mtgriz said:
I don't think UM will bid as high as in the past. Last year, a terrific matchup with SDSU, only sold 14,600 tickets. People have figured out that at $35 a tickaet, best to wait and see if the Griz go deeper in the playoffs than Thanksgiving weekend.
I can't imagine that any school could match UM's first round bid. UM's ticket prices for the first round game will be higher than any other school, due to the ncaa's requirement that the price can't be below the lowest price charged during the season (which I believe is the requirement). And UM's attendance, even at 14,000, would almost surely be higher than any other first round school. I'm assuming NDSU will be seeded.
From an article in Dec. 2015:
"The average attendance in last weekend's first round was particularly poor at 5,634, with a high of 14,575 at Montana (that's more than 11,000 below than the average regular-season game) and an embarrassing low of 997 at Dayton. Montana was up slightly from a home game in last year's first round, but Northern Iowa and Sam Houston State, which hosted games both years, were down quite a bit from last year, when the average attendance for eight first-round games was 6,548.
FCS schools eventually made it to an average of 8,295 for the 22 games played at school sites before the championship game drew 20,918 to Frisco - driven by the North Dakota State fan base."