Having expressed my cynicism......a couple of things.
1) Bowl games are cheap for ESPN to broadcast - which is why they're not going anywhere any time soon.
rgw covered a lot of this, but the reality is that it doesn't matter to them if the stadium is empty. They can do some camera positioning to make it look fuller than it is, and they will broadcast it for pennies on the dollar and profit from even a makeshift bowl game.
2) They also royally screw the school that can't sell tickets.
I don't know if you read Dan Wetzel's book "Death to the BCS," but he laid out in there by a bowl game for a team like UCONN (when they went to the Orange Bowl) can be like being stricken with a serious virus because YOUR SCHOOL has to buy up the ticket allotment for the school, and they often lose money.
3) Bowl games went from being sought after experiences to consolation prizes.
We've gone from the Sugar Bowl being that Alabama had to win to claim the national championship to, "Hey, you lost the Iron Bowl to Auburn - who is playing FSU for the title? Well, your reward is a game against Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl!"
And rest assured that what happened to Tua is now in the back of the minds of everyone. It's happened before that a guy wound up seriously falling in the draft or not having much of an NFL career as was expected (which is why Willis McGahee took out that insurance policy before the BCS title game back in 2002).
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But I miss the atmospherics and feeling that we were a part of something big (even though that was an illusion).
On January 2, 1984, I was in the ninth grade at Sembach AFB, (then) West Germany. It was a Monday - in fact, it was the day we had to go back to school, which royally stunk. Remember that it is a seven-hour time difference between Tuscaloosa and Kaiserslautern (where I basically lived). So that meant that the 1984 NYD bowl games kicked off with the Cotton Bowl, which started at 740pm my time back when I had a 9pm bed time, worked 3-4 hours per day after school (3-7 pm) and was struggling in Algebra.
So I've never once seen the famous Miami vs Nebraska Orange Bowl where Osborne went for the PAT and Notre Dame hack Don Criqui spent the telecast defending what Notre Dame did in 1966 as okay (note: I've heard part of the game and just rolled my eyes on that one).
But every game was important. Well almost every game.
The Cotton Bowl mattered because Texas was undefeated and needed to win to stake a title claim.
The Sugar Bowl mattered because if Nebraska and Texas both lost then Auburn had a shot.
The Rose Bowl mattered because if Texas and Nebraska AND Auburn lost then Illinois had a shot at the championship.
The Orange Bowl mattered because if Miami could beat Nebraska and Texas lost, they had a legitimate title shot.
The Sugar and Orange Bowls were on at the same time back then.
And I didn't see a single play of any of the games. The "big deal" for me was a buddy of mine was an UGA fan and had the audio tape of the last 10 min of the fourth qtr that he brought to school and loaned me. The excitement was incredible.
But I had an intense interest in MANY games on that one day. Some mattered conditioned on what happened later.
But even those removed from the national title were important. Alabama drew Southern Methodist and got a lot of condescending "we should be playing someone better" as the Mustangs got stang by Alabama.
I remember watching the very last CFB game of the 1970s, a thing called the Bluebonnet Bowl pitting Tennessee against Purdue. I didn't know anything about anybody playing, but it SEEMED important. It was a big deal. Back in those days, in fact, good luck finding the game on TV. There were many bowl games that I don't think ever even aired in my neck of the woods. There was a syndicated sports channel called Mizlou that would sell the bowl games to the networks (in fact, Coach Bryant's last game in the Liberty Bowl - if you watch it on the original telecast - a syndication group called Metro Sports oversaw it and sold it to ESPN).
Of course, in 1978 when I watched my first-ever CFB bowl game - the Tangerine Bowl between NC State (and my uncle lived in NC) and Pitt - there were only 15 total bowl games.
We've gained a lot, but we've lost a lot, too - and it's never coming back, either.
