What If They Held An NFL Game And Nobody Came?

From Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville is the biggest city in America.

But Jacksonville is not big league.

The Chiefs and any fans that bother to watch in the great Midwest will see that on Sunday when there’s a chance there will be more empty seats at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium than those containing paying customers.

Granted the 1-6 Chiefs against the 3-4 Jaguars does not rank as the NFL’s premier matchup of the weekend. And yes, these two teams finished last season with losing records. But it’s not like they are a pair of franchises that have been constant losers. Jacksonville was in the playoffs in 2007; the Chiefs in 2006.

It’s become more and more apparent that Jacksonville and the so-called First Coast area of Florida is not big enough, or willing enough to support the Jaguars franchise they were given in 1995. Sunday’s game is blacked-out in northern Florida, the sixth time in six pre-season and regular season games that the Jaguars were unable to sell enough seats for home television.

The franchise didn’t even ask for an extension this week because they knew there was no way they would sell enough tickets. Reports out of Jacksonville have set the over/under attendance line at 40,000 for this game, and a lot of folks are picking the under.

And this despite the fact the team has lowered the number of seats it will sell, thus bringing down the threshold on blackout limits. Here’s how the system works: Each year, teams must turn into the league office what is called a manifest which designates the number of seats it is selling and their price. Any team can place a number less than the capacity of its stadium. The Chiefs have done that this year for Arrowhead. Now, what that number is remains a closely guarded secret in the organization. But if you wonder why the Chiefs have not had any blackouts when they obviously have plenty of empty seats and tickets available, one of the factors is them altering their capacity on the manifest.

What happens once the number is established is that no matter demand, only that number of tickets can be sold. Say a team’s manifest number was 70,000, and let’s say the same team starts the season 7-0 and demand for tickets is quite high. Even though this team has a stadium that seats 79,000, they are not allowed to sell those extra nine thousand tickets.

For the last several years, the Jaguars have covered over some of their upper deck seats and taken them off the manifest. The team’s media guide says the capacity of Jacksonville Municipal Stadium is 67,184. But enough temporary seats can be added to push the capacity to over 80,000. This was done for the Super Bowl when the 39th championship game was played there. They also expand the seating for the annual Florida-Georgia game which is played there every year.

Three weeks ago, the Jaguars hosted the St. Louis Rams and announced a crowd of 42,088. They had 46,520 for Arizona and 49,914 when Tennessee visited. In the pre-season they had 42,177 for Tampa Bay and 39,942 fans were in the house for Washington.

Yes, these are tough economic times. Yes, the Jaguars are coming off a 5-11 season. And yes, the Jags have no saleable talents or personalities. The closest thing they have to an NFL superstar is RB Maurice Jones-Drew.

But selling the Jaguars has always been tough. Yes, Jacksonville is America’s biggest city in land size. But in population, that’s another matter. The city of Jacksonville has an estimated 807,000 residents. Add those from surrounding counties and the figure creeps just above 1.3 million. That makes it the fourth smallest metro area to have a team; only Green Bay, Buffalo and New Orleans have fewer people. According to U.S. Census estimates, the Kansas City metro area has approximately 2 million people.

Much like Chiefs fans, the folks in Jacksonville aren’t willing to pay for a poor product. The team was 5-11 last year and this year they can’t get close to a sellout. The Jaguars went 5-11 in 2003 and the next season they had six regular-season games blacked out. The game against the Chiefs will be the 23rd blackout in the last nine years.

College football is No. 1 in this corner of the South, with heavy interest in teams like Florida, Florida State, Georgia and Alabama.

Majority owner Wayne Weaver has publicly remained committed to Jacksonville. But player costs have risen in recent years, while his revenue fell and Weaver faces some tough future choices.

The folks in Jacksonville finally have figured out there might be a problem, as just last week they revived an organization called Touchdown Jacksonville. This civic group helped campaign and convince the NFL that the city should have an expansion franchise back in 1995.

“Jaguars ticket sales are down more than any other team in the NFL,” said Carl Cannon, who is heading up the push for pro football a second time. “We are at a critical point in the history of the Jaguars in Jacksonville.”

The first goal of Touchdown Jacksonville is to sell out the Jaguars game against Indianapolis on December 17th. That’s a Thursday night game, the only night game on the Jags schedule this year.

“The Jaguars put us on the map,” said Cannon. “By every count the Jaguars are good to Jacksonville.”