You mean the bowl or the network don't want them there? I think the bowls are happy to have them there, and probably the networks too. It is the greed of the big five conferences that don't want them there.
Bowl attendance for the Orange Bowl last year, with Northern Ill, had a very good attendance year of 72,000, better than the prior 3 years.
The Feista Bowl attendance in 2007 when Boise State played Oklahoma was 73,700. The closest Feista bowl attendance since was in 2010 when two non BCS schools, Boise State and TCU played in front of 73,200.
In the past five bowl games, the Sugar Bowl hasn't matched the 2008 attendance level of 74,383, which was the year Hawaii played. The Sugar bowl attributes a dismal 2013 showing of 54,100 to Florida who only sold 7,000 tix.
I think the bigger issue becomes when a school's fans get tired of going to the same bowl, not when the non bcs guy gets their shot.
http://www.bcsfootball.org/news/story?id=4809856
Attendance statistics are largely meaningless due to the mandatory ticket purchases that the schools have to make. Northern Illlinois took a bath on the Orange Bowl because of this.
But the real number is the television ratings and those are generally dismal. Here they are from last year...the Orange Bowl, despite being played on New Years Day, was the lowest of the BCS bowls. And was also beaten by a couple other non-BCS bowls.
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013...op-the-charts/
Let me put it another way, if the Orange Bowl had its druthers last year and could have picked any school it wanted to play Florida State, do you think they pick Northern Illinois? Or any other non-BCS school? Not a chance. They would probably have taken Georgia...but they couldn't because UNI had to go somewhere and Florida was the second SEC school chosen. The only reason schools like UNI have access to these bowls is due to the threat of legislation and lawsuit.
The Big 5 programs almost always draw the biggest television ratings, and since that is what drives the bowl pay out amounts, I think the Big 5 programs deserve everything they can get from the BCS bowls.
The ticket issue is not unique. Most schools take a bath on tickets, including the big boys like Wisconsin. Wisconsin loses money on bowl game tickets every year. Big 10 championship too, as when they played Nebraska there were more than 20,000 empty seats. No reason to buy through the school when you can get them cheaper at the stadium. Even schools like Florida and Florida State who often play closer to home take a bath on tickets.
What I dislike about the bowl system is it doesn't matter who is good or who the better teams are, it matters what conference you belong to. I will say, I think this year the BCS bowls should be pretty good, and I think from what I've seen, UCF belongs.
The problem is that if you look at the entire concept of bowl games, it looks ridiculous. They are essentially meaningless games, most of which are played in less than packed stadiums. They only really work because they draw better television numbers than normal programming at a time when a lot of people aren't working.
The big bowls always were about the big schools drawing big crowds and big television ratings. They were never meant to determine a champion. So college football fans are stuck with a bizarre system of meaningless exhibitions and now a four team playoff to try to determine a champion. It is inevitable that it will grow larger however, and the importance of the bowls as stand alone games will slowly fade away.