I think this is the most accurate take on this thread. Yes, a “winning” program would get more people out. But that would be a winning MAC program vs Ohio State. We would need to be ranked for people to even notice that the football team is any good. If you ask any students that have started after 2018, they will all say the same thing without even thinking about it “The football team sucks”. I even had my best friend, who is a huge sports fan, at the Buffalo game ask me if we were FBS or FCS! When we have these buy games against P5 schools, students especially those that aren’t that in tuned to CFB, see that we lose 66-6 against Michigan State and just say “oh yeah that’s akron!”
I honestly say that winning won’t solve everything. I mean the soccer team has been top 5 all year and I don’t think there has been a game attended more than 2500 yet. There definitely is something to having a gameday experience. Even if the team is 8-0, not that many people are going to want to come to a 4 hour long game on a Tuesday night when it’s 35 degrees when there is absolutely no entertainment for an excessive amount of TV timeouts. CFB is simply made for TV.