Las Vegas Bowl sets records for attendance, TV ratings

Steve Guiremand

Thursday, Dec. 27, 2001 | 10:55 a.m.

(Paid attendance in parentheses)

1992 -- Bowling Green 35, UNR 34 (14,476)

1993 -- Utah State 42, Ball State 33 (15,508)

1994 -- UNLV 52, Central Michigan 24 (17,562)

1995 -- Toledo 40, UNR 37 OT (12,500)

1996 -- UNR 18, Ball State 15 (10,118)

1997 -- Oregon 41, Air Force 13 (21,514)

1998 -- N. Caro. 20, San Diego St. 13 (21,429)

1999 -- Utah 17, Fresno State 16 (28,227)

2000 -- UNLV 31, Arkansas 14 (29,113)

2001 -- Utah 10, USC 6 (30,894)

When Las Vegas Bowl executive director Tina Kunzer-Murphy rolled out of bed early Christmas morning, she looked outside and saw one of the best presents any bowl official could ask for.

"The first thing that hit me was what a beautiful day it was," Kunzer-Murphy said of the bright sunny skies.

It got even nicer at about 8 a.m. when she pulled into the parking lot of Sam Boyd Stadium to see hundreds of USC fans already on hand tailgating. And it was absolute paradise a few hours later when an unexpectedly large walk-up crowd bumped the paid attendance for Utah's 10-6 victory over the Trojans to a Las Vegas Bowl record 30,894.

But the best was yet to come on Wednesday.

That's when Kunzer-Murphy found out the game garnered a lofty 4.9 rating and 13 share on ABC television, an increase of 23 percent over last year's Christmas Day ABC matchup between Arizona State and Boston College in the now defunct Aloha Bowl in Honolulu.

The rating was four times as large as last year's Las Vegas Bowl matchup between UNLV and Arkansas that Kunzer-Murphy said drew about a 1.2 rating on ESPN2 cable.

"We're absolutely delighted with it," Kunzer-Murphy said. "It's great for us, it's great for the city of Las Vegas, and it's great for Sega Sports, which sponsored the game.

"We knew the (TV ratings) would be bigger than past Las Vegas Bowls because of the fact it was on network television and it was the only bowl game on TV on Christmas Day. But for it to do so much better than last year's game that was shown at the same time by the same network is especially rewarding. And everybody we've talked with said they thought the game looked great on television."

The 10th edition of the Las Vegas Bowl also picked up an outstanding 8.5 rating and 19 share in Las Vegas. The overnight rating surveys just the top 30 television markets in the country and Kunzer-Murphy said the actual overall national rating probably won't be known for about a week.

Perhaps even more rewarding than the TV ratings was that 22,385 people actually used their tickets to attend the game, which was played for the first time on Christmas Day. Projections leading up to the contest were bleak, with only 12,000 to 15,000 expected to show up.

But the nice weather combined with the drawing power of a traditional college football power such as USC helped overcome the obstacle of playing on Christmas.

"We had the largest walk-up of any of the bowl games we've had here," Kunzer-Murphy said. "We had over 1,500 people walk up and buy tickets at the stadium this year. Last year we had about 400."

This was the first of a three-year pact with ABC to play the game on Christmas. Although the Pac-10 agreed to just a one-year deal to send its fifth place team to Las Vegas, conference officials are expected to renew the agreement in January.

"We had great comments about the game from (USC athletic director) Mike Garrett," Kunzer-Murphy said. "We had a general overall good buzz about the game. Hopefully, now people will say its OK to open their presents and then go to a football game on Christmas Day."

The one negative from the unexpected large crowd was long lines at the few concession stands that were open. Part of the problem is that vendors and youth groups that normally work many of the concession stands as fund-raisers had no desire to do so this year because of the Christmas Day date.

"We tried to offer incentives and things to get people to work on Christmas, but it didn't seem to work," Kunzer-Murphy said. "There are some areas we need to improve on but now that we have one of these Christmas games under our belt, we can go back and work on some of these kinds of things a little earlier."

Still, all in all, it was a very merry Christmas for the Las Vegas Bowl.

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