Stadium

HoustonEagle · January 9, 2014

Minor note that doesn't negate your arguments, but UH has always beat UNT in stadium capacity (exception 2 temp games at BBVA stadium this season) even if it was by a minor amount. Robertson held over 32k while Apogee holds over 30k. You could probably say UH's new stadium significantly beats UNT's and it would be accurate and could be used for your points.

But I disagree with your arguments for a different reason. Respect is earned more by attendance than stadium size. Rice and UAB have a huge stadiums, but that doesn't get them respect because their attendance is poor and looks worse in the giant stadiums.

As I said in a previous post, selling out a smaller stadium is more important to increasing attendance than increasing stadium capacity. To really increase average attendance consistently, you need to increase season ticket sales. If you want to increase season ticket sales beyond the hardcore who will be there every game to the fan who goes to a couple of games a year, you need that sellout threat for the big games which are going to be the games the occasional attendee goes to. You can't rely on walkups to consistently have a higher attendance. You may get the occasional high attendance name through walkups if you get a name opponent, but you need that season ticket sale to have the high attendance every week.

Good Post.

As someone that has been to many Rice games over the years I can tell you that the vast open spaces just kills the college football environment. What looks like a good crowd in Apogee would be swallowed up by Rice stadium. Apogee needs to stay at 30k until tickets are a hard fought commodity for at least half the games in a season.

Green Mean · January 9, 2014

I agree...but when do we start seeing 30K per game....in 3 yrs? 5 yrs? sooner?...if we aren't putting 30K in the seats after 5 yrs something is really wrong...the AD has dropped the ball....this season and the HOD bowl made me realize what could be !

The only way I see putting less than 30K in Apogee is if we go back to being little ol North Texas again and quite frankly start to really stink again. Just thinking about that possibility is really scaring the crap out of me.

MeanGreenTexan · January 9, 2014

The only way I see putting less than 30K in Apogee is if we go back to being little ol North Texas again and quite frankly start to really stink again. Just thinking about that possibility is really scaring the crap out of me.

So you're expecting the average attendance next year to jump about 9k...why?

If because of the bowl win, I don't think that's enough for the ones who are not coming now to start coming.

Beat Texas to start the year, and I'll buy in.

meangreenthirteen · January 9, 2014

So you're expecting the average attendance next year to jump about 9k...why?

If because of the bowl win, I don't think that's enough for the ones who are not coming now to start coming.

Beat Texas to start the year, and I'll buy in.

Heck, play Texas as close or closer than Georgia and SMU game is a record-breaker. Maybe it's just the high from all the hype wearing off, but I definitely feel we will see a significant increase in attendance next year.

Green Mean · January 9, 2014

So you're expecting the average attendance next year to jump about 9k...why?

If because of the bowl win, I don't think that's enough for the ones who are not coming now to start coming.

Beat Texas to start the year, and I'll buy in.

No I meant that in 10 years from now the only way I can see us being under that number consistently is if we've reverted back to being real bad and making bad hires and decisions. If we continue our success and do things right then 30K+ is easily attainable.

UNTP1 · January 10, 2014

Sell beer inside Apogee and attendance will increase significantly. The SMU game will be a guaranteed sellout if we have a good showing in Austin and beer is available for purchase at concession stands.

3XL · January 10, 2014

Good Post.

As someone that has been to many Rice games over the years I can tell you that the vast open spaces just kills the college football environment. What looks like a good crowd in Apogee would be swallowed up by Rice stadium. Apogee needs to stay at 30k until tickets are a hard fought commodity for at least half the games in a season.

There are some great post here...I really enjoyed Plum & UNTFan23's duel....both good...both funny...I + arrowed both guys!

It's pretty exciting that we can envision, a little more clearly, what this place could be like in 10-20 years.

I agree with HoustonEagle....open spaces can really kill the football environment...let's max what we have first....

Edited January 10, 2014 by 3XL

Harry · January 10, 2014

Sell beer inside Apogee and attendance will increase significantly. The SMU game will be a guaranteed sellout if we have a good showing in Austin and beer is available for purchase at concession stands.

I think they should tie any good seats to the SMU game to season ticket purchases. I agree that a good showing -- not necessarily a win - but a good respectable showing at UT will do wonders for the SMU game attendance.

PlummMeanGreen · January 10, 2014

Mean Joe Greene quote on recent radio show with the Dallas Cowboy's Mickey Spagnola and on the subject of Apogee Stadium:

"Well, it is small....." Will UH's 40K stadium ever be called.....small?

Todd Dodge right before he left UNT: "It will be a nice stadium albeit small."

When is "small" ever a good thing when it comes to college sports and campus venues?

Lets see here, we now have one who talks about 38,000 MG fans in a very cavernous Cotton Bowl Stadium on New Years Day but adding 9,000 more seats to Apogee is such an "out there" idea? What am I missing here? No one has said we need a 92,000 seat Apogee to my knowledge. Wonder how those 35K to 38K Mean Green fans at the HOD Bowl would have looked inside a 40K seat Apogee? So see just how close we already are with such a venture?

