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WSJ: College Football’s Growing Problem - Empty Seats

Cerebus

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WSJ: College Football’s Growing Problem: Empty Seats

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College football has an attendance problem. Average announced attendance in football’s top division dropped for the fourth consecutive year last year, declining 7.6% in four years. But schools’ internal records show that the sport’s attendance woes go far beyond that.

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The average count of tickets scanned at home games—the number of fans who actually show up—is about 71% of the attendance you see in a box score, according to data from the 2017 season collected by The Wall Street Journal. In the Mid-American Conference, with less-prominent programs like Central Michigan and Toledo, teams’ scanned attendance numbers were 45% of announced attendance.

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Despite the rising value of TV-rights contracts, football ticket sales and donations often make up more than half of athletic-department revenues. College sports officials say many factors are incenting fans to stay home including: affordable big-screen TVs; the availability of more games on TV; ever-changing kickoff times that make it difficult to plan ahead; games that span more than four hours; traffic; and rising ticket prices.

 

Pavlovs Eagle Veteran

Pavlovs Eagle

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2 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

My big takeaway is that after a solid decade of sucking, we still have some of the strongest attendance in CUSA.   Things will only get better if we continue to win.  

As long as they don't get too rich with ticket season prices... Sometimes schools have a "soak the rich" manta regarding anyone with season tickets.  We haven't been good enough for long enough for that to happen.

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TheColonyEagle Grand Master

TheColonyEagle

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43 minutes ago, GreenN'walinsVet said:

I don't know how a fan of a premier P5 team plans anything when the majority of your games kickoff times are not set until 13 days before.

Premier P5 fan's lives revolve around their team. 

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SilverEagle Mentor

SilverEagle

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14 minutes ago, Cerebus said:

My big takeaway is that after a solid decade of sucking, we still have some of the strongest attendance in CUSA.   Things will only get better if we continue to win.  

.....and the competency of our athletic department stays at the same level.....or continues to improve.

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DeepGreen Grand Master

DeepGreen

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3 minutes ago, SilverEagle said:

.....and the competency of our athletic department stays at the same level.....or continues to improve.

Which absolutely pains me to think of all the years completely wasted by incompetent UNT administrators and athletic directors.  What could have been after the Fry era, before lowering ourselves to D1AA(FCS).

Edited by DeepGreen
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SilverEagle Mentor

SilverEagle

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8 minutes ago, DeepGreen said:

Which absolutely pains me to think of all the years completely wasted by incompetent UNT administrators and athletic directors.  What could have been after the Fry era, before lowering ourselves to D1AA(FCS).

I never realized how entrenched all those "Old Nesters- Dr. Matthews-era-minons" were, and still in positions of power after Hayden Fry left.  Shortly after that they ganged up on Jitter Nolan and ran him out of town. And then the dark ages returned.

MAN, I never realized how much Hayden Fry was hated by so many administrators and professors until he left. 

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untjim1995 Grand Master

untjim1995

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24 minutes ago, DeepGreen said:

Which absolutely pains me to think of all the years completely wasted by incompetent UNT administrators and athletic directors.  What could have been after the Fry era, before lowering ourselves to D1AA(FCS).

This is what killed any hope we ever had of being a Power Level team. At the very least, if we had never dropped down to I-aa and stayed there for 12 freaking years, we would be an AAC type program, bare minimum. 

I still think the biggest mistake we ever made under Fry was going all in on getting SWC membership. The better plan would've been to pit the Big Eight against the SWC. The Big Eight had no Texas ties here, except for when OU played UT every year in the Cotton Bowl. Back then, they could've gotten a DFW foothold, allowed each program to play 8 conference games instead of 7, and had Texas HS kids knocking on their door. It would've been a perfect fit for the old Big Eight. And nobody would've blocked it out of fear of another huge public school stealing market share or using their resources to keep the private schools further down.  We could have had football games here with OU, Nebraska, and Colorado in the 70s and 80s, as well as basketball games with OU, OSU, KU, KSU, and Mizzou. There would've been nothing that SMU and TCU could've done to match that combo, even with Texas, Arkansas, A&M, and UH at their best in that time frame.

But,  instead, we gave up.

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SilverEagle Mentor

SilverEagle

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8 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

This is what killed any hope we ever had of being a Power Level team. At the very least, if we had never dropped down to I-aa and stayed there for 12 freaking years, we would be an AAC type program, bare minimum. 

I still think the biggest mistake we ever made under Fry was going all in on getting SWC membership. The better plan would've been to pit the Big Eight against the SWC. The Big Eight had no Texas ties here, except for when OU played UT every year in the Cotton Bowl. Back then, they could've gotten a DFW foothold, allowed each program to play 8 conference games instead of 7, and had Texas HS kids knocking on their door. It would've been a perfect fit for the old Big Eight. And nobody would've blocked it out of fear of another huge public school stealing market share or using their resources to keep the private schools further down.  We could have had football games here with OU, Nebraska, and Colorado in the 70s and 80s, as well as basketball games with OU, OSU, KU, KSU, and Mizzou. There would've been nothing that SMU and TCU could've done to match that combo, even with Texas, Arkansas, A&M, and UH at their best in that time frame.

But,  instead, we gave up.

Well, the one thing that the "old nesters" DID embrace was the end of the Dr. Matthews ban on fund raising.  Many departments (mainly the school of music) went after big doners and they made many connections out there......which no one else was allowed to contact. 

It's only been in recent history that the athletic department has been allowed to go after,  real "leads". Up till then they were relegated to fending for themselves, and when they did make new contacts they probably had to deal with "catch-22" conversations like "we're not going to donate to a 1-aa program. When you can demonstrate that you can compete with the big schools in Texas, then we'll talk".

SCREAMING EAGLE-66 Rookie

SCREAMING EAGLE-66

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--- I don't think it is just colleges with increasing number of empty seats.... It seems to be happening with many high schools... At one time there were fewer sports and people considered the existing games more important ... plus less entertainment options in many towns then. [ less TV and no/few  video games etc. ] ..    Concussions  etc. may be a concern also with a lot of kids that would have played years ago not playing now. ... in towns,  less local kids playing mean less interest. 

Edited by SCREAMING EAGLE-66
outoftown Veteran

outoftown

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3 hours ago, Cerebus said:

vE3KZtc.png

So, if only scanned tickets were counted (which is what it really should be), then UNT would be number2 in C-USA

Also too bad, the numbers are not available for SMU. I'd be really interested in seeing those.

Edited by outoftown
outoftown Veteran

outoftown

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1 hour ago, emmitt01 said:

Check this out, and especially pay attention to the scanned tickets lines.    P6 my ass.  

(From http://footballscoop.com/news/college-footballs-attendance-crisis-worse-think/)

attendance.jpg

Shows pretty clearly what many of us have suspected for a long time: the AAC is more bluster than anything else. If the privates were reporting, it would look even worse on their side. I am sure SMU would render that percentage worse.

meangreenJW Enthusiast

meangreenJW

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1 hour ago, outoftown said:

So, if only scanned tickets were counted (which is what it really should be), then UNT would be number2 in C-USA

Also too bad, the numbers are not available for SMU. I'd be really interested in seeing those.

Does it tell number of games so you can figure an average? That would be a good data point

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