There is no question marching bands and cheerleading squads add to the atmosphere at college football games, especially during bowl season.
Heading out to a bowl game with the team is one of the perks of being at a school with a winning program. Some bowl organizers require schools to bring along the bands and cheerleaders to add to the pageantry of their games.
Some, not all. As the old cheer goes: Two, four, six, eight — not everyone gets to participate.
Financial and logistical challenges are to prevent some bands and cheerleading squads from traveling to the more exotic bowl locations this season.
Their absences are to be most apparent on Christmas Eve, which features the only two bowl games outside the 48 contiguous states. This bowl season features a record 41 games.
Cincinnati is not taking its band or cheerleaders to the Hawaii Bowl, but it is taking a mascot. San Diego State does plan to bring a smaller entourage to Hawaii, including 30 band members, eight cheerleaders, six dance team members and a mascot.
Having to miss out on a trip from Ohio to Hawaii in the winter is, well, cold.
Band members at Middle Tennessee and Western Michigan are also to miss out on a trip to the Bahamas, although each school is to travel with part of its cheerleading squad to the bowl game in the Caribbean.
“We looked at maybe trying to bring a pep band and those kinds of things, but actually hotel rooms are really tight on the island,” Middle Tennessee athletic director Chris Massaro said.
Sending an entourage to a bowl game can prove quite expensive.
Fresno State athletic department spokesman Jason Clay said it cost more than US$90,000 for the school to send its band and cheerleaders to last season’s Hawaii Bowl.
Western Michigan band director David Montgomery said it took two chartered airplanes last year to fly the band’s 300-plus members to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl in Boise, Idaho.
While bowl officials believe bands and cheerleaders help make a game more of an event, Mid-American Conference (MAC) spokesman Ken Mather said the Bahamas Bowl is the only game with his conference partners with that does not require a band to accompany the team.
Lisa Fortenberry, the pageantry director for the Cotton Bowl, said she often reserves hotel rooms for marching bands up to three years in advance, just to make sure there is enough space available for them.
“If we’re going to sign a contract three years out, they’re definitely required to come, because we’ve made a commitment to that hotel,” Fortenberry said.
Schools frequently get assistance from their conferences to help offset travel costs to bowl games.
Mountain West spokesman Javan Hedlund said the Mountain West Conference gives each of its bowl teams an expense reimbursement figure that varies “based upon the particulars of the bowl and their respective travel destinations.”
Hedlund said it was at the discretion of each school how to manage that money.
Massaro said Conference USA also helps to send bands to bowl games within driving distance; Middle Tennessee received aid for its trip to the 2013 Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth, Texas.
However, the Bahamas, probably as inviting as any bowl location, presents many challenges. Neither Central Michigan nor Western Kentucky took its band to the inaugural game last year.
Western Michigan athletic director Kathy Beauregard said the school uses a stipend offered by the MAC to help with these types of expenses. Last year the athletics department said it took that money, and more, to take the band to Boise. However, school officials determined sending the 300-member band to the Bahamas would prove too difficult — both logistically, as well as financially.
Middle Tennessee and Western Michigan are both sending equipment by freighter to the Bahamas well in advance to make it as smooth as possible when the teams go through customs.
With neither school’s marching band at the game, Bahamas Bowl executive director Richard Giannini said the halftime show would include a preview of the musical attractions at the Junkanoo, a Bahamian national festival beginning later that week.
However, not all the stockings for band members and cheerleaders are to be filled with coal.
Montgomery said despite some the disappointment, “some of the students were a little bit relieved” that they do not have to alter their family holiday plans.
That is an admirable glass-half-full viewpoint with Hawaii or the Bahamas on the table.
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