No, we'd never sell out every game in a 40K sized stadium just like U of Houston is not going to against most their AAC opponents--few of which most Texans know or care about; but why not shoot for a 40K sellout at least once a year by having the right OOC games in Denton every Fall? We had more impressive OOC games at Fouts than we have at Apogee for the time being--that needs to change no matter how large or small our stadium is.

If a school that says it wants to be the equal of UH and then proceeds to build a new stadium which adds only 350 more seats than the stadium its replacing, then hasn't that been a most defining statement by our school about our future? Does that bode well for a school that says it has UH-type aspirations? Granted, UH will have empty seats at 40K in their AAC, but they will still be able to do like UTSA and schedule some pretty impressive P5 home games because of their initial seating being at 40K They are not building that large for AAC foes like UConn, but because they have a bigger picture in mind by playing home games against schools who will help them fill a 40K seat stadium from time to time.

SOMETIMES WE ARE SLOW LEARNERS AT NORTH TEXAS: Whether one want to admit it or not, we are still in a NCAA FBS facilities arms race (especially among the G5). And no, if we keep doing the ways we've always done them at North Texas, then we might need to do like Rice U and start removing seats and getting canopies to cover up Game Day embarrassments.

SLOW LEARNERS YOU SAY? After all, it only took us over 30 years to figure out that maybe we needed to hire a HFC with a similar background as the last HFC to leave UNT with over a .500 record? I suppose it takes Ivy League graduated kind of leadership to figure that one out, but I don't see many of those on our payroll of late, either. Anyone else kinda' figure out why some of us don't exactly listen to those so-called "experts" who've never led or been around a truly successful NCAA football program which has annual superb season ticket sales and lights out attendance?

No, we really don't need to expand Apogee with present crowd who never really had a viable plan to fill Fouts Field; a staff with no apparent football season tickets goals who never tells our group how many they've sold; or a staff of which large group promotions is a total stranger to their ways of running things on Game Days at Apogee. I guess they just like the strange, aesthetic look of empty seats.

Only reason to enlarge Apogee has everything to do with the future and the fact that one day we might just have leadership who will get schools to come to our on-campus stadium much like UTSA is scheduling right now? I repeat: Much like UTSA is scheduling right now. Does that make some of you regressives who base our entire future on just about everything we've (unsuccessfully) done in the past proud, too? Well, just wait till the next re-alignment comes around and see what the main criteria will be for a school to move up. Right now, even UTSA has the advantage over UNT with that looking at the ways these kind of things usually shake out. First time in the late 70's what would divide the wheat from the chaffe? It was attendance back then and it will one day be attendance again. Yet what was it that got UTSA all the national publicity along with a few national feature articles as well? Wins? At the time they had a mere handful of "W's." It was UTSA's B.I.S.

So no, I don't think we'll expand Apogee any time too soon with our present crowd because they are still too busy high fivin' each other with the construction of a "3 years old going on 4 years old" "new" stadium. One whose capacity is smaller than our present enrollment and about 1/7'th the size of our over 200,000 North Texas alums living within 1 to 1.5 hours of the Mean Green Village.

I'm moving on from this subject.

GMG!

Edited January 11, 2014 by PlummMeanGreen

oldguystudent · January 10, 2014

Not a small stadium.

And why in the HELL would I give one flying albino squirrel dropping as to what Todd Dodge has to say about Apogee after departing in disgrace?

UNTLifer · January 10, 2014

I thought Apogee was too small at the time it was being built, but the intimacy of the stadium has created a huge home field advantage for us. Add on when sellouts are a constant threat, although, adding a second level on the student side, which would be premium seating, would be more attractive to the average fan than sitting at the top of the tail section.

oldguystudent · January 10, 2014

I thought Apogee was too small at the time it was being built, but the intimacy of the stadium has created a huge home field advantage for us. Add on when sellouts are a constant threat, although, adding a second level on the student side, which would be premium seating, would be more attractive to the average fan than sitting at the top of the tail section.

Apogee if freaking awesome. Have any of these willy nilly expansion proponents been to a road game since Apogee opened? Did they hear the lack of thunderous noise as the cavernous Cotton Bowl swallowed up the cheers of 38,000 Mean Green fans? They built Apogee smaller, but utterly first class top to bottom. Place is amazing.

As for the counter argument that we weren't selling out Fouts before building Apogee, Fouts was falling down. It was like playing in an ancient Roman ruins. And wisely, when they build Apogee, they knew attendance was only about 18,000 at the time, so they chose capacity wisely.

Sometimes, life should be about quality, not how high on the fence you can piss. I think that concept has been lost on us as a culture, not limited to college football stadiums.

forevereagle · January 10, 2014

Sell beer inside Apogee and attendance will increase significantly. The SMU game will be a guaranteed sellout if we have a good showing in Austin and beer is available for purchase at concession stands.

So because we sell over priced beer in the stadium, more people will come? I don't think that beer sales are as much the holy grail of attendance that you do.

Stix · January 10, 2014

So because we sell over priced beer in the stadium, more people will come? I don't think that beer sales are as much the holy grail of attendance that you do.

