Attendance problems aren't specific to SMU

[RGV Pony]

You probably had her at 501

[mrydel]

Did not say my plan was well thought out.

[ALEX LIFESON]

I am talking about butts in the seats, not ticket sales. Again, and this is the last time, TCU had pitiful fan support at their game today. Period.

Give it up, he will defend tcu to the grave.

[SMU_Alumni11]

Yeah ill take TCU's terrible attendance for a spot in the Big 12. At least you know they are moving along the P5 train into the future. I am glad though that TCU might see the importance of our game against them as thats the only game their fans like.

[SMU 86]

And that soccer stadium only holds 22,000. Probably only about 12,000 at the game.

[GRGB]

Declining Student Attendance Hits Georgia
At Campuses Across the Country, More Reasons Than Ever to Skip the Game



The scene at home football games here at the University of Georgia is almost perfect. The tailgate lots open at 7 a.m. Locals brag of the bar-per-capita rate. The only commodities in greater abundance than beer are the pro-Bulldogs buttons that sorority girls wear.

There's just one problem: Some students can't be bothered to come to the games.

Declining student attendance is an illness that has been spreading for years nationwide. But now it has hit the Southeastern Conference, home to college football's best teams and supposedly its most fervent fans, giving athletics officials reason to fret about future ticket sales and fundraising.

As it turns out, Georgia students left empty 39% of their designated sections of Sanford Stadium over the last four seasons, according to school records of student-ticket scans. Despite their allocation of about 18,000 seats, the number of students at games between 2009 and 2012 never exceeded 15,000.

Winning isn't even necessarily a solution. The average student crowd to see last year's Georgia team—which finished the season ranked No. 5—was almost 6,000 short of maximum capacity. Even at Alabama, 32% of student seats went unused by students between 2009 and 2012, when the Crimson Tide won three national championships. Alabama coach Nick Saban wrote a flattering letter last week in the student paper to recruit students back.

Georgia officials have been so concerned by student attendance that they reassigned 2,000 seats previously reserved for students to young alumni before this season. "It was a significant hole, and it was very noticeable," Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said. "It was way too obvious."

The inscrutable behavior of 18-to-22-year-olds is actually understandable in this case: For students today, there are more reasons than ever to skip the game.

The cellular reception at the stadium is bad. The nonconference schedules these days are worse. And the high-definition broadcast at home (or at the frat house, the bar or wherever) is gorgeous. The result is students are focusing on the few marquee games—like Saturday's matchup of No. 6 LSU and No. 9 Georgia—at the expense of others.

To study this shift in behavior, the SEC recently hired Now What, a New York market-research firm that will spend this season traveling to SEC stadiums, visiting fans watching at home to gather their opinions before presenting its findings after the regular season.

"We can't afford to lose a generation," said Mississippi State athletic director Scott Stricklin, a member of the SEC's committee on the game-day experience.

This worrisome dynamic was evident last Saturday, when Georgia hosted North Texas on a drizzly afternoon and one tailgating troupe near Sanford Stadium kept dry underneath tents. Lounging in lawn chairs, with a makeshift bar to their right and their buffet and beer-pong tables behind them, students who said they had tickets to the game being played across the street instead were glued to two flat-screen TVs. "There are a ton of people who prefer this," said Sam Little, a junior at Georgia. "They can actually watch the game instead of deal with the crazy atmosphere."

Those students were far enough from the stadium to use their smartphones—which, they gripe, is virtually impossible inside. As the service is right now, many stadiums are such dead zones that "you can't text, Instagram or tweet," said Georgia senior Kim Baltenberger.

Most schools are considering new stadium Wi-Fi networks that would cost anywhere between $2 million and $10 million, industry experts say. The need for this technology is greater in college than in the NFL, said Enterasys Networks chief executive Chris Crowell, whose company outfitted the New England Patriots' and Philadelphia Eagles' stadiums. The upload traffic at crowded events doubles that of downloads, he said, and the activity ratio is further skewed by younger crowds: Gillette Stadium's Wi-Fi network, installed in 2012, whizzed with its most upload data during a Taylor Swift concert this summer.

Some students also have better things to do than watch football. When asked if they agreed with the statement that they didn't have time to attend Tennessee's football games, undergraduates there averaged a response of 3.15 on a scale of 1 to 5, said Tennessee professor Robin Hardin, who surveyed 2,500 students for a report on their habits commissioned by the school's athletic department. (The depressing state of their team doesn't help matters.)

Student indifference is easy to spot at matchups they expect to be lopsided: 45% of the student seats went unused at Georgia's non-SEC games. In the Big Ten, Michigan's student section had wide swaths of empty rows before kickoff Sept. 14 against Akron, the week after a stirring home win over rival Notre Dame. At Ohio State, the student no-show rate hit 26% for a game last season against lowly UAB.

Once the students straggle in, schools struggle to keep them interested, a problem they attribute to the shorter attention spans of students today. Oregon devised a solution to slow its exodus: fast food. If the Ducks score 40 points, those who stay for the whole time earn a free "Jumbo Jack" hamburger from Jack in the Box. The team held up its end of the deal for three of its four conference games last year, when the reward was tacos.

Around halftime of Georgia's game last week, students trickled onto the main drag here, most still wearing their wristband tickets from the stadium. Some were in search of beer—unlike some other conferences, whose members soak up beer revenue, the SEC has banned alcohol sales to the public in its stadiums. A short walk from the stadium yielded more bars than streets, plus the Georgia Theatre, a concert hall that shows Bulldogs games on its big screen, and a row of fraternity palaces.

