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We have a winning streak going and the beginning of a promising new season…..so I am not buying the loser thing. There is enough to be excited about. We have the most charismatic coach (family) we could hope for, an amazing stadium/campus, great weather (sorry, I won't mention uniforms). I just don't get it. The people I brought up from DC were saying "wow, this place is beautiful, there must be a lot of things to do in Akron (sarcastically)…..its a pretty big city and you can only get 9000 people to a game?

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We have a winning streak going and the beginning of a promising new season…..so I am not buying the loser thing. There is enough to be excited about. We have the most charismatic coach (family) we could hope for, an amazing stadium/campus, great weather (sorry, I won't mention uniforms). I just don't get it. The people I brought up from DC were saying "wow, this place is beautiful, there must be a lot of things to do in Akron (sarcastically)…..its a pretty big city and you can only get 9000 people to a game?

There is even more. The Zips are 5-1 in their last six games. I know it isn't exactly fair to bring a stat from one season into another, but there has been winning with the program in recent games. There is no reason the game Thursday shouldn't have been played on Saturday night. Again, when you make it hard for fans to go to games, they don't go to games. The insanity needs to stop.

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This is the reality of the situation folks. People won't come to Akron games on a saturday afternoon. They won't come on a Tuesday evening either. When will they come?

I'd like to think that as soon as we get winning, they will come to the games. Making the games at 8 PM on a Tuesday night won't help maximize what we could do. Certainly not Tuesday and Wednesday night. Friday, maybe.

Stop worrying about the Tuesday games. Until we're good enough to fill the stadium on a Saturday afternoon (with other big games going on that people could be watching) we have no business complaining about it. We need to stop bellyaching over Tuesday night games. If we're good enough to fill our stands, than we're good enough to start demanding National attention. We're not there yet, so make the best with these lemons. Actually, the Tuesday night games are the exact kind of thing that is killing the league and people should be complaining about. Season ticket holders should be up in arms about it. Just pretending that winning more games will make this horrible decision by the leadership of the schools and league somehow OK is not living in the world of reality. Long term, winning won't get us on TV on Saturday afternoon because there is not a network that will show our games nationally on Saturday afternoon. The year NIU went to a BCS game, they didn't have a single network Saturday game. Winning isn't going to change it because the "leadership" of the schools and conference have doomed us to this reality by signing contracts with ESPN for these horrible weeknight games. The enemy within is always the most dangerous. Our enemy is the combination of our ADs and the league Commissioner.

Toledo Game was on a Weekday game, and it was the 2nd most exciting Zips FB game I've ever been to. I didn't drink at that game either...still had the best time. Your stretching reality with the Toledo game. Yes, technically it was a week day game...the day after Thanksgiving, which is basically a weekend game because few people work that day.

The Toledo game was "Technically" a weekend game...and it still looked like an icebox. Cold. Empty, devoid of fans.

At least long term winning will justify not having a nationally televised game on Tuesday, because we'd at least have attendance at those Saturday games. NIU is the exception. It usually can fill it's stadium. Akron can't, regardless of the day of the week. Neither can Miami, EMU, or rather half the MAC for that matter.

The only real solution is get better MAC leadership...MAC needs to perform better; or we need to leave the MAC. But right now, the REALITY is that we have 4 nationally televised games on a Tuesday. Make use of them.

You and a reported 12,505 other folks attended. I think the other guys are saying weekday games hurt attendance, not the excitement of the game (although I bet it would have been even more exciting played in front of a full house).

12,505 is awful, but it's not really that much far from what our attendance is at weekend games.

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Marketing initiatives, especially giveaways, are planned several months in advance of the actual games. The absence of any promotions isn't really related to the new marketing director being hired last week.

Its hard to plan marketing initiatives when you don't have a Marketing Director for the whole summer. The former Director left in May and the new one was just hired. Also, the budget cuts for almost every department in the University don't help.