I wouldn't call it the "holy grail of attendance", but after seeing how many empty "bottles"* there were in the Cotton Bowl as I was leaving, I'm convinced. We should sell beer at Apogee.

And I should add, I didn't see any drunken fans at the HOD.

* if the bottle is made of aluminum, is it really a bottle?

Edited January 10, 2014 by Stix

UNTFan23 · January 10, 2014

I wouldn't call it the "holy grail of attendance", but after seeing how many empty "bottles"* there were in the Cotton Bowl as I was leaving, I'm convinced. We should sell beer at Apogee.

And I should add, I didn't see any drunken fans at the HOD.

* if the bottle is made of aluminum, is it really a bottle?

What about plastic?

UNTP1 · January 11, 2014

So because we sell over priced beer in the stadium, more people will come? I don't think that beer sales are as much the holy grail of attendance that you do.

I agree that beer at sporting events is way overpriced. That being said, have you ever attended a sporting event where the price of the beer was deterring the majority of people from purchasing it? Not to mention one of the groups we are trying to bring in the stadium are the folks who tailgate but don't attend. I believe that group would have no problem paying for overpriced beer because they are already too drunk to care.

FirefightnRick · January 11, 2014

The Deck at Fouts served a great purpose. Something like it is all that Appogee is missing. I thought the AC Center outdoor deck was going to be it, then we blocked it's view with the video board. Need to somehow bring that idea back.

Rick

Rudy · January 11, 2014

Fouts was falling down. It was like playing in an ancient Roman ruins.

Well, we were not being entertained, so not an entirely accurrate analogy

UNTFan23 · January 11, 2014

The Deck at Fouts served a great purpose. Something like it is all that Appogee is missing. I thought the AC Center outdoor deck was going to be it, then we blocked it's view with the video board. Need to somehow bring that idea back.
Rick

Nice to see we've revived this discussion. Can't leave a dead horse to rest.

Ben Gooding · January 12, 2014

An invitation to the big12 is the prized goal. However, let's work on owning the CUSA west and filling Apogee Stadium. If those 2 things start to consistently happen then they sky is the limit. GMG!!!

PlummMeanGreen · January 12, 2014

Nice to see we've revived this discussion. Can't leave a dead horse to rest.

The only dead horses I see are those who apparently have guns pointed at them forcing them to read threads that gets them and their little Mean Green world all bent out of shape. I have one fairly known fellow alum at North Texas so pissed off at me for having opinions that apparently differ from his that at a recent game he was even trying to bring my personal life into the discussion. If he ever does that again I'm going to slap his teeth down his throat and probably spend my first ever night in jail for doing it.

If all this makes you so tense, why do you persist in reading it and badgering those who don't share the same vision of North Texas you and a hardy handful of your buds on this message board always seem to have? And then comes all of yours and "the elite cliques" Saul Alinsky'esque "isolating and demonization" of posters whose ideas merely differ from some of yours? So progressive of ya'...

Freedom of Speech still exists last I checked on that in the last 24 hour news cycle and most of us plan to exercize that right. In fact, some of us who still cling to our guns and religion will guarantee that we will do that because after all.............didn't our Founding Fathers of whom many were our very own ancestors have to do it to preserve the republic at times? (now insert "Battle Hymn of the Republic")

Edited January 12, 2014 by PlummMeanGreen

wardly · January 12, 2014

As regards expanding the stadium, I would think that we would want to create a demand by routinely selling out what we have. Otherwise, we have an outdoor basketball arena with 2,000 fans in a 9,000 seat venue.[sound familiar] Regarding drunks at the HOD,saw a group get into a pushing match a few rows below me but no blood. Personally, I would rather keep the drunks out than bring them in. I have yet to see a study that says beer sales will bring more fans, but I have club seats where liquor is sold and have not seen any problems.I haven't had a drink in 25 years,but never liked being around drunks even when I was one.

oldguystudent · January 12, 2014

The club did have a couple interesting episodes in the first season, but since then it's been a kinder, more genteel atmosphere. I blame the decline in food quality.

DeepGreen · January 12, 2014

Before expanding Apogee, let's fill it with capacity crowds, watching Mean Green "winning football" on a consistent basis. For all the years Boise State has performed remarkably well in football, look at the expansion history of Boise State.

36,387 (2012–Present)
33,500 (2009–2011)
32,000 (2008)
30,000 (1997–2007)
20,000 (1975–1996)
14,500 (1970–1974)

NTXCoog · January 12, 2014

Before expanding Apogee, let's fill it with capacity crowds, watching Mean Green "winning football" on a consistent basis. For all the years Boise State has performed remarkably well in football, look at the expansion history of Boise State.

36,387 (2012–Present)
33,500 (2009–2011)
32,000 (2008)
30,000 (1997–2007)
20,000 (1975–1996)
14,500 (1970–1974)

To be fair, Boise was D2 from 1973-1977 and D1AA from 1978-1995. So they expanded their biggest expansions were when they jumpled to higher divisions.