It’s the afternoon on Dec. 16, a Sunday, one day after bowl season started. Scott Ostlund has to delay our phone call, because he isn’t sure what time zone he’s in.
5 dudes’ quest to see 18 bowls in 24 days, explained by the guy organizing it
Some previously disappointed USC fans are trying to make bowl attendance history, and they’re making up lots of it as they go.
Courtesy: Scott Ostlund
He tells me he’ll call at “12:30.” That’s 1:30 p.m. where I am and where he was 24 hours prior. It’s 10:30 a.m. where he was 48 hours prior. It’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re attempting what he’s attempting: to go to 18 bowl games in 24 days.
Ostlund is part of a group of Southern California businessmen calling themselves The Latitudes who have come together to go on this college football postseason expedition. They aim to set a Guinness world record for bowl game attendance, and they’re in contact with Guinness’ people about what that will take. Along their journey, they’ll watch football in six states (sometimes a couple in a day) and two countries.
The journey is called “Bowlmageddon.”
It all started because USC had a bad season.
It’s a big group of guys — as many as 20, with smaller, closer groups within. They plan plenty of ambitious trips. Ostlund and many others are Trojans fans.
The group jumped on a plane and headed to Snake River Gorge to catch an eclipse recently. A few months ago, Ostlund tried to rally the group to Mount Kilimanjaro. If USC had gone bowling, like it had done every year since NCAA sanctions kept the Trojans out in 2011, some in the group would have followed the team to that game. But at 5-7, USC missed out.
“Man, I’m depressed we’re not going anywhere this year for the first time since 2011,” Ostlund tells SB Nation, describing his frame of mind after the regular season.
Another group member, Mike Arnold, offered an idea: “Let’s go to another bowl game.”
Ostlund offered another: “Well, let’s go to ‘em all?”
They won’t go to all 40 FBS bowls, but they’re attempting to hit nearly half.
Five hardcores have the motivation and the time to shoot for all 18. Those five are Ostlund, Arnold, Brian Richardson, Mike Fyhrie, and Jared Murayama. Ostlund says about 13 guys will fly in and out for different parts of the trip, and 12 or 13 of the group will be joining for a stretch of four games in three days in what they’re calling the Texas Loop.
The full bowl list, as it’s sketched out now: the FCS Celebration, the Camellia, the New Orleans, the Boca Raton, the Frisco, the Gasparilla, the Bahamas, the Birmingham, the Dollar General, the First Responder, the Independence, the Texas, the Alamo, the Peach, the Orange, the Holiday, the Rose, and the Playoff National Championship.
When Ostlund told Richardson about the plan, his response was simple.
“I looked at him and I said, ‘Scott, you’re totally insane. Count me in.’”
The obvious question: how much money is this gonna cost?
Richardson said in a radio interview the whole thing would be less than $500,000 collectively. Ostlund told me he’s not sure what the number will be.
“I don’t mean to sound wasteful, but I don’t think a group can do this if we’re having to track it exactly amongst everybody,” he says. “You have to have a little elasticity between each other when it comes to money. We joke that we’ll have fines for anyone that talks about the business on the trip or calls home to their wife too often. One of the kinda rules is we try not to keep tabs on each other. Everyone’s pretty good about throwing in as we go.”
Part of the reason is that the travel plan is evolving, and it’s not even finished. For instance, their original posted schedule had them hitting the Celebration Bowl in Atlanta, then the Cure Bowl (Orlando), and then the New Orleans Bowl, all on Dec. 15. Instead they went from the Celebration to the Camellia (Montgomery, Ala.) to the New Orleans.
Right after Christmas, the original schedule had the Cheez-It Bowl (Phoenix), then the Music City (Nashville), and finally the Alamo (San Antonio), all by Dec. 28. Instead, as of publication, they’ll go to the First Responder Bowl (Dallas) on the 26th, then to the Independence Bowl (Shreveport, La.) and Texas Bowl (Houston) on the 27th, and end up in San Antonio on the 28th. (That’s the Texas Loop.) They’ll barnstorm the Lone Star State in an RV, which Ostlund is going to get lined up as soon as he hangs up with me.
It might wind up being more than 18 games. They aren’t contracting a travel agency or anything like that. ESPN featured them during them during the New Orleans Bowl, and they were angling for 20-something at that point, the network’s Olivia Dekker reported.
Weather could always create unforseen delays, but snow is unlikely to get in the way on a trip that goes between Southern California and the South.
“It’s a pretty resourceful group,” Ostlund told me.
Ostlund’s involved with a real-estate company that has rental houses all over. One’s in New Orleans and another’s in Florida. “By coincidence, some of these things are lining up for us to stay in some of those properties,” he says.
