This football season there were 35 bowl games — many of them thinly veiled variations on a Your Name Here, This Space For Rent and sandwich board theme. Somehow, there was no 1-800-ASK-GARY Bowl. Yet.
Amid a welter of such diluted product, it’s easy to lose track of those bowls that haven’t lost luster over the years. To wit: our own Outback Bowl, whose roots date to the 1980s. This year the Urban Meyer-Joe Paterno marquee matchup, which also included Florida and Penn State, was an unqualified New Year’s Day success. The 60,000-plus crowd was 20,000 more than any Bucs game drew, and the weather was chamber-of-commerce perfect.
And now we know the TV numbers were almost off the charts. Although in direct competition with Orlando’s Capital One Bowl and Jacksonville’s Gator Bowl, the Outback on ABC drew the second highest rating–7.05–for any college football game on broadcast television this season. It equates to approximately 12.5 million viewers.
That’s a lot of folks, including many watching in frost-bitten northern venues, who didn’t just see Meyer’s Gators defeat Paterno’s Nittany Lions. They also viewed all those network cutaway shots of sailboats, beaches and a waterfront skyline. Just the sort of national marketing bonanza no chamber could ever afford.