COLLEGE FOOTBALL SPOTLIGHT : THEY MIGHT HAVE PASSED ON NEBRASKA-FLORIDA

Critics of the Sugar Bowl’s decision to invite Texas instead of Florida State are hooting over the attendance on Sunday.

The smallest Sugar Bowl crowd since the game moved to the Superdome 20 years ago watched the Longhorns lose to Virginia Tech, 28-10. With as many as 3,000 tickets unsold, an estimated $300,000 loss in revenue is possible. Attendance was announced at 70,263. The facility seats 77,814.

And not yet in are TV ratings that are expected to reflect the attendance drop. The matchup was originally described as a “ratings winner” by an ABC spokesman.

Sugar Bowl executive director Troy Mathieu, who lauded the matchup in early December, now blames bad marketing for poor ticket sales.

“We had a marketing program that did not take off the way we expected it to,” he said. “And not having an SEC team cost us some regional support.”

What cost the Sugar Bowl was a horrible matchup. Florida State, which admittedly had trouble selling its Orange Bowl ticket allotment, still would have been a better draw no matter what Sugar Bowl officials said.

One hearkens back to this comment from Virginia Tech media relations director Jack Williams in early December: “We only get 15,000 tickets, but we figure we could sell 25,000 if they could get them for us.”

Maybe Mathieu’s problem was shipping, not marketing.