FAU Official Attendance

Cerebus · October 9, 2011

WTAMU (Div II) attendance last night - 14,577.

The Sunbelt will kill UNT's program. It would be better to go independent until a respectable conference home can be found.

God bless Texas!

Going independent is a great plan, if your goal is to get us into FCS.

SBC membership automatically gives us four home games a year with programs we can compete with. Smaller programs usually sell their road games at the start of the year, and then everyone is busy with conference play. Because of that, buying road games would be cost prohibitive for us.

A indy schedule for us would be about 4 home games, maybe 5 in a great year, with 1 or 2 of those games being against FCS teams. The number of body "bag games" would be much higher than it is now. Membership in the SBC gives us 8 games a year against FBS programs we should be able to compete with. We probably play 3 or 4 of those games if we go indy.

Marty · October 10, 2011

Angelo State at West Texas : 15,100

....and it was WT's homecoming. And there's nothing else to do in Canyon.

Edited October 10, 2011 by Marty

Aquila_Viridis · October 10, 2011

I have a guaranteed plan to get the stands full regardless of any other factors: (1) give away the tickets, (2) free beer, and (3) topless dancers. This is what they are doing at UTSA.

UNTLifer · October 10, 2011

WHERE WERE THE STUDENTS? I would be embarrassed to meet a player face to face on campus this week. Poor, poor, poor, and I don't care if the Rangers were playing and the OU thrashing of UT was over 4 hours prior to our game.

GangGreen · October 10, 2011

Denton has a "Sports Commission", but you would never know it from the lack of any activity supporting local teams/universities, etc. I think the Commission is pretty much a "clique" of folks who really see it as their own little universe to do with as they please, and could really care less about actually promoting sports in and around Denton.

I give the Denton Sports Commission a BIG FAT "F" FOR "FAIL BIG TIME". Seems to be a pure waste of energy, time and money.

Anyone know any members of this esteemed Commission?

I remember in 2000, The Sporting News ranked Denton as the worst sports city in the country. Eleven years later.....

Green Crazy · October 10, 2011

Would you say there was 4k on the students side? So we had 1% of the student population?!? Really? Pathetic.

Does anyone think the state fair hurts the attendance numbers as well? I usually have to miss a game a year because of a yearly trip to the fair with some close friends. We try to schedule it around the home games in October, but usually our schedules conflict each other and I have to bite the bullet and miss a game. I'm not saying this is a huge reason, but I think it just adds to the problem.

This game will hurt the effort to break the attendance record for a year. Hopefully a win next week and homecoming will save us.

wardly · October 10, 2011

Those programs are not the answer to our attendance woes. Playing good, solid football, and scheduling teams like Rice, Houston, TCU, SMU, UTEP, Baylor, Tx Tech, etc., along with Tulsa and the military academies will help.

utsa, with a start up program, has averaged 38,695 for 4 home games, total of 154,780 ytd. that is quite a bit more that the 110,000 or so we will probably average for 6 home games,or about 18,000+ per game. thats if we draw 20,000 for homecoming, and 15,000 for wk and mtsu. we are stuck with our conference games, and programs like tcu,baylor,and t.t. won't schedule us anymore,and smu comes and goes. no one in the belt travels well, so it is up to us to develope a winning program and try to develope some natural opponents that can bring fans. otherwise we are looking at the same 17,500 butts in the seat that we averaged at fouts. just an old mans opinion.

unteagle0913 · October 10, 2011

Baylor had over 35K last night for ISU. Yes, the are ranked (25) but they were playing ISU, were coming off a loss, with the same weather/ALCS issues as our fan base. They are also a lot smaller in terms of alumni/student base. If we can't at least draw half of what Baylor draws (regardless of opponent/record) were in bigger trouble than we realize. As said above - it's time to start giving away tickets . . . .holding high school band nights etc

FYI 35k is 10k less than their season average. They are a BIG XII school with a heisman candidate coming off a 1 point loss to the #5 defense in the country. They have a very loyal fan base and that is something we have yet to build. I wouldn't compare UNT to Baylor at this point. We just aren't there yet.

unteagle0913 · October 10, 2011

I watched the game on ESPN3 while listening to George & Hank on kntu.com because I don't live anywhere near Denton. Let's be real... and it's been repeated in this thread: the only thing that will get people in the stands is a winning football program. You can't demand loyalty from students or alumni... you have to earn it. The way you earn people's loyalty in college football is by winning.

