Attendance Question

[Ryno aka Menace]

Remember this..There are 15 schools on the NCAA minimum attendance radar according to the IndyStar - six from the MAC alone.I've gone through and pulled a list of the teams that could be in jeopardy of losing their DI-A status, with 2005 average attendance (pdf), 2006 year-to-date average attendance (pdf), the school's name, and a two-year average of those numbers.2005 AVG - 2006 YTD AVG - SCHOOL - Two year rolling avg (must >15,000 for DI-A)11,476 -- 6,431 - Florida Atlantic -- 8,9545,219 -- 11,686 - Eastern Michigan -- 8,45310,896 -- 13,134 - Utah State -- 12,01514,929 -- 13,906 - Bowling Green -- 14,41812,953 -- 14,138 - Ball State -- 13,54615,241 -- 14,386 - Miami (OH) -- 14,81418,630 -- 14,811 - SMU -- 16,72112,735 -- 14,860 - Temple -- 13,79815,175 -- 15,135 - Idaho -- 15,15515,147 -- 15,193 - Florida International (FIU) -- 15,17017,591 -- 15,482 - Louisiana - Lafayette -- 16,53710,893 -- 16,011 - Akron -- 13,45218,033 -- 16,194 - Ohio -- 17,11610,072 -- 16,753 - Rice -- 13,4131. Are we being smart by not scheduling home games..less games=less time we need above 15K? This along with an in shambles stadium.So far so good?!2. Cleveland Browns stadium had above 15K , the Can't game did, now we only need to get that amount 3 more times one of the three games is a homecoming. Hmmm maybe next year only schedule 4 to be safe until the new stadium is built.......j/k Anyways if I remember correctly there is a probation period, and I believe we are off of that. Correct me if I am wrong please.

[Ryno aka Menace]

I have said it once and I have said it again we need out of the MAC, I like the conference and have nothing against it, and I know we have beaten this horse down but it is a dead end conference. South Florida, UConn both went from 1AA to 1A in better conference we can't we follow suit, Marshall made the move to and I bet in time it will pay off to. Southern Miss and Rice are both in Conference USA. Have a solid winning season for the next 5 years and dip to a better conference is my suggestion.

[skip-zip]

It's a catch 22 situation.We think we need a more high-profile conference to get better attendance.However...The high profile conference reps. would likely come to our games to "court" us as a new member, and would also likely never extend an invitation once they saw 5,000 people in the seats, which is the typical amount that actually shows up regularly at our homes games.A good 2-3 year run of high attendance in a new stadium might get us where we need to be. Lets hope.

[johnnyzip84]

I might ask none other than the Marshall Blundering Turd whether the grass has been greener thus far in C-USA. UConn and South Florida both offer far larger markets than Akron (unless you count Cleveland, and obviously it's unwise to assume that, given how the TV stations THERE treat us), and that is how they got into the Big East. Well, that and the fact that the Big East had just been raided by the ACC and was in a bit of a desperate situation in the aftermath. We need to establish ourselves as a consistent MAC power before even thinking about another league. But for the sake of dreaming, I'd rather see a new league form, taking select schools from the MAC and possibly building from there. C-USA is the only likely candidate right now, and I think it's way too sprawled across the country for good rivalries to form.

[3rd&twenty]

That threat has been out there for years. So far no one has been demoted to 1-AA because of attendance. The limited attendance at Akron games could be contributed to our conference but I think it's more like apathy. People would rather sit at home and watch OSU on television. If you watch any C-USA game, those stadiums are not bursting at the seams with fans. Wait until the stadium is built, we'll get sell-outs or close to it because everyone will all of a sudden become a Zips fan.

[Ryno aka Menace]

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news?slug=ap...ov=ap&type=lgnsMost interesting part "I've been here for five years and I haven't seen nothing like it," senior safety Anthony Williams said Tuesday. "Being inside Nippert Stadium, sold out -- it just feels so good. It makes you play 10 times harder than you did before."As a freshman, I dreamed about it -- seeing a sold-out crowd." sounds like they play at the rubber bowl with this comment....The tarps that covered empty seats were removed for the first time in years, allowing 35,097 fans to squeeze in. Players ran over to the student section before the kickoff, and sang the fight song with the marching band in a corner of the stadium afterward.This backs up what some of u have been saying..."You've got to have a football team that people enjoy watching," Kelly said. "And they're a pretty exciting football team, so people want to see them play."

[uadrum823]

im going to point out the obvious....... were in trouble....niether "home" game so far has had a fair representation of what attendance is going to be.....Cleveland game: there were ALOT of tickets that were handouts from radio stations, media, ect. the only reason those people came to the game was because it was free. not to mention, it didnt include a fair student section. And the army cadets didn't have a choice in being there either.Can't game: This last saturdays game was "Bands at the Bowl" there were Hundreds of high school students there, those are seats that otherwise wouldnt be filled. in three years of marching with Ohio's Pride, I can say that I have noticed a HUGE improvement in attendance at games....... alot of it due to the organizing of the AKRowdies into an offical student organization. But I can tell you that those three years have also taught me that attendance at "non-media" or "non-hype" games is ALOT less. Expect about 2/3s of the crowd from Can't, minus the highschool students for homecoming, and subtract another 1/3 for any other home game. That's just the way it works. sorry to say.so to point out the obvious, were in trouble, the answer isnt a new stadium (all though it well help ALOT to be on campus) Its support, noone in the greater akron area really cares about akron football unless were preforming miracles like the 2005 MAC Title game. We need to rally some support behind our team and start building a fan base. That means that noone leaves if were getting killed going into the third or fourht quarters, and noone boos our own team. Theres still alot of fans out there who have the wrong attitude! and It sucks to see us on that list because of it.

[ZachTheZip]

Welcome uadrum823.You're right... to a point.Neither "home" game we have played so far has been a good representation of what our attendance will be. The Cleveland game was empty because it was a home game 40 miles away from our actual home, and there were too many excuses not to show up. If this was promoted the same way, but at the Rubber Bowl, we would have had better attendance.The Wagon wheel game will always get far more people to show up to a game than normal because both school's fan bases are in the area we get a lot of fans from the other team, plus it is a rivalry game. But it still counts towards our average attendance.So far, our average attendance is 19866 per game, and we only have 3 home games remaining. Remember last year, our announced attendance was always above 15,000 regardless of the number of people actually in attendance. We'll be fine.Also, the reason people don't go to games isn't because they don't care; (Akron's fan base is a sleeping giant, we've seen glimpses of it at the end of 2005) it's because nobody else goes. Do you know why some mediocre teams have sustained high attendance? It's because people go to the games, which makes it seem like the place to be, so more people go and it sustains itself. The only way to get more people in the stands is to have more people in the stands to begin with. Make it a large social event where people want to be, just to say "Yeah, I was there" and sound cool. It's a difficult process to get started, but once it starts, it is much easier to keep up. We're starting it now with the AK-Rowdies and AK-Oldies, getting people to be part of a group where they belong, with their friends, and we're doing it at a much faster rate than any other team in the MAC.