Last weekend the Tennessee Volunteers played against the Ohio Bobcats in Knoxville, TN. Neyland Stadium holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 107,000 people. The official attendance during the Ohio game was about 96,000. On TV it looked a lot emptier than that.

This brings up an interesting question, where were the fans?

Did they stay away because Tennessee was 1-2 entering the game and playing a MAC team? Did the possibility of severe weather keep people away? Was it sheer economics?

It was probably a combination of things but I have to believe that the economics played a big part.

Look at some other notable events recently. Washington St. canceled the second part of their home and home against Hawaii. They had to pay a $300,000 buyout but that was probably pennies compared to the travel costs of taking a PAC 10 school to the islands. Attendance is down at a lot of NFL games as well. The Jacksonville Jaguars are blacked out all season long because they can't sell out their stadium.

I read stories all summer long as to the impact this economy is having on college athletics. Coaches driving to see recruits as opposed to flying. Schools canceling games with opponents like the Washington St. example above.

Some schools already were already cutting back on recruiting because of budget constraints and I'm pretty sure that we'll see kids commit to the Wyoming's, Boise St's, and UNLV's of the world without ever traveling to see the campus. I think these instances will be rare but between text messages, IM and streaming video coaches can recruit kids from far away without ever visiting them.

In the end the current economic environment has had a bigger impact than people think.  In the past during hard economic times people cut back but they still found a way to go to the game or to the show. Those times many be long when you look at the increased ticket prices  vs. household income.

So Tennessee not selling out the 107,000 seats could be blamed on a lot of things but let's look at it the other way, there was 96,000 people there. That's more than most NFL stadiums hold.

A few teams go all out when it comes to scheduling. Granted most of the little schools looking for a big payday will play the toughest schedules but this year we have a few of the big time programs sticking their neck out early.

TOUGH

BYU:

vs. Oklahoma, vs. Florida St

TCU

@ Virginia,  @ Clemson

Fresno St.

@ Wisconsin, vs. Boise St, @ Cincinnati, @ Hawaii

TOUGHER

Virginia Tech

vs. Alabama, vs Marshall, vs Nebraska, vs. Miami

Georgia

@ Oklahoma St, vs South Carolina, @ Arkansas, vs Arizona St, @ LSU

TOUGHEST:

MIAMI

@ Florida St, vs Georgia Tech. @ Virginia Tech, vs. Oklahoma

If you want to see all that Las Vegas has to offer than take a late afternoon flight out of LAX to McCarren.

DUDE.

Wannabe pimps, DJ's, business people going in early for a conference, women looking for a job as a cocktail waitress and of course the "guy trip".

Buddy, if you're on the Southwest flight you're probably not a "player". But if it makes you feel better go ahead and think that. We have like 13% unemployment here. We need all the help we can get.

As the Holiday song goes, 'It's the most wonderful time of the year.' Only it's not Christmas it's the opening weekend of College Football. From 9am PST until 11pm PST there were football games to be watched.

What did we learn from the 1st weekend? Here's a breakdown:

-ACC: This conference could be in more trouble than the Big East. While the Big East had no teams ranked in the Top 25 to start the season the ACC has only 1 win against an FBS school.

-BIG 10: Wisconsin, Iowa, and Ohio State all escaped embarrassing home losses while Illinois gets run out of the building by Missouri. Minnesota got a nice OT road win and Purdue gained some confidence going into Eugene next weekend to play the wounded Duck. The upside is that Penn St and Michigan both looked great.

-SEC: Bama got a hard fought win against Va. Tech and everyone else won the games they were suppose to win including Tennessee who after 2 turnovers on the first two possessions hung 63 on Western Kentucky. Georgia took a good kick in the butt at Oklahoma State that shouldn't have been all that unexpected if you know you're stuff.

-PAC -10: Washington showed a lot heart against LSU and nearly pulled off the upset of the day. Oregon looks to be a mediocre team after getting dominated by Boise St. on Thursday and SC and CAL lived up to their billing.

-BIG 12: Overall a good day other than the loss by Oklahoma and the loss of Heisman QB Sam Bradford. Texas, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Texas Tech, and A&M all roll. K-St has some issues but we already knew that and Oklahoma St and Baylor both get huge wins on the opening weekend against tough opponents (Georgia and Wake Forest).

BIG EAST: I'm not even addressing this....

WAC & Mountain West: Respect to be paid. BYU upsets Oklahoma in Dallas, Boise St. beats up Oregon, and UTAH holds off Utah St. Fresno St. smacked around UC Davis, UNLV turned it on against Sac. St. On the down side Nevada got run @ Notre Dame, Hawaii barley beat Central Arkansas and San Jose St had no answers for USC. TCU, probably the best team in these 2 conferences, opens up next weekend at Virginia and drops into Death Valley to play Clemson in a few weeks.