I live in San Diego and just hopped on Stub Hub to see about getting tickets to the Poinsettia Bowl (BYU vs Wyoming) and/or the Holiday Bowl (Wazzu vs Minnesota), pretty slim pickens for the Poinsettia Bowl if you are cheap like me. About only 1/3 the tickets available as the Holiday Bowl and they are quite a bit more expensive. Pretty impressive that the Ponsettia Bowl will likely out draw the Holiday Bowl.
Subpar bowl in a great city. Easy driver for both fan bases. Wyoming hasn’t been to a bowl in how long so you know their fans will travel. Add to that it’s BYU a team Wyoming fans absolutely hate maybe even worse then Utah fans. Big alum and church base in San Diego county for BYU. This all adds up to a big crowd.
BYU has the “advantage” of knowing what bowl they’ll be playing in by week 2 of every season. That’s one of the many sucky parts of independence, but the good part for their fans is that they have months and months to make travel plans and buy tickets.