Attendance at Bowl Games

Attendance figures for the 40 Bowl Games played so far are down about 5% from last year, which amounts to 86k fewer seats filled at the various games.  Four of the five games with the lowest overall attendance involved MAC teams - though to be fair, Eastern Michigan played in the Bahamas at a stadium with the seating capacity of 15k.  The other poorly attended game involved the exciting matchup between Maryland and Boston College.  They played in Detroit at Ford Field (capacity 65k), and the attendance was slightly above 19k or 30% capacity.

The news isn't all bad though.  The Rose Bowl game between USC and Penn State had over 95k spectators (helps to have a popular local team playing), while the two playoff venues (Peach and Fiesta) had attendance above 70k.  Even the Music City Bowl drew 68,496 - but again, you had a local team (Tennessee) playing another historic program (Nebraska) whose fan base travels well.

In my opinion, the bowl system is just too saturated and could use some thinning out - by about 15 games...