Can Tennessee football fans Checker Nissan at Music City Bowl? Ticket sales method makes it hard

Checker Neyland was pulled off perfectly. But Checker Nissan could be challenging.

The way that tickets are allotted for the TransPerfect Music City Bowl adds a level of difficulty for Tennessee fans wanting to fill Nissan Stadium with the iconic orange-and-white pattern.

UT (7-5) will play Purdue (8-4) on Dec. 30 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN) at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.

The Vols have successfully pulled off five games for Checker Neyland, which had a grassroots start in 2014. And now fans are trying to do the same with Checker Nissan, an idea that has circulated on social media this week.

Could UT fans pull it off at the Music City Bowl? It would be hard to bet against them.

But some factors will be out of their control at a neutral site, namely the method of ticket sales.

Why Purdue ticket allotment is bigger than Tennessee's

UT gets only 3,000 tickets to sell through its ticket office, per the SEC contract with the Music City Bowl. That includes 2,000 on the lower level along the east sideline, where UT will be the visiting team, and 1,000 on the club level.

And UT gets 500 complimentary tickets for its band.

Purdue gets 5,000 tickets via its Big Ten contract. Music City Bowl president/CEO Scott Ramsey said he expects both schools to easily sell their allotments.

Nissan Stadium’s capacity is 69,143. The rest of the tickets are sold through the Music City Bowl Ticketmaster site and on the secondary market. Obviously, that could mix UT and Purdue fans in many sections.

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Ramsey said more than 20,000 tickets are usually sold before the teams are announced. He said that presale count was a little lower this year because of the COVID-19 hangover, but that means plenty of tickets are available.

For UT fans to pull off Checker Nissan, they’ll need to buy a large majority of the tickets through Ticketmater and on the secondary market. And that’s not out of the question. Two of the Music City Bowl’s six sellouts since 1998 were in UT’s two trips there.

The Vols’ 30-27 loss to North Carlina in double overtime in the 2010 Music City Bowl drew a crowd of 69,143. And their 38-24 win over Nebraska in the 2016 Music City Bowl had an attendance of 68,496.

Purdue’s 63-14 loss to Auburn in the 2018 Music City Bowl had a crowd of 59,024.

Why SEC reduced ticket allotment for schools

This will be UT’s smallest ticket allotment for a bowl in several years, but that shouldn't affect its attendance at the Music City Bowl.

In 2020, FBS conferences and bowls started six-year agreements aligned with the College Football Playoff terms. The SEC negotiated a reduction from 8,000 tickets to 3,000 tickets for each school’s allotment for its secondary pool of six bowls — Outback, Gator, Music City, Duke’s Mayo, Liberty, Texas.

UT did not play in a bowl last season, and the Music City Bowl was not played because of COVID-19. That means this is the first year under the new allotment.

Other SEC bowl allotments were also reduced, allowing a more streamlined method of selling tickets.

“The feedback that we got was that (athletic directors) didn’t want to be in the ticket business anymore, and that’s understandable from the university side of it,” Ramsey said. “I can market tickets all year long rather than holding two big 10,000-seat blocks for unknown teams and then risk them not being sold in a few days.”

It’s a popular new approach across college football in selling bowl tickets.

For decades, schools would try to land bowl bids by guaranteeing the sale of large blocks of tickets. If they didn’t sell out, the school would have to eat the cost.

The process was also very slow. Schools could not assign a seat until they checked off a long list of priority donors and corporate sponsors.

But with the rise of online sales and the secondary market, fans can choose their seat instantly based on a price point. And it doesn't leave schools with unsold tickets because of outdated methods.

“There was a lot of pushback from the schools and conferences because the allotments were too large, and their fans were buying elsewhere (to get their preferred seat),” Ramsey said. “So the marketplace is just different, and the old way wasn’t working.

“If you’re going to a concert, you don’t wait a week to find out where you’re going to sit. You want to pick the seat now and buy the ticket.”

But that wide-open method of buying tickets makes the possibility of Checker Nissan difficult. UT fans must buy enough tickets to minimize Purdue’s visual impact on gameday.

Reach Adam Sparks at adam.sparks@knoxnews.com and on Twitter @AdamSparks.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Can Tennessee fans Checker Nissan at Music City Bowl? Ticket sales method makes it hard