Pat Dooley's article on Fan attendence at Sugar Bowl

[Panhandle Gator]

I know this is old news but this idea that UF fans were so lame for the Sugar Bowl is a little irritating. I get that the stadium wasn't full, but as one of the many Gator fans there last Wednesday, I disagree that UF fans didn't show up.

I didn't want to pay $135 face value for a UF Athletic Department issued ticket, so, like everyone else I talked to, I purchased my tickets from some corporate receipient, or speculator waiting on the next BCS championship game through Stub Hub for $70 dollars. I got a much better seat for half the price.

Technically I wasn't credited to UF, nor were the multitude of Gators around me, but there were at least 15,000 UF fans there.

[Jabberdave]

If anyone is to blame, it would be those that have caused prices to be extreme. I could go buy a mac daddy (apologies for using technical terms) HD TV for less than a trip to the Sugar would cost and watch the game in 3D HD UPI.

Besides, with the BCS champ game belonging to the SEC champ, the also-rans from the SEC that make it to the Sugar really don't care anymore, same for their fans. It is a shame, but that is what it be.

[Panhandle Gator]

BCS bowl sites have lofty face value ticket prices because they each get the big game once every four years.

They require patrons to renew for the less valuable years to be able to purchase for the big game.

So, you have a lot of speculators holding tickets to a game that they have no interest in attending in anticipation of scalping the BCS Championship Game. That creates artificially high demand for tickets that don't have butts in seats for the non BCS games.

The result is, when fans get their letter from UF inviting them to buy tickets for $135, they say...no thank you!

[Mikhail]

Perhaps those non-attendee fans knew something you didn't....as in the final score.

[IDGAC]

Perhaps those non-attendee fans knew something you didn't....as in the final score.

I hope they booked bets

[Deuce Coupe]

I'm a loser, in several ways.

[SavannahGator]

I know this is old news but this idea that UF fans were so lame for the Sugar Bowl is a little irritating. I get that the stadium wasn't full, but as one of the many Gator fans there last Wednesday, I disagree that UF fans didn't show up.

I didn't want to pay $135 face value for a UF Athletic Department issued ticket, so, like everyone else I talked to, I purchased my tickets from some corporate receipient, or speculator waiting on the next BCS championship game through Stub Hub for $70 dollars. I got a much better seat for half the price.

Technically I wasn't credited to UF, nor were the multitude of Gators around me, but there were at least 15,000 UF fans there.

This isn't just true for bowl games. If you think about it, you could use StubHub to purchase decent tickets at a reduced price for each and every UF home game. You might never sit in the same place twice, but you'd be in The Swamp.

I go to two games per year, via tickets my Gator Club purchases through block seating (in 2012 was LSU and Mizzou - yes, I was shocked that LSU tix were available via this method, usually "primo" games are not, but that's what 7-6 in 2011 and 8-5 in 2010 do to UF ticket sales).

But in 2011, I went to the Furman game via StubHub. You may scoff at that, but my son and I had NEVER sat in the Champion's Club deck, and we were able to score two tix for those seats @ $65 each. I jumped at what I figured would be a one-time opportunity to sit where we'd never sat before. It was worth the experience, although the game was not exactly what we expected.

This is the nature of the beast these days. For bowl games, anyone who purchases tix through UF is paying a premium they don't have to - and then UF (or any other school) doesn't get "credit" for their fans being in "attendance."

Of course, that doesn't explain the fact that the Sugar Bowl attendance overall was pretty pitiful.

[Gov C Tyree]

Pat is right about the growing "disconnect" with the fans, particularly private season ticket holders. When they added the new seats under the skyboxes (the Champions Club) many if not most of those seats were purchased by corporations or businesses. Those seatholders now get dibs on road game, SEC Championship game, and bowl game tickets before the rest of the season ticket holders do. As a result, several of us who have had our tickets for a long time got Dear John letters from the UAA telling us we could not buy tickets for those games, after we had been getting them for years. Now when it looks like a game needs tickets to be sold, such as this year's Sugar Bowl, the UAA swamps us with emails and letters wanting us to be part of the program again. The game day experience, even at games in the Swamp, needs some work as well. About 3 years ago the UAA made the law school parking lot on game days a parking pass-only lot (and it is never full - even at this year's games against LSU and South Carolina) so a prime tailgating area is now off limits. Also, the U fo F is building a new home for the school president where the Baby Gator nursery used to be, so another tailgating spot will be lost.

I plan on buying my tickets again this year but several in my group have quit because of the growing pain the ... it has become to get to campus on gameday and not feel you are going to get arrested for trespassing.

[oxrageous]

Did Dooley himself even go? Doubt it. If he did, it was on his employers dime.

[oxrageous]

By the way, here's an actual link to the article, since the OP didn't bother to post it.

http://www.gatorsports.com/article/2013 ... Bowl-seats

[WobbleGator]

I was too busy downloading all the great songs Dooley suggested, to go to the game.

[ALPHAGATOR91]

I haven't seen any mention of when the bowl was. It was the Wednesday after new years. I for one took time off between Christmas and New Years, so I had a tough time justifying more time off in going to the game given the opponent and location. I think this plus the cost of the ticket weighed down overall attendance.

[scmike]

I totally agree with Pat and those blasting the school for trying to kiss our a$$e$ when the tickets do not move. I will keep my season tickets, but I no longer try to get away game tickets since UF told most of us to suck eggs a few years ago because we did not have enough booster points.
Yep, it is a free society, and if one is snubbed, turn about is fair play.
Go Gators!

