CHARLOTTE – Long lines to get into the game because fans aren’t used to NFL security. A big traffic jam and wreck on the interstate heading south into the city. Lots of people tailgating who haven’t made it in yet. A lukewarm matchup between two teams who disappointed last season. Ticket prices. An early-evening kick on a weekday. Any of those things could be offered up as to why Bank of America Stadium looked so empty at the start of the 2015 Belk College Kickoff game between North Carolina and South Carolina on Thursday.
But as George Washington once wrote, “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
Neutral site games are taking over, and they’re not going away any time soon. Cities want a chance to showcase marquee football and bring in revenue, and schools want the payday and recruiting bump that comes with playing in a metro area. Neither party necessarily cares if a stadium is half-full, although it lends itself incredibly well to jokes.
“We’re looking for schools that are recruiting the Charlotte market,” Charlotte Sports Foundation Executive Director Will Webb said, “that have very substantial alumni bases here, and who have some degree of travel. It’s a combination of the three.”
Don’t you worry. The folks will have jokes when these kickoff games aren’t played to capacity. Attendance is an issue across college football – not just at neutral sites – and it doesn’t stop a host of national writers week in and week out from tweeting out pictures (either from the games they’re at, or screengrabs) of a stadium with a caption that hilariously reads “lots of fans dressed as empty seats tonight” or “plenty of good seats available.”
The solution hasn’t been found yet. It likely won’t be found anytime soon. Students have lots of things pulling at their attention. Tailgates are more fun, and especially more fun than watching a future 4-8 team get its teeth kicked in by an 8-4 team whose fans think they’re underachieving too, so they don’t bother going to their home games either.
Going to games for the general population is expensive as all getup, and the experience of watching from a giant TV with the food you want, on your couch, with your friends, and lots of beer is really not that bad at all. Plus you’re not stuck sitting in traffic on the way in or out of the stadium.
“I think [neutral site games] are great for the city and it brings in revenue,” former Notre Dame and South Carolina coach and ESPN analyst Lou Holtz said. “But I prefer to have it on campus. Now, if I’m a visiting team, I’d love to see it at a neutral site. Unless you’re playing Notre Dame at a neutral site at the Vatican. The one thing I’d really like to see is some very good teams. I don’t think we have enough good interconference play, and that’s why I wish we’d go to an eight-team playoff. Take the five conference champions, then your nonconference schedule would be tougher. You don’t have to worry about your record and everything else.”
Of course purists would rather have these neutral site games on campus instead. That’s a big part of the fun of college football. The students have a little extra (safe) time to get rowdy. The towns look incredible on television in the afternoon or under the lights. Fans get a chance to get into town, bring their kids to the restaurant they’ve gone to for a decade or decades, walk around, and take it all in.
Again, our nation’s first president (and badass MC) would shake his head at the nature of the excuses, but G-Dub never had to watch a noon Kentucky-Vanderbilt game from the stands in the middle of September. And this is college football, the biggest business outside of the NFL that absolutely refuses to consider itself a business.
What’s the point of making all this money off unpaid labor if you’re not going to make even more money off of it – and neutral site games help build that brand.
The attendance issues aren’t unique to the underwhelming matchups. Even the biggest games in the highest profile stadiums aren’t drawing. It comes down to simple supply and demand. Take Wisconsin-Alabama at AT&T Stadium in Dallas on Saturday. This should be a huge game, right? Wisconsin is coming off a pretty big bowl win over Auburn and has a new coach. Bama is Bama. Jerry World is one of the nation’s brightest and shiniest places to watch a football game.
Instead, those same tweets and jokes are going to come. As of Sept. 2, only 40,000 tickets had reportedly been sold.
The schools and the cities can stomach a couple jokes. Even with an underwhelming matchup (Andy Staples of Sports Illustrated remarked to me that “Both coaches gave a losing coach’s press conference” after the Gamecocks backed into their win on Thursday night), and a less-than-capacity crowd, Charlotte is expected to bring in around $15 million from the game.
The Uptown area was swarmed with South Carolina fans in sundresses and hosts of Tar Heel fans in baby blue. Even the parking lot at the gentleman’s club a couple blocks away was packed with pickup trucks and tents.
“The hotels were full,” Webb said. “The restaurants were full. The crowd was good. Maybe it could have been a little bit better. We were about driving economic impact to Charlotte, and we think we successfully did that.”
Webb went on to say that this was the first year Charlotte has done a kickoff game, and that they’d investigate things to do differently in the future. This includes changing the pricing model and keeping the game on Saturday (as initially intended before ESPN requested it be moved to Thursday) to avoid the traffic issues and the students coming up from school. They’ve got quite a few chances to get it right. It was recently announced that North Carolina and South Carolina would play in the game again in 2019 and 2023.
In the meantime, the cities and schools will keep cashing checks and reaping the rewards. By then, we won’t even need jokes. In 2023, we’ll be able to fill the stands with robot fans watching robots playing football.
