Ratings lower than 10.

Virginia Tech appears in the list twice, at #2 and #18. VT's Music City Bowl appearance, with a rating of 2.4 (1.841 million households), finished #52 out of 70 bowls.

As always, the data used in this report can be viewed as an HTML document or downloaded as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

To view the data in your web browser as an HTML document go here:

http://www.techsideline.com/tslextra/issue007/footballbowlratings2000.htm

MS Excel File (Excel 97 compatible):

http://www.techsideline.com/tslextra/issue007/footballbowlratings2000.xls

(Right-click the link and do a "Save Link As" or "Save Target As" to save the Excel file to disk.)

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