ASU hosts the Pac 12 Championship game, as it's not at a neutral site.

So, here's a chance to see if playing for home field advantage works for another conference. Frankly, it still looks bush league to me, and has additional controversy since ASU is hosting, but lost to Stanfraud earlier.

Finally, if I understand correctly, the game will be broadcast exclusively on the Pac 12 Network. I understand trying to lure people to your network, but that cuts down significantly on viewers across the country.

At this point, I'd say that the PAC 12 is making all sorts of bad decisions.

It's not as big of a deal that they host their championship game as long as it's a championship atmosphere. Last year's CC at Stanford was pathetic, for their sake they better hope ASU packs the stands. The west coast may not have great December weather in some places, but it's good enough and the schools are big enough that they have no excuse to look like the P5 version of the C-USA. Then again, it's hard to choose a neutral site. Every game will require at least one fan base to fly, that's recipe for disaster. It would look terrible for them to have a Utah/Washington State game in front of 20,000 people in San Francisco.

Also agree on your assessment of their TV situation, they're going to be buried behind the SEC, Big Ten, etc. just because of exposure.

Last year's PAC12 championship game at Stanford had attendance of 31k - about 2/3 capacity.

Neutral site venues are a waste unless its the SEC.

(12-01-2013 11:30 AM)HuskieRak Wrote:  Neutral site venues are a waste unless its the SEC.

While the first two Big Ten championship games were attendance flops, the OSU-Michigan State game is going to be a good one in Indy. Just looking at Stubhub, less than 3,000 tickets are available and the starting price is $120 ... and most expensive is $10,000 (good luck with that). But it looks like all the club seats available are $500 and up.

Here's a look at demand via stub hub.

The BCS leagues:

Big Ten: 2,913 available. Lowest are $135 (one single ticket is up there for $120). Highest is $10,000.

ACC: 3,972 available. Lowest are $10 and highest is $999.

SEC: 4,628 available. Lowest are $180 and highest is $24,000 (yikes).

Pac 12 game (at Arizona State). 3,127 available. Lowest is $52 and highest is $1,000.

The non BCS games:

MAC (Detroit): 0 tickets available. SELLOUT! Anybody know what the deal is, nothing comes up when I type in Bowling Green or Northern Illinois, either? I know plenty of good seats are available being that it's in a 60,000 seat stadium. But I figured some of the premo seats would have shown up. Though maybe that means that NIU and BG fans already have gobbled all those up and aren't selling.

Mountain West (at Fresno State). 410 available. Lowest is $20 and highest is $175. Makes sense that so little remain. It's a home game and Fresno has either sold out, or come close to selling out, its 41,000 seat stadium all year.

CUSA (at Rice). 13 available. Lowest is $58. Highest is $75. All 13 are lower 50-yardline tickets. Like the MAC (even though its a home game), its being played in a big stadium, so plenty of good seats will be available at the gate. But surprising that there are some tickets on stub hub (though it could be Rice fans trying to off these premo tickets to Marshall fans).

Overall, these championship games seem like a mixed bag in terms of demand.

For this year, the Big Ten and SEC are in huge demand, and it makes sense to play it on a neutral field.

The ACC game, which has been an abomination, is being saved being that its in Charlotte and Duke is there, along with a Florida State team that is going for a title-game appearance. Still, seeing that there are a ton of seats available for dirt cheap (hundreds for less than $15 on stubhub) shows that the ACC may be better off going the Pac 12 rout. This is the league's perfect storm and it's only going to be respectable at best.

The Pac 12 obviously made the right decision to play it at a host site. The demand for that game is somewhere between the ACC and Big Ten. The only realistic "neutral" stadium would be Candlestick, and even with Stanford playing in the game, doubt demand would be nearly as high as it is at ASU.

As for the non-BCS schools. The Mountain West is going to benefit from it being at Fresno State (big stadium with a big fan base). Like the Pac 12, they could put it in Candlestick (San Fran) ... or even Qualcom (San Diego), but it would sap attendance big time. The league is so spread out, it's tough to travel.

Same with CUSA. While, technically, having the game at Relient would be no different than having it at Rice this year, since a Houston team is involved. But if it was say Marshall/ECU vs. Tulsa, a game in Houston would be a ghost town. Again, CUSA has to have it at a host site.

The MAC is really the only non-BCS league that could realistically hold the title game at a neutral site, NFL stadium, due to how compact the league is. For the most part, Ford Field (even if half empty) will draw as well as a home team's capacity. ... and this year, probably more. Plus, playing a game in the NFL stadium gives a "big-time" feel ... hence why the SEC has been doing it for years, even though every team in the league has a capable stadium to hold a game of this magnitude. Unless the games in Detroit start drawing 10,000, it's the best venue for the game. ... Kind of like the Q in Cleveland for hoops.

Overall, for both football and basketball, the league has made the right choice by bringing its title games to professional venues.

There has never been much of a secondary market for MAC games, especially the MACC. Unless someone wants to sell tickets at way below face value, it's a waste of time to try and sell them on StubHub when they are so easily obtained elsewhere.

(12-04-2013 03:38 AM)Wadszip Wrote:  MAC (Detroit): 0 tickets available. SELLOUT! Anybody know what the deal is, nothing comes up when I type in Bowling Green or Northern Illinois, either? I know plenty of good seats are available being that it's in a 60,000 seat stadium. But I figured some of the premo seats would have shown up. Though maybe that means that NIU and BG fans already have gobbled all those up and aren't selling.

Ok..yep, I'm skeptical when I read that statement...lol! I'm glad to see you are skeptical of this, as well....