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Its hard to plan marketing initiatives when you don't have a Marketing Director for the whole summer. The former Director left in May and the new one was just hired. Also, the budget cuts for almost every department in the University don't help.

Promotions are sponsored so that doesn't hold much water. Somebody could have been contacting businesses to sponsor a bobblehead or something, doesn't take much creative genius there.
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Promotions are sponsored so that doesn't hold much water. Somebody could have been contacting businesses to sponsor a bobblehead or something, doesn't take much creative genius there.

Not saying they COULDN'T have got giveaways planned but it makes it harder when you don't have a director and the Graduate Assistants aren't there for the summer.

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attendance will come around this year. You have a good team that will contend and with that result from BG who knows. Be glad you weren't one of the 8000 at Eastern Saturday night. I was there and trust me it wasn't only the play of eastern that made it tough to watch. They have a grey field now. Only place I have ever been you needed sunglasses at night to cut down the glare. Be glad they are a home game no matter the size of the crowd.

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attendance will come around this year. You have a good team that will contend and with that result from BG who knows. Be glad you weren't one of the 8000 at Eastern Saturday night. I was there and trust me it wasn't only the play of eastern that made it tough to watch. They have a grey field now. Only place I have ever been you needed sunglasses at night to cut down the glare. Be glad they are a home game no matter the size of the crowd.

Were you there for the attempted breakdown of the concrete wall with sledgehammers by the players at the beginning of the game? In concept I'm sure it sounded great but the execution was so poor it ended up on a Sportscenter blooper reel and someone made a pretty good Youtube parody.

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How big is your stadium, guys? When I worked at Duke U, Coach Cut made a few phone calls and got Alabama to play at Wallace Wade. They brought in bleachers to push seating to about 45K. Be great if Coaches Bowden or Amato could twist a few arms to bring in a similar team. While the game didn't end well for Duke, that one game really helped Duke's football growth, and got Dukies a little more hooked on attending football games.

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How big is your stadium, guys? When I worked at Duke U, Coach Cut made a few phone calls and got Alabama to play at Wallace Wade. They brought in bleachers to push seating to about 45K. Be great if Coaches Bowden or Amato could twist a few arms to bring in a similar team. While the game didn't end well for Duke, that one game really helped Duke's football growth, and got Dukies a little more hooked on attending football games.

Stadium holds 30k I believe without looking it up. I've only been following the Zips for 5 seasons (since I started attending UA) and believe they brought in a bigger opponent to play at the Browns stadium before. The stadium is designed to expand a sizeable amount I believe, which is a plus. Not sure if there is room to bring in temporary seating?

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We may have a problem with student attendance, but we are not alone

At College Football Games, Student Sections Likely to Have Empty Seats

Declining Attendance Reflects Soaring Ticket Prices, Increase in Televised Games

By

Ben Cohen

connect

Aug. 27, 2014 9:10 p.m. ET

Football stadiums will be packed this weekend for the kickoff of the college season. But many of the student sections are likely to have empty seats.

Average student attendance at college football games is down 7.1% since 2009, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal of stadium turnstile records from about 50 public colleges with top-division football teams. The decline was 5.6% at colleges in the five richest conferences.

The decrease even at schools with entrenched football traditions and national championships stands in contrast to college football's overall popularity. Total turnout at home games of top-tier teams hit a record in 2013, while average attendance has slipped just 0.8% since 2009.

The growing number of empty seats in student sections across the U.S. is a sign of soaring ticket prices, more lopsided games and fewer matchups against longtime rivals, and the proliferation of televised games that make it easier than ever for students to keep tailgating long after kickoff. (Explore the interactive on college football attendance since 2009.)

Declining attendance by students at college football games reflects soaring ticket prices, more lopsided matches and the proliferation of televised games. Ben Cohen joins MoneyBeat.