[rogdochar]

Perhaps there is a sizable attendance-dip going from great
team-performance to sluggish style performance. I mean, for
some years there, the UF-mob expected NC type performances.
Also, there's the presence of high-heroes to see "live" ... Tebow,
Harvin, and that "speed kills" breakaway TD runs that could happen
in any game. Bet attendance will begin to climb, when we regain
that fireworks-display offense. Unfortunately, a certain portion of
lost fans will have to be pulled away from their season tickets for
the product-applauding infomercial audience.

[Okeechobee Joe]

I agree with B. B. King. The thrill is gone.

Going to the Sugar Bowl is not what it used to be. Lots of reasons discussed elsewhere here and abroad.

[law98gator]

Even for home games, there are empty seats, lots of them.

Its seems people aren't digging the entertainment value of the 1950s Big 10 offense.

[Maillot Jaune]

I agree with B. B. King. The thrill is gone.

Going to the Sugar Bowl is not what it used to be. Lots of reasons discussed elsewhere here and abroad.

Agree. And playing on a Wednesday night, the 2nd of January, doesn't help either.

[gatordad]

And then having to go to New Orleans and hang out in that godforsaken hell hole of a town...

[oxrageous]

I remember how excited we all were when we got invited to the Sugar Bowl in 1993. I remember our fans throwing packets of sugar all over the place. West Virginia never knew what hit them.

Gator defensive back Lawrence Wright, before the end of the first half, ran himself into every highlight film the Sugar Bowl will ever again produce - straight into the West Virginia end zone and into Florida football lore.

Wright tip-toed his way through the Mountaineers, not once, but twice, in perhaps the most exciting dash in the six-decades-old annals of the Sugar Bowl. Slipping and sliding maybe 120 yards from sideline to sideline on his way to the end zone with an interception - and the touchdown that put Florida ahead for the first time 14-7.

The play was born with West Virginia playing a first-and-10 at its 30-yard line and quarterback Darren Studstill scrambling out of the pocket. Rover Monty Grow fired in on a blitz, zeroed in on Studstill and caught him chest-high just as the ball was being released. Studstill's head shot backward as his mouthpiece flew off to the side.

Grow's shot turned Studstill's pass into a wounded duck that fluttered into the open arms of Wright, who made the Mountaineers dizzy with his broken-field virtuosity that was right out of a game of "touch" and which officially ended 52 yards from the point of the interception.

"That was a key play," Gator coach Steve Spurrier understated.

Indeed. The game was never really close again.

"The shot was definitely one of my best this season," Grow, a 6-foot-3, 222-pound senior, said in explaining how it lifted Florida from early lethargy. "It was a good solid shot, and it felt real sweet. After that hit everybody was smacking each other around before the next play, saying, "C'mon, let's play ball!'"

Wright said simply, "Monty's hit got Studstill rattled. Once you take a big hit like that, you don't focus on the game the same way you normally would."

The route Wright took to Sugar Bowl fame is a story unto itself. Out of high school he had signed not with the Gators but with the Miami Hurricanes, which was no surprise seeing as how he was a blue-chipper out of North Miami High School. But as fate would have it, he didn't have the necessary grades and wound up at a prep school, Valley Forge Military Academy in Fort Wayne, Pa.

When Wright lifted his grades and was ready to re-enter college, his young life took a sudden twist. Because his high school dream was to build a recreation facility in his depressed neighborhood, he decided on the University of Florida, not Miami, when he discovered Florida's School of Building Construction ranked No. 1 in the U.S.

Wright went quickly from being academically suspect to a spot on the SEC's All-Academic Team, thanks to a 3.2 GPA.

As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story of how Lawrence Wright galloped into the Florida Hall of Fame.

It was the second time West Virginia was victimized by the blitz in the first half - one by the Mountaineers themselves - after motoring for an easy first-quarter touchdown. Florida countered with a tying scoring drive in the second period before the pyrotechnics began.

Behind by the margin of Wright's touchdown with less than a minute to play in the half, Mountaineer linebacker Wes Robinson came in on a blitz as Gator quarterback Terry Dean got off a sideline pass to wide receiver Willie Jackson. Jackson had to slow down for the under-thrown ball, and as he jumped for it, West Virginia cornerback Mike Logan slipped. Jackson made the catch near the 20-yard line, then casually trotted into the end zone to complete a 39-yard scoring play with 51 seconds to go until intermission. Florida led 21-7 at the break.

If West Virginia had any serious notions of coming back, they were dispelled in the third quarter when Florida scored twice in the first six minutes to push the lead to 35-7, including a 1-yard run by Errict Rhett, his third touchdown of the game, with 8:58 to go in the third quarter.

"We felt like we were still in it at the half," said West Virginia wide receiver Jay Kearney. "When they scored those two quick touchdowns, that was it. There really wasn't any way we were coming back from that." Spurrier agreed. "After we scored on those first two (second-half) possessions," he analyzed, "we were pretty much in control."

There is one very important coda to this game: Wright eventually became one of the University of Florida's most renowned building construction graduates. And he did build the recreational facility for the kids in his old neighborhood.

[gardnerwebbalumnigator]

Say for instance UF slipped to #5 in the BCS and the Sugar took UGA instead....(1) do you think UGA would have traveled to NO better after the SECC game heartbreak and (2) would UF have sold out their allotment for the Cap One Bowl?