Courtesy of a Yahoo! Sports story on accelerated expansion of the playoff.

"There will always be a place for second-tier bowl games. They still rate well, are heavily bet on and give fans a near-nightly football fix during the holiday season. (Basketball coaches are always dumbfounded to hear statistics like this: The Belk Bowl beat all but one regular-season college basketball game in audience last year.)"

I'm sure it benefited from being on NYE, but this is still remarkable to me.