Going with the flow was already a defining theme the day after the first bowls.
“It’s by plane, by car, by Segway — however you have to get there. Surprisingly, this year it lines up really, really well. You don’t really have three bowl games where you can drive to each one. So it was natural to start in Atlanta and to drive to Montgomery and drive to New Orleans. Now we have this day break, so we’re gonna rest and eat a bunch of crawfish. Go on a swamp tour. Then tomorrow, we’re gonna fly to the Boca Raton Bowl.”
These guys are somewhat winging it, but I still wanted to ballpark a cost, so I pretended I was making this 18-in-24 trip myself. I calculated it to about $10,000 for one person to go solo, conservatively.
I started with some assumptions: that my home base was Southern California (like theirs) and that I could call in some favors and use some connections along the way.
The logistics are a little fun to figure out. It’s like a puzzle. For instance: it’s possible to swing the Bahamas Bowl on Dec. 21 without spending a night on the islands. It’d be tight, but after taking in the Gasparilla Bowl on the night of the 20th, I could hop on an early-morning flight out of Tampa and be in Nassau two hours before kickoff.
Then I could enjoy the game for a couple hours and hop on a 5:19 p.m. flight out of Nassau, connecting through Miami and arriving in Birmingham, Ala. around 11 p.m. — well ahead of the Birmingham Bowl the next day at noon. After taking in the game in Birmingham, I’d rent a car and drive to Mobile for the Dollar General Bowl later that night.
I factored in food and drinks at $75 per day. I considered things like rental car costs ($60 per day as needed, $35 for gas fill-ups as needed) and ridesharing in places where a rental’s not needed. I also factored in money for souvenirs and some for incidentals.
For ticket costs, the rough get-in for most of the minor bowls is about $30 on the resale market. I’m not as resourceful as the “Bowlmageddon” group — which has ticket hookups for the Rose Bowl and National Championship — but I’m a Florida alum, so I’m fairly sure I can find a free or cheap seat at the Peach Bowl. I’d have couches to sleep on in Atlanta and some of the Texas sites. And like The Latitudes, I’m not above scalping.
“Heck, the first game, I bought on StubHub when I was in line,” Ostlund says. “All of these guys don’t come from a lot of money. I think they’re all entrepreneurial kinda guys that learned to go to things at a young age and would scalp tickets to get into a sporting event ... There’s always a way to get a ticket and get into a game if you’re resourceful.”
Including a break for Christmas like the group did, the whole journey would be 16,185 miles.
Ostlund’s chief concern about the group isn’t the monetary cost, but the human one. This is a stressful deal.
On the 15th, they somehow found a way to see all three halftime shows for the Celebration, Camellia, and New Orleans Bowls. They left after the first halftime and made it to Montgomery for kickoff. They stayed through halftime of that one, hanging out with former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville and the bowl committee’s chairman. Then they made it to New Orleans right as the second quarter ended.
After that, they faced some tire-related adversity ...
... but still got to South Florida in plenty of time for the Boca Raton Bowl on Dec. 18:
“I don’t want to act like we’re too unsafe, but I had that gas pedal pushed down pretty far [on the 15th] to get us to that New Orleans game,” Ostlund says. “So that was really tough physically and logistically. I think what will be hard is these guys not wearing on each other as we get deeper into this. There’s not as many, but you know there’s things that we’re all needed for at home, as well, that are tugging on us.”
Beyond their business responsibilities, there’s a little holiday right in the middle of the bowl calendar. In the way things sometimes just find a way to work out, Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday, which means the 23rd is a Sunday and Christmas Eve is a Monday. Bowls don’t like to compete with the NFL. The Hawaii Bowl’s not even on Christmas Eve this year, for the third time ever.
That means that the group gets a Christmas break. That break might be why the group’s described it as a 22-day trip, though it’s 24 on the calendar from start to end. Ostlund will fly to see his family and then rejoin the group on the Texas Loop.
“Thank God,” he says. “We’d all be divorced.”
So, if you’re at a bowl game, look out for a bunch of guys in “Bowlmageddon” shirts.
“We didn’t even know that people would really take an interest in this, Ostlund says. “We were just gonna do it for the fun of doing it. Now there’s a little bit of pressure with everybody knowing.”
USC not going bowling doesn’t mean this group was content to sit around. If they make it through this stretch, they’ll be in Santa Clara on Jan. 7, maybe getting some record recognition of their own before college football crowns its champion. And even if not, Ostlund sees a bigger benefit:
“We’re having the time of our lives.”
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