re: This year's bowl attendance

Cotton Bowl Attendance was 59K plus. So probably 95% of the crowd was Wisconsin/WM fans with very few locals attending. That would be my guess. Decent crowd for those two teams considering the distance from each state to Dallas.
But yes, attendance at Bowl games is pathetic.
I think they should go to a 8 team play off (5 P5 champions, highest ranked G5 team and two wild card teams). Use the old traditional bowls for those 7 games. Rose, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, Cotton, Sugar, Sun Bowls.
Beyond that, have 10 bowl games. So then you would have 28 teams making postseason play. In other words, you would have to earn it again. The ten bowl games that survive you be picked by a combination of age, tradition, location, stadium, and money. That would give us 17 bowl games total. The other 20+ can bite the dust.