Some college administrators and coaches are alarmed by the attendance declines because noisy students help give their team a home-field advantage that often is bigger in football than other sports. Colleges also depend on football to create bonds that will keep students connected after graduation, including as season-ticket buyers and donors.

Colleges and athletic conferences are scrambling to lure students back, but it is a daunting challenge. "There are so many other things they can do that maybe going to the game that day isn't the most important thing on their agenda," says Louisiana State University athletic director Joe Alleva. Student attendance fell 5.5% to 8,508 in 2013 from 9,000 in 2012.

"Nothing can unify a community and alumni base of a university like college football can," says Kirby Hocutt, athletic director at Texas Tech University. An average of 11,365 students attended the college's six home games last year, up 16% from 2012 and 25% higher than 2009. The college hired a new coach before the 2013 season.

(Read more from The Wall Street Journal: Five Things To Know Today .)

Colleges don't report student attendance in game box scores. To tally student attendance, the Journal requested stadium-turnstile figures from public institutions that are subject to state public-records laws.

About 80 colleges provided data to the Journal, including 38 in the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeastern conferences, collectively known as the Big 5. The NCAA recently granted those conferences more power to govern themselves.

Some schools don't track how many students actually used tickets they bought, and other colleges say the attendance figures they provided might not be accurate because of faulty ticket scanners at football stadiums.

The Journal's percentage calculations exclude colleges that didn't provide student-attendance numbers for every year between 2009 and 2013.

Among college football's heavyweights, student attendance was lower in 2013 than 2009 at Ohio State University, Michigan State University, University of Florida and Florida State University. It also declined at the University of Michigan and LSU, though the schools didn't provide five years of data to the Journal.

Schools can't even rely on students who buy tickets to show up at games—or they trickle into their seats late and leave early. At the University of Kansas, which had a 3-9 record last season, 74% of student tickets went unused.

Related

At Michigan, an average of 14,749 students showed up at the college's home games last season, an 11% decline from 2011. The team won just seven games in 2013, down from 11 in 2011.

The attendance slide also was blamed on an increase in student ticket prices, which jumped to $295 from $205 last year, as Michigan replaced a long-standing policy that rewarded seniority with a plan that gave students general-admission access. A midseason survey by the college's student government showed that 76% of student season-ticket holders disapproved of the new plan.

"There are students who are being priced out," says Michael Proppe, a 22-year-old Michigan business student who was the student-body president last year. "People are looking to trim costs, and for a lot of folks, football is an easy thing to cut. It's not essential to going to college."

Enlarge Image

Student dissatisfaction led to another change that takes effect at Michigan's home opener against Appalachian State University on Saturday. Michigan students are now assigned seats based on how many sports games they attended the previous school year. The athletic department, which formed a student council for advice on ticketing issues, also decided to offer discounted, single-game student tickets.

Michigan has another problem. Because of the Big Ten's expansion, Michigan's home schedule doesn't include either Michigan State or Ohio State, Michigan's two biggest rivals, for the first time since 1966. Football ticket sales to Michigan students are down 40% from last year.

For schools in college football's top division, football revenues soared 99% in the last decade, with much of the growth coming from TV networks battling to broadcast games.

Those lucrative media deals are now seen as a threat to the live-game experience. Of the 85 games involving at least one of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision teams this week, almost all can be seen on TV or streamed online, giving students more reason to watch from home.

In response, the Southeastern Conference, home to seven of college football's last eight champions and some of the sport's most passionate fans, formed a committee in 2012 to study fans' experiences. All 14 schools in the conference made improvements this season, the SEC said last week.

The changes range from better cellular reception at the University of Georgia to new stadium video boards, cleaner restrooms and an enhanced sound system at LSU's Tiger Stadium.

At Michigan, an average of 14,749 students showed up at the college's home games last season, an 11% decline from 2011. Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

Many of the tweaks are aimed at students. "The goal is to make sure they come to the games and then stay at the games," says Mr. Alleva, the athletic director at LSU.

