Bowl Attendance Is Dropping

Bowl attendance is dropping, according to an analysis released Sunday by USA Today. Through this year's first 19 bowl games, attendance is down by an average of 3,138, and six games have seen drops of at least 5,000. The article said that as bowls proliferate and some teams seem to be playing a bowl game every year, fans are unwilling to spend what it costs to travel to a second-tier bowl to root for a team that had an off year (but still won a bowl bid). Last week's Military Bowl, in Washington, had attendance of 17,835 -- the lowest for any bowl game since USA Today started tracking bowl attendance in 2004-5.