Chad Painter lifted his 8-year-old son, Chapman, onto his shoulders Wednesday morning so Chapman could peek inside a ballroom at the Renaissance Orlando Hotel. Chapman wore a No. 24 Georgia Bulldogs jersey and held a miniature football signed by players as he and his dad craned their necks to get a better look at University of Georgia football coach Mark Richt.

The recession didn't stop the Painter family from traveling from their home in Dalton, Ga., for six days in Orlando to watch their beloved Bulldogs play in this afternoon's Capital One Bowl against Michigan State. The Painters are staying in the Georgia team hotel, and Chapman even met star quarterback Matthew Stafford and star running back Knowshon Moreno...

...Officials from Florida Citrus Sports, the nonprofit organization that runs both bowl games, hope that today's Capital One Bowl will draw 60,000 people. Though that would be short of the stadium's 65,438 capacity, FCS officials say Georgia sold all 12,000 tickets it had been allotted and that Michigan State sold just more than 11,000.

"Everybody's hurting out there, and it's expensive to travel right now and stay in hotels and buy tickets," FCS Executive Director Steve Hogan said. "But I'm very happy where both of these teams ended up relative to where I thought maybe it was going to go."

Elsewhere, numbers fall

It's impossible to determine exactly how much the economy is to blame for sluggish ticket sales at some bowls.

But when The Hartford Courant asked readers why few University of Connecticut fans had bought tickets to the Jan. 3 International Bowl in Toronto, fans responded that the top reason was the economy.

The inaugural St. Petersburg Bowl at Tropicana Field announced just 25,205 people even though it featured nearby University of South Florida. Even tradition-rich games, such as the Jan. 2 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, have seen sluggish ticket sales.

A smaller-than-usual crowd is expected for tonight's Orange Bowl game. Cincinnati, a school with a limited football tradition and relatively small fan following, and Virginia Tech, a school with a large fan base, haven't generated much excitement in South Florida. Online ticket broker StubHub.com is selling some upper-deck seats for $25 apiece, and fans can snag tickets for far below face value through online auctions.

The South Florida area, though, expects a financial windfall when it hosts the Bowl Championship Series national title game between Florida and Oklahoma in the same stadium Jan. 8.

That game has high stakes. Other bowls are essentially exhibitions designed in part to attract tourism dollars to the host cities. Florida Citrus Sports spokesman Greg Creese said a third-party study conducted by Joyce Julius & Associates found that Orlando's two bowl games last year resulted in $71.7 million in new economic activity for the area.

At lunchtime Wednesday, fans in Georgia's red and white and Michigan State's green and white strolled through the Pointe Orlando shopping and dining complex off International Drive, where organizers have set up the Bowl-a-Palooza FanFest.

Eight of the 31 people eating at Adobe Gila's cantina wore Michigan State shirts or caps. The restaurant's general manager, Dave Greer, said Spartans fans packed the restaurant Tuesday night after a team pep rally at Pointe Orlando.

"They spent a lot of money around here," Greer said.

And in a recession, every little bit helps.