Sports Radio Service


		Emerald Bowl benefits the City and visitors alike By Michael Duca December 24, 2004

	SAN FRANCISCO--The Bowl To be Named Later, which started out as the San Francisco Bowl, then became the Diamond-Walnut Bowl, is now the Emerald Bowl, because Emerald is a new brand of the Diamond walnut people. Whatever it is called, it has done some good things for the City. In the past the event has been held on New Year’s Eve. This year the event organizers moved it forward a day to the afternoon of the 30th. The Emerald Bowl should get a little more television audience this way, as the city is certainly scenic in the daytime. Networks love to shoot gorgeous pictures out here, especially when most of the country is hip deep in snow. It is an important event for the ball park because it keeps the revenue stream going in the middle of winter. This year there are bleachers on the field. I suspect that’s in part because the Naval Academy has been invited to this year's Emerald Bowl. The entire Corps of Midshipmen will march in formation, so I expect the will occupy those on-field bleachers. It is quite a tradition at the Academy. Attendance should be the best ever, with 5000 Naval academy graduates within 3 hours drive of San Francisco, plus an all -out blitz by the Academy to contact its alumni and sell tickets over the web. The Naval academy has sold somewhere between 15 and 18 thousand tickets so far. That nearly matches the total attendence of the earlier Bowls that featured teams Virginia Tech, and Boston College. The Naval Academy is still an East Coast team, of course, but their graduates come from all 50 states, and go back to those places after they finish their Naval careers. The other combatant, New Mexico, is from relatively closer by. Albuquerque is close enough for people to drive and make a week of it. On top of that, it should be an interesting game this year, as there are a couple of pretty good offenses that are going to be out on the field. I think people will enjoy it, we may see upwards up to 30,000 people in the stadium. That would be one of the biggest football crowds they've ever had. I think that the promoters of the bowl game expected it to take a few years to catch on, as most bowl games do. San Francisco certainly has some added advantages and I think they were wise to move it away from New Year’s Eve, since the games were ending too late for people to really enjoy a night out on the town. I think people will come out here for the football game on maybe the 29th and be here for an afternoon game on the 30th. They can spend the evening on the 30th in town, and once you are in San Francisco the day before New Years eve, you might as well stay in one of the most wonderful cities on the planet for the big night. So the City will get three or four visitor days per person out of this, and I think with a larger attending group than they got from either Boston College or Virginia Tech when they were out here. This will be the most successful of all the Bowl games at SBC Park. I think this is along the growth curve that they were looking for and expecting. Obviously, the Emerald would have liked to have a west coast team in it, but this year should still be well-attended. The University of New Mexico is a large school. They may bring a few thousand folks out here, too. When you consider all the people who root for the Naval Academy, I think this is going to make next year’s Emerald Bowl a little bit more of a destination game that teams will want to play in.