"Big-screen TVs close to your own refrigerator are pretty compelling," Georgia president emeritus Michael Adams said.

One of the first to tackle the discord between football mania and student apathy, Georgia is encouraged by the early returns this season. The first home game on Sept. 7, a 4:30 p.m. kickoff against South Carolina, hit the sweet spot for student attendance. It drew 15,864 students, the most since at least 2009. Students are anticipating a similarly boisterous crowd against LSU. In fact, at the South Carolina game, there were so many students in Sanford Stadium that some struggled to find seats.

"I did get in," said Yates Webb, a Georgia senior, "but it took some pushing."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 38780.html

[PlanoStang]

laugh all you want TCU had 41,894 paying customers today-probably the only unsold tickets were from Kansas allotment. That's a lot of cash SMU needs

Guess they laughed all the way to the bank.

TCU radio guys said that the stands looked half full for Homecoming

I'm thinking that would be around 22000, but the pictures don't support that

[Oldmins]

I am talking about butts in the seats, not ticket sales. Again, and this is the last time, TCU had pitiful fan support at their game today. Period.

Afraid you're wrong there. I went over to the game, and at the first of the game, the stadium was probably 90% full. Then came the direct sun, the 95 degree temperature, the high THI index, the VERY boring game....and out they went. Or should say, our WE went, because I could only bear the first half. Never been so hot. Found the concourses under the stands jammed with people. I guarantee you, the folks were there, but they certainly weren't in the stands the second half.

[Stallion]

I'm not sure about 90% but TCU Kansas Highlites on the internet show that they had substantially larger attendance in the first half than SMU fans are suggesting. TCU fans suck too obviously though for leaving in droves in a relatively close game. See highlites from say :28-to about 1:15. At 1:00 or so Kansas intercepts pass and returns for TD which happened with 9 minutes left in 2nd Q-a good barometer for viewing crowd after late arrivals should be in their seats. Good lower bowl shots too at 1:14

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTFcnKZii1o

[GreenbeltPony]

I'm really not surprised by the attendance issues other schools are facing. Why spend time and money (ticket, parking, food, drinks) going to a non-marquis game in the heat/rain/etc., when you could just sit at home and flip through 3 big, heavily-hyped/advertised Top 25 matchups in addition to your original game? Almost every single game is now on TV/the Internet, whether it's ABC, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ESPNU, FS1, FSN, PAC-12, BIG10, etc. You can even watch games between FCS teams with losing records.

And just for the record, I went to all but maybe 2 or 3 home games over my 4 years as a student (2009-2013).

[lwjr]

This is obviously a growing concern. Even the SEC is not immune to the problem. I think this link has been posted earlier from the Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 38780.html

[mrydel]

I am talking about butts in the seats, not ticket sales. Again, and this is the last time, TCU had pitiful fan support at their game today. Period.

Afraid you're wrong there. I went over to the game, and at the first of the game, the stadium was probably 90% full. Then came the direct sun, the 95 degree temperature, the high THI index, the VERY boring game....and out they went. Or should say, our WE went, because I could only bear the first half. Never been so hot. Found the concourses under the stands jammed with people. I guarantee you, the folks were there, but they certainly weren't in the stands the second half.

Well tell me Oldmins, is fan support any better at home in front of the TV, or on a boulevard than it is on the concourse. You cannot claim good fan support in a close game if the fans have all left the stands.

I am not trying to compare SMU to TCU. Our support is truly bad, but how can you say your fans did support because they left the stands and filled the concourse?

I guess it was good that a cold front hit the Cotton Bowl and allowed the Texas and OU fans stay in the stands during their game.

[LHS81]

41894

[Oldmins]

I am talking about butts in the seats, not ticket sales. Again, and this is the last time, TCU had pitiful fan support at their game today. Period.

Afraid you're wrong there. I went over to the game, and at the first of the game, the stadium was probably 90% full. Then came the direct sun, the 95 degree temperature, the high THI index, the VERY boring game....and out they went. Or should say, our WE went, because I could only bear the first half. Never been so hot. Found the concourses under the stands jammed with people. I guarantee you, the folks were there, but they certainly weren't in the stands the second half.

Well tell me Oldmins, is fan support any better at home in front of the TV, or on a boulevard than it is on the concourse. You cannot claim good fan support in a close game if the fans have all left the stands.

I am not trying to compare SMU to TCU. Our support is truly bad, but how can you say your fans did support because they left the stands and filled the concourse?

I guess it was good that a cold front hit the Cotton Bowl and allowed the Texas and OU fans stay in the stands during their game.

No, you're right, fan support is lacking when miserable weather sends us home to watch it on TV, BUT, people were there when the game began, and I think would have stayed, despite the heat, if the game had been worth watching. So I didn't (and don"t) say that the fans gave good support, but the stadium was virtually sold out. Fans supported at least enough to buy the damn tickets. AND, if you think the OU fans stayed in the stands during the whole game Saturday at the Cotton Bowl, you haven't seen pictures of the stands during the fourth quarter. The OU fans were practically to Gainesville, heading north,by then.

[ReedFrawg]

I was actually surprised how many people were there at kickoff. About 4 minutes in the sun came out and it went from overcast to hot and muggy. I wasnt prepared for the heat.. and there were a ton of people in the parking lots at halftime. Anyway our attendance is never going to be good at 11AM against a team like Kansas when we are having a down year. UT game will be packed and 70% tcu fans. I will take photos. I don't see many tcu fans on this site ever smack talking about attendance...we have the same struggles as smu and baylor and always will.