re: ESPN's David Hale Projects LSU to Play in Music City Bowl

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Bowls are all about ticket sales

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Not anymore. It's all about TV ratings. Here is info from an article about it. The article is 2 years old, but is still pertinent.

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"More money in sports is starting to come from TV than from tickets. There was a day when the only thing that justified the game going on was ticket sales, because there was no TV. 

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even though ticket demand is relatively low for lesser bowls, millions of viewers keep watching, even if it's the Camellia Bowl in Montgomery, Ala., a game that drew just 20,256 fans last week but attracted an average television audience of 1,114,000, according to ESPN.

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Only one bowl game last year drew fewer than 1.2 million viewers on average, according to Nielsen. That's better than the 1.1 million who watched an opening day baseball game last year between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. 

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The down side of this is that schools have to eat a lot of unused tickets. Alleva will lobby hard to get LSU to a bowl where LSU can sell tickets and still be attractive for the network. He was pivotal in brokering the deal that got LSU to Nashville to play Notre Dame a couple years ago. He will do everything in his power to keep LSU away from a shitty matchup that our fans wouldn't buy tix for, but it's ultimately up to the league, who has ESPN's schlong tickling their tonsils.