2nd bowl game at Sun Bowl?
- Thread starter FiliUTEP
- Start date
Okay forget getting into AAC or Mountain West. Make a 2 Nd lower bowl and have CUSa vs any other conference.
In the next bowl contracts it is very likely the Sun Bowl will be a g5 bowl. Current contract runs through 2019.
The Sun Bowl always has great attendance. I imagine CBS will keep the game on the air and P5 teams will come here year after year.
If the Sun Bowl keeps the contract with CBS (or even switches to espn one day) and also keeps the rental car tax going and attendance stays good, no reason it would ever become a G5 bowl.
I like the idea. C-USA west team vs at large. Always seems to be plenty of teams available. Attendance would be much lower than for the Sun Bowl but still additional pub for UTEP (because it's on campus), for UTEP's conference and for El Paso. How about the "Old El Paso" food brand being the sponsor even if the brand is owned by General Mills. ESPN loves to televise the smaller bowls too and some of them are played in completely empty stadiums. I doubt the second bowl in El Paso would be completely empty.
Bowls are about much more than attendance. In the end they are all about money. The Sun Bowl is always going to struggle with keeping up payouts. People forget the Sun Bowl was on the verge of being discontinued when Helen of Troy stepped up to be the title sponsor about 8 years ago. The Sun Bowl was lucky again when El Paso elected a mayor with ties to Hyundai. The contract will end in 2019 along with the conference affiliation contract. The Sun Bowl has and will continue to struggle to find a big time title sponsor to keep up the payouts.
The CBS deal will more than likely come to an end. CBS is going in new directions. Just last year they stopped televising the US Open tennis tournament which they had telivised as long as the Sun Bowl. This is Vern Lunquist last season he's synonymous with SEC and the Sun Bowl. It wont be shocking if cbs reires the Sun Bowl with Vern lunquist. Im not sure when the cbs contract ends, I assume its in 2019.
The Sun Bowl also faces a changing landscape. In 2019 there will be brand new Stadiums in LA and Vegas. The Vegas bowl is already equal with the Sun Bowl, but the new stadium will bolt the Vegas bowl light years ahead of the Sun Bowl. Stan kronke isnt spending four billion dollars on a stadium in LA and not putting a bowl game in it. La and Vegas are both destination cities which El Paso isnt.
The final problem is location. The Sun Bowl has continually fallen down the totem pole based mostly on money but also on location. The fact is if bowl were ranked on location the Sun Bowl would rank near the bottom of the list. Schools and their fans dont want to come to El Paso. The Sun Bowl through its history has been supported almost entirety by El Pasoans and local dollars which is a testament to the city. Not being in a destination city has and will continue to hurt the Sun Bowl.
The Sun Bowl will live on its just likely without p5 teams. I think El Paso should seriously consider bidding on the fcs title game. The Sun Bowl would be the biggest stage ever for an fcs itle game. Unlike the Sun Bowl, the fbs titlte game would attract lots of outside money and fans to El Paso. Right now the fcs championship attracts 18,000 fans to Frisco, and that number is held down by the small capacity of the stadium. An FCS championship game,in El Paso would attract 20-25 k fans a year. Most of them would stay more than a day. The economic impact of an fcs championship game in El Paso would be ten times more than that of the Sun Bowl
Great. It's safe to assume we are cancelled on CBS now and will now feature SBC vs MAC schools.
