West Virginia spent $1.2 Million on Orange Bowl

Email

Print

Everyone knows about how expensive bowls can be for small FBS programs. All too often we hear the stories of the Ball State’s and the Southern Mississippi’s and their bank busting trips to Go-Daddy.com Bowls. But what about the bigger AQ-conference schools? Turns out bowls can break the bank for them too.

Officials from the athletic department at West Virginia say out of the last five bowl games they’ve been to money has been lost on at least three of them. This includes the loss of $217,700 on the Orange Bowl this past season. WVU was given 17,500 tickets from the Orange Bowl but only sold 7,763.

This means the athletic department had to deal with the 9,737 unsold tickets themselves. These tickets cost between $75 and $225 and went either unsold or were given away to players and coaches families, marching band, and others.

The athletic department ended up spending a total of $1.2 million on the bowl.

Bowls have proved to be expensive across the board. Even LSU and Alabama had to break out the check book to cover the cost of their bands in the National Championship.

There’s a chance that the cost of bowls, (particularly BCS bowls), will change with the new post-season format that is currently being discussed. As of right now it’s safe to say that Dana Holgorsen and the Mountaineers consider the cost worth the trip.

So do the people of West Virginia.