vapspwi
Dodd-Like
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2002
- Messages
- 8,620
You've still got to be .500 or better to make a bowl (minus a few outlier exceptions). .500 ball is my bare minimum for an acceptable season. It's obviously not great, but if we could get back to at least .500 every year with an uptick to 9+ every 4 or 5 years, I'd take it.
Since you're "one of those" with regard to bowl attendance, here's something I put together back in 2005. (Not exactly current numbers, but Homer Rice has been gone for a long time, too...)
Since 1985, we've played in 11 bowl games. Seven of those were in the southeast, where you can reasonably expect a significant number of fans to attend. I cannot find any numbers on the now defunct All-American Bowl we played in 1985. The 1997 Carquest Bowl was the worst-attended game in that bowl's short history so that definitely counts against us. On the other hand, the 72,328 (majority Tech) that saw us defeat Nebraska remains the 3rd best attended Citrus Bowl in history. The 70,791 present at the Gator Bowl on 1/1/99 know that the vast majority of fans were pulling for Georgia Tech, not Notre Dame. That was an Alltel Stadium record at the time and remains the 4th best mark for the Gator Bowl since the stadium was rebuilt. It's true only 43,416 showed up the following year (hindered by Y2K fears) but again, anyone that was there knows that the vast majority of fans were Jackets. I'm being generous if I concede that 15,000 Hurricane fans were there.
Our attendance at the Peach Bowl set another record for a bowl game. Over 73,000 crammed into the Georgia Dome - which seats just over 71,000. That number has been topped once since - 2004 when Clemson faced Tennessee. Our last bowl game on the east coast was not much to write home about: only 28,237 showed up in Orlando to witness our thrashing of Syracuse. However, this attendance figure is comparable to those great traveling teams in Clemson and Raleigh. NC State has played in the Champs Sports Bowl twice. The first time 28,562 made the trip; two years later it was 26,482. In between, Clemson played in front of 28,671. If you're keeping score at home, that's 7 southeastern bowls - 6 of which we can document attendance figures at. Three of those 6 set attendance records at the time, and 2 were more or less average, and 1 was below average.
Our attendance at the Peach Bowl set another record for a bowl game. Over 73,000 crammed into the Georgia Dome - which seats just over 71,000. That number has been topped once since - 2004 when Clemson faced Tennessee. Our last bowl game on the east coast was not much to write home about: only 28,237 showed up in Orlando to witness our thrashing of Syracuse. However, this attendance figure is comparable to those great traveling teams in Clemson and Raleigh. NC State has played in the Champs Sports Bowl twice. The first time 28,562 made the trip; two years later it was 26,482. In between, Clemson played in front of 28,671. If you're keeping score at home, that's 7 southeastern bowls - 6 of which we can document attendance figures at. Three of those 6 set attendance records at the time, and 2 were more or less average, and 1 was below average.
Nobody's ever going to accuse us of taking over the stadium on a regular basis (though we've done it a few times), but we don't embarrass ourselves, either.
JRjr
