Since gas prices are the topic du jour these days, I guess we're bound to find articles like these where a couple struggles with all-important decisions about ... their expenditures towards college football.That could be particularly problematic for K-State, a school with no major population base nearby. Wildcat fans are scattered from Garden City to Kansas City, and all will be paying a much higher price for weekend road trips."Any school that has a relatively small population and is not on the cusp of a metropolitan area, it's bound to have an impact," [Kansas State Deputy Athletic Director Jim] Epps said.
The greatest impact might be yet to come. While many fans seem willing to bite the bullet this season, that could change if gas prices climb even higher next summer.
For Zack McNett, it might mean giving up the football road trips altogether.
"It's a legitimate possibility," he said. "I'd probably just pay $50 to get all the channels and try to pick up as many games as I could on television."
How much of this is just water cooler talk about the economy and how much will actually be realized at the stadium and at the cash register I don't know. I have a feeling that unless gas prices really soar (like, $10/gallon soar), the impact won't match the worry generated by scary headlines. That isn't to say the impact of rising gas prices isn't being felt.
College football fans are, overall, an intensely devoted group and if you ask around will find that most of those who attend games spend a great deal of money in doing so. You're talking multiple season tickets, travel, food for tailgating, tailgating equipment, memorabilia, maybe travel to a road or bowl game, and so on. But they're also people in a position to do so, as college football fandom is a self-selecting phenomena. I'm not sure fuel prices by themselves are a dealbreaker for the vast majority of fans on whether to attend a game or not.
Maybe I'm off here, but in the narrow context of fans attending games, I'm not too worried for college football. Yes, everyone's going to be much more careful with their spending, but I think most fans tend to budget a surprisingly good amount of money already on attending games. The savings may simply come from cutting back on some souvenirs, or hawking that extra ticket instead of giving it to a friend. Butts should still be in the seats come September.Now, as noted in the article, university teams all travel so there will be changes. Kansas State may take a few more chartered bus trips instead of hopping on chartered planes, at least with its smaller sports programs. Maybe other college football programs follow suit, I don't know. Certainly spending will be more scrutinized and the bottom line marginalized, which may be a good thing if you're one of the critics of big spending in college sports. A little fiscal discipline never hurt anyone, or so it would seem.
Update: Yup. Sports attendance up, hot dog spending down.