It would be one thing for the bowl game to sellout (which it hasn't-even though we have had good attendance in some games), but the MACC? I couldn't believe it....so, I went searching...and for whatever reason could not find any tickets on ticketmaster. Then I thought, let me go to the official website, which directed me to purchase tickets from Detroit Lions.com and there were definitely seats available for purchase ($10/$15/$20). Can't get a feel for how many are left, but there's is no way that the MACC "sellouts" in a stadium that size.

As far as using stub hub to determine supply/demand...everyone using that cite is trying to turn a profit (I've used it as a seller). You're not going to intentionally purchase and try to flip tickets to events that you don't think will net you a profit, which is why I wouldn't expect to see many (if any) tickets for the MACC on there....

One corrections guys: It is not on the PAC-12 Network. That's only 3rd tier rights stuff. It will now rotate between Fox and ESPN/ABC. This year it's on ESPN.

I've also read that they are covering up a lot of the Arizona State stuff and putting PAC-12 stuff in its place. I guess they want it to feel like a neutral game, but given it's not, I'm not sure the point of that.

(12-04-2013 07:24 AM)wleakr Wrote:  

(12-04-2013 03:38 AM)Wadszip Wrote:  MAC (Detroit): 0 tickets available. SELLOUT! Anybody know what the deal is, nothing comes up when I type in Bowling Green or Northern Illinois, either? I know plenty of good seats are available being that it's in a 60,000 seat stadium. But I figured some of the premo seats would have shown up. Though maybe that means that NIU and BG fans already have gobbled all those up and aren't selling.

Ok..yep, I'm skeptical when I read that statement...lol! I'm glad to see you are skeptical of this, as well....

It would be one thing for the bowl game to sellout (which it hasn't-even though we have had good attendance in some games), but the MACC? I couldn't believe it....so, I went searching...and for whatever reason could not find any tickets on ticketmaster. Then I thought, let me go to the official website, which directed me to purchase tickets from Detroit Lions.com and there were definitely seats available for purchase ($10/$15/$20). Can't get a feel for how many are left, but there's is no way that the MACC "sellouts" in a stadium that size.

As far as using stub hub to determine supply/demand...everyone using that cite is trying to turn a profit (I've used it as a seller). You're not going to intentionally purchase and try to flip tickets to events that you don't think will net you a profit, which is why I wouldn't expect to see many (if any) tickets for the MACC on there....

I also use stub hub myself, both as a buyer and seller. I wasn't expecting to see a huge amount of tickets on there since they are so easily attainable at the gate. But I was a bit surprised that none of the marquee seats are turning up ... even the CUSA game has "13" tickets available, and they are all lower 50-yard line seats, IE the "demand" tickets.

To me, that either means demand is virtually zero. Even for a MAC title game in an NFL stadium, that seems hard to believe, especially since NIU is going for back-to-back BCS games and Bowling Green (hour or so from Detroit) is going to be there.

I'm thinking that there could be a secondary market (only for the top-tier seats), but the fans of the two schools have already gobbled those up and are planning on going, and have no interest in selling. ... though it's still a little surprising that 0 tickets show up.

I guess we'll see when the attendance numbers are released. But based on what the secondary market is showing (and I didn't look up ticketmaster, thanks for doing that), I'm cautiously optimistic that there will be 30,000-plus there. I'm going to look at it from the glass half full side and stick to the lack of secondary market is being due to the high demand of the best seats (which are already sold out).

If so, at least for this year, would support the league's assertion that it can play its title game in a "big-boy" stadium and still draw numbers. ... or at least numbers that no "host" school could match. ... kind of like the basketball scenario I posted in another thread.

Maybe an NIU or BG fan could add more to how well ticket sales are going.

conference championship games for football in general are dumb ideas basically intended to create tv revenue. they degrade the value of the big regular season games and place too much emphasis on defining an ultimate champion. i.e. obviously the game of the year in SEC was the auburn-Alabama game - for several reasons. the game of the year for osu and Michigan was the big game last week in ann arbor. those are the games players and fans will remember. the conference championship games just take those kids out of class as finals approach and take the game away from campus where it belongs. they also extend the season by a week and delay most of the bowl decisions which means plane travel to early bowls is at the airlines' highest rates and fans have little chance to plan the trip.

is there any doubt NIU is the mac's best team? why are we even bothering w BG playing them when they are the league's 4th best squad?

I guess i'm old fashioned but I'm perfectly fine with a regular season of college football games played on campus on Saturdays without 5 minute delays for every close call to be reviewed and an extra 2 minutes of stoppage every change of possession and score so TV can make their ad money.

(12-05-2013 03:25 AM)pono Wrote:  is there any doubt NIU is the mac's best team? why are we even bothering w BG playing them when they are the league's 4th best squad?

There have been upsets of the "best" team before in the MACC, so if NIU really is the best, there shouldn't be any issues proving it against any team...

(12-05-2013 02:15 AM)Wadszip Wrote:  I guess we'll see when the attendance numbers are released. But based on what the secondary market is showing (and I didn't look up ticketmaster, thanks for doing that), I'm cautiously optimistic that there will be 30,000-plus there. I'm going to look at it from the glass half full side and stick to the lack of secondary market is being due to the high demand of the best seats (which are already sold out).

We've never had 30k plus for the MACC, which is not to say that it couldn't happen...the best years for attendance involved Central Michigan (varies from 20-28k)...last year with BCS implications was 18K...so, it's probably safe to say with BGSU as a "local" that attendance will be between 18-28K...