Why should we be surprised that there were so many empty seats on a weekend when Texas & O.U. played and the Rangers are in the ALCS (and bad weather to boot)? How can we criticize those who chose not to attend a game featuring Florida Atlantic? Furthermore, why is the athletic department scheduling home games on Texas/O.U. weekend? We can beg everybody to attend through letters and other gimmicks all we want... but why try to fight that tradition head-to-head? It didn't work for the USFL trying to beat the NFL... it's not going to work for North Texas at this stage of the game.

People will start being more than mildly interested once the program starts winning consistently... and last night's win over FAU gives us hope that the winning program is a lot closer than it's been in recent years.

The conference schedule is set by the Sun Belt Conference, not our athletic staff. Since we are home and home with conference opponents, sometimes things just don't work out in our favor. Can't blame our staff for that.

GTWT · October 10, 2011

Going independent is a great plan, if your goal is to get us into FCS.

SBC membership automatically gives us four home games a year with programs we can compete with. Smaller programs usually sell their road games at the start of the year, and then everyone is busy with conference play. Because of that, buying road games would be cost prohibitive for us.

A indy schedule for us would be about 4 home games, maybe 5 in a great year, with 1 or 2 of those games being against FCS teams. The number of body "bag games" would be much higher than it is now. Membership in the SBC gives us 8 games a year against FBS programs we should be able to compete with. We probably play 3 or 4 of those games if we go indy.

No, my goal for UNT isn't FCS. My goal is a respectable FBS conference. Realistically that means cUSA or MWC. I don't believe UNT can get there from the Sun Belt. I think our best chance at moving up is to move out of the Belt. If that means going independent with all the problems that entails - so be it.

greenminer · October 10, 2011

No, my goal for UNT isn't FCS. My goal is a respectable FBS conference. Realistically that means cUSA or MWC. I don't believe UNT can get there from the Sun Belt. I think our best chance at moving up is to move out of the Belt. If that means going independent with all the problems that entails - so be it.

We all have the same idea (moving up), but thinking independent is going to move us faster than the Belt is not realistic at all. It is very likely we would be so suffocated by the financial struggles that entail it, we would not be able to recover at all, let alone put ourselves in a position to move up.

wardly · October 10, 2011

How many of those games were also homecoming? I seem to remember that several of those were, and we always draw well for the homecoming game.

i doubt any were homecoming. i am susprised at the positive attendance at our game during texas/ou weekend. i have been living under the impression for 50 years that it adversily affected our attendance and now stand corrected. thanks for the information!

Cerebus · October 10, 2011

Would you say there was 4k on the students side? So we had 1% of the student population?!? Really? Pathetic.

Our enrollment is not 400,000.

4K is ~11% of our student population.

Not great, but the alumni turnout was probably 5% of the DFW alumni population, and that's not great either.

GRN-WHT · October 10, 2011

The attendance culprit is clear to see now.

The Dallas Stars attendance today up against the Rangers: 6,306

Eagle1855 · October 11, 2011

My son asked me who NT's rival was during the game. I could not tell him....we do not have one in the sbc.

We do not have a rival. It's true. We really don't. It's all kinds of frustrating, too.

Green Crazy · October 11, 2011

Our enrollment is not 400,000.

4K is ~11% of our student population.

Not great, but the alumni turnout was probably 5% of the DFW alumni population, and that's not great either.

Ha! Typo. My point was we need more than 1 out of 10 students to attend the game.