Alabama saw an uptick in attendance last season after Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban urged students to come to games and stay for all 60 minutes regardless of the score. "We're just asking them to do the same thing we ask our players to do," he said at the time.

One college that has bucked the downward trend is University of California, Los Angeles, where student attendance has climbed 58% since 2009. UCLA's football team improved its record to 19-8 since the 2011 hiring of coach Jim Mora.

Dan Guerrero, UCLA's athletic director, says the gains also reflect years of effort to overcome the 30-mile distance from campus to home games and competition for attention with other big-city attractions.

In 2012, Mr. Guerrero rode the bus with students and sat with them at the Rose Bowl. That led to changes at a student tailgating area and a "Football 101" crash course, he says.

"We needed to do more," Mr. Guerrero says. "The fact that we have to persuade and convince and cajole and provide special types of activities shows how much things have changed."

—Rachel Bachman contributed to this article.

Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com

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Good article about student attendance. I guess my immediate reaction to the decline is to think about whether or not that is a bad thing. On many levels, I think it is a good thing, but in general, there are things going on at Universities that are making this happen that are taking the game day experience away from students and replacing it with something else.

First of all, we expect kids in college to be smart. Part of being smart is identifying crap when you see it and avoiding it. If the product on the field is bad, shouldn't we expect smart kids to avoid watching crap? Fair weather fans are overly maligned. In some ways, they are the best type of fan because they won't settle for watching a bad product. Good for those students if they won't sit there and watch crap.

A concern I have about the culture surrounding college athletics has become the idea that if your team can't compete for the national championship, what's the point in supporting them. This is the problem with the now obsession with the four team national championship. College football has become a vehicle for schools winning a national championship and not for the sake of good competition. ESPN Game Day will spend half of their time this morning talking about the playoff (The program is too long and has become unwatchable). 7-9 wins seasons will be looked upon as failures. Teams that make the playoffs but not win a game will be looked at as a failure. When the talk of firing coaches centers around whether or not they win a playoff game or make it to the Sweet 16, it is a sign that they are actually professional leagues. That's fine for the NFL and NBA because (drum roll) they are professional leagues. So, what does this have to do with students attending games? If you are a student at let's say, NC State, and you know your team has no shot of getting in the playoffs or for that matter competing for the ACC Championship, what is the point in going to the game? They will be bombarded with the idea that only winning the championship matters.

They have more things to do? I totally agree with that. Universities have become playgrounds for over indulged kids. Schools used the "building process" to give them any number of fun activities and then are surprised when they use those activities in lieu of going to games.

A lot of kids probably now have to work to pay for the student fees that are used to support the "building process", so they don't go to the games in the stadiums that the "building process" built that were supposed to be for them, but in reality are designed to bring in more money through other means. In an ideal world, if you think like an Athletic Director, a full stadium without a single student maximizes revenue...They get the student fees and have no game day expenses for them attending the game while selling the remaining tickets to others in addition to the foundation donation for the yearly rights to those tickets. It's king of like double dipping.

College football and basketball has probably been through its high mark as far as student attendance. Look for the current trend to continue for the next 3-4 years and then level off. Years from now, there will be stories about increased student attendance at various schools, but it will never reach the levels of say 10 years ago.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I can't believe no one has commented on 13,357 attendance. Beautiful Saturday, Ohio State had a bye week, it was Band Day & an interesting opponent that traveled well. More concerning than 9,100 on an opening Thursday night if you ask me.

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I can't believe no one has commented on 13,357 attendance. Beautiful Saturday, Ohio State had a bye week, it was Band Day & an interesting opponent that traveled well. More concerning than 9,100 on an opening Thursday night if you ask me.

And how many of the 13,357 were Marshall fans and high school band members and their families. Too bad the Zips couldn't show the band members and their families a decent product. Perhaps they would return. Once again, we crap all over the field, and none return to savor the stench.

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