What the hell are you thinking? -- Third-tier bowl edition

Editor's note: Conference previews are coming. We swear. Maybe even before the season!!1! In all seriousness, I abhor standardized tests and I'm looking forward to getting back to my regularly scheduled college football obsession after Saturday afternoon. In the meantime, allow me to ramble sans research.

The Seattle Bowl was a terrible idea.

I feel uniquely qualified to say this because I attended the only two iterations of the game ever played. Based on the attendance at each game and the major demographic differences between the fans in attendance, I suspect I am one of only a handful of people to have done so. (I estimate the number of people who attended both contests to be less than 1,000.)

Bad weather, bizarre matchups and an apathetic host city were just a few of the problems with the bowl. So it seems only natural, then, that some misguided individual would try to revive it in the midst of a slack economy.

In his post, Condotta mentions that the bowl is being pitched as a fundraiser for Children's Hospital in Seattle. That's about the only good thing I have to say for it. For some perspective, let's take a look at the games.

In 2001, the tertiary postseason event formerly known as the "Oahu Bowl" relocated from paradise to dreary Seattle. The inaugural version of the game was played on a makeshift field inside Seattle's baseball stadium, Safeco Field, and matched West Coast regular Stanford against Georgia Tech, an Atlantic Coast Conference team. The game itself was a riveting intersectional contest between a rugged Tech defense and Ty Willingham's last good Stanford team. Georgia Tech won a tight game, 24-14.

Beyond the good day on the field, the rest of the event was miserable. Poor attendance, cold temperatures and gray skies -- and not in the cool "football weather" way. Here's an interesting recap of the day focusing on the crowd. The "announced" attendance was 30,144, which I can confirm to be total bullshit, having attended dozens of baseball games at Safeco. It was the smallest crowd I had seen at the stadium -- I'd guess maybe 15,000 butts in seats. The two schools sold just 5,000 of their 15,000 allotted seats. I was sitting near the Stanford cheering section, and I'd guess that they bought 4,900 of them.

The 2002 Seattle Bowl fared a little better, but not by nearly enough considering the game featured a nearby Northwest school -- Oregon -- against Wake Forest. The game was played -- surprise! -- in cold weather under gray skies, and the announced attendance at Seahawks Stadium (as Qwest Field was then known) was 38,241. Bullshit again, but this time by a narrower margin. To their credit, the Oregon fans came out in decent numbers, with perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 fans making the trek north. The remainder of the crowd was cheering for Wake Forest, but I suspect fewer than 100 were actual fans. Most of the Deacons boosters were actually University of Washington fans jumping at the chance to show up and root against Oregon. They got their wish, as Jim Grobe's first good Wake team used obscene amounts of misdirection and "Maryland-I" backfields to down the Ducks 38-17.

Shockingly, financing could not be secured for a third Seattle Bowl following the first two amazing results, and the game ceased to exist. I can not stress enough that this is a good thing.

I'll save the lengthy lecture about how no one wants to go to a bowl game in a cold-weather city, particularly one without a dome, though this is undoubtedly the main reason not to play college football in December in Seattle. Yes, most bottom-rung bowls are made-for-TV events, but the game just isn't a big seller in the apathetic Northwest. Even under the most optimal conditions -- a Pac-10 team from Washington or Oregon playing in the game -- the bowl would struggle to draw enough fans. Bringing in a Mountain West or WAC team could help some, but without a majorly rigged selection process, the bowl wouldn't be able to avoid the inevitable UCLA-New Mexico or Arizona-San Jose State matchups.

Seattle is a depressing place in the winter. Nearly everyone who lives there wishes they were someplace warm and sunny. Let's not subject teams and fans of a poor 7-5 football team to the same experience. Also, let's let me keep my quirky distinction of attending every Seattle Bowl ever.