Senior Bowl on the move (across town); combine ratings tick up … A couple of draft related housekeeping items. The Senior Bowl announced yesterday that event has agreed to a multi-year deal to hold the practices and game at Hancock Whitney Stadium, the brand new 25,000-seat state-of-the-art stadium located on the campus of South Alabama in Mobile beginning next year. The Senior Bowl had been held at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile since 1951. Next year’s Senior Bowl is scheduled for January 30th (which for those keeping track of these things is just 331 days away.) Meanwhile, preliminary ratings numbers have been released for last week’s scouting combine showing a 3% increase in viewership across the event. That has to be very disappointing for the NFL which was hoping for a much bigger increase after pushing the on-field activities into prime time. Problem is as we noted in a post last week, for the most part combine activities are kind of boring and are never going to be of real interest or meaning to more than a fringe audience. Let’s just hope the NFL realizes that there are some activities you just can’t make money from.
