David Scott calling out fans

Like I said, fans in Charlotte!

That was a really fun day for me Saturday, not being facetious at all. I wish more people had been there to enjoy the win. Being 2-2 against a traditional G5 power like USM out of the gates is one of the few positive things about these first six seasons on the field.

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Several things
1). Putting the kids alcohol tailgate a mile away will kill student attendance forever. I don’t care how many shuttles you run. Student non participation is not unique to us. My daughter, who is a sophomore at ECU, has tickets in the boneyard, and hasn’t been inside the stadium at all this season because “no one goes to the game”. Put the kids near the stadium and they MIGHT show. Putting them a mile away? No chance.

2). The damage that keeping Lambert caused after last season will affect us for years. We used to have a season ticket base of 8000. We are likely at 5000 now with a lot of folks dropping last year. I wish they had hung in there but I don’t blame them.

3). That the observer said we were winning is ridiculous. We had lost three of four coming into this game. Beating Western was nice, but we can into this game 3-4. Certainly good by Charlotte standards, but not great by any means.

4). I predicted before the season we would lost our last six. I will amend to say we will lose our last four. Even if I’m wrong and if we win an game or two , we need to get rid of Lambert because tons of people won’t ever come back if he is here.

5). And lastly a plea to the causal fans, if you can make it, try to get to the FIU game. These kids have really done a good job of turning it around. The coaching staff still does dumb things, but the stupid avoidable things (personal fouls, muffed punts, late hits, holds away the play) are way down. Saturday’s game felt like I hope football with a competent coach will feel like: a Charlotte squad that competes and has a toss up chance to win against a decent conference opponent.

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You guys are over-estimating the “general fans” out there. Most couldn’t pick Lambert out of a line-up. They just know we lost most of our games the last year and our wins this year don’t seem to be getting much attention. It is not just some protest over Lambert or “giving up” on him.

I agree to that a little bit. True casual fan just knows we suck if they know we exist at all. However, there are fans who gave up on Lambert the past two years who were regulars/season ticket holders.

Conference USA! That is the reason no one cares. We saw what happened when we played App State. We play Carolina in a couple of years. You don’t think the stadium will be packed? People show up to watch us beat an ACC school or another local school (App state). Otherwise, win or lose, no one cares about coming to games when we play anybody in our conference. Mike Hill has to get us out of this conference. Or they need to blow the conferences up and get us more regional members.

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If you mean we might get fans to turn out for ECU if we were in the AAC I would agree, but there’s no one else in that conference our fans will care to see annually either.

I had a conversation with someone in the Athletic Department about that on Saturday, because the old spot just below the stadium is now “non-alcoholic” and they only had about 100 kids show up–mostly in the band–to eat the free Chick-fil-A food. What led to the change was the students requesting a place where they could do real tailgating, allowing them to bring their cars loaded with supplies, just like we all do. They accommodated them, but the spot is a good ways out. I don’t know where else you would put them though. You certainly cannot bump people giving $500, $1500. or more per year to the 49er Club out of their spaces. I am not sure how to make everybody happy on this one.

I can assure you the students did not move by choice.

Basically I look at it like this. If you play crap opponents you better beat them on a regular basis. We haven’t. In fact we have lost a lot to them. 4 wins doesn’t fix that. Kick times, style of play, etc might impact some folks but when it comes down to it you either better play decent names or beat crappy names. We have done neither.

We need a signature something. Big upset, 5 OT game we win, bowl win, conference title something that crystallizes the football fanbase. Build some on the fan experience and we are good. Basketball is proof we can weather a down program for a decade and still have solid support. After a decade the losing finally really impacted the crowds. Football needs something to build on. We wasted the honeymoon, now we gotta do it the hard way.

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Totally agree!

this season was decided to be a throw away when we didn’t fire lambert at the end of last year or in Hill’s first few days.

It was clearly decided we would go through the motions, ride out what was likely a last place finish in CUSA East, and get a new coach next year.

We’re 4-3. We’ll be 4-4 in 5.5 days. Our 4 wins have a combined record of 7-26, the remaining conference teams we play are 15-8 combined. We’ve improved and the wins are nice, but we’ve beaten, for the most part, really bad teams.

We’ve all moved on. Everyone knows that. Lambert knows that. David Scott just likes to take his shots.

So basically there are a lot of little reasons our fans don’t show up for late season games:

Let’s recap:

  • Weather

  • Game time

  • Boring play style

  • Expect us to lose

  • Done with Lambert

  • AAU level games for the kidos

  • Every game is on TV/internet

  • Too far for students to walk drunk from their tailgate lot

  • Festival time

Am I missing one?

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Attendance was atrocious that’s for sure, but keep in mind it was Halloween weekend, lots of things going on. I know 10 regulars in our group that had other things going on. Also the weather Friday was awful, and Saturday wasnt expected to be so nice.

With all that said, even with the team doing decent, there is a staleness in the air. I didnt bother too much to find anyone to use two of my tickets, and didnt care. It’s like I started this season just going through the motions, waiting to see who Hill hires.

We are 4-4 now.

This is a good way to put it.

Even though the team is doing well, there is a staleness in the air.

Everyone wants Brad Lambert fired. We don’t want the team to go bowling and potentially let him save his job. It’s hard to support your school and protest the coach at the same time. It’s just a terrible situation. Get a new coach in to breath some life in the program. I think we could be decent next year, and really good in a few years with some really solid recruiting. But average Joe doesnt GAF about us, and even Niner fans are just exhausted and over it. Some people think doing things like spending time at their kids soccer games are a better use of their time than watching lame duck Lambert coach.

I agree with that. Their might be a small minority that are cooking, but most are there for the atmosphere.

Our alums don’t want to pass drunk kids on the way to the game, because we all wearing sport coats and drinking old fashioneds when we in college.

The tailgate being in east nowhere is the 2nd biggest reason attendance is down (behind Lambert apathy).

I brought this up with a nice group of fellow fans on our way back to CRI Deck after the game. To a man all of them said I didn’t know what I was talking about and they hoped Lambert continued to stay and improve the team. I even brought up his local recruiting issues and they said he’ll fix that too.

Now this is just one incident and perhaps I landed in the middle of the Brad Lambert fan club; but most Niner fans aren’t on this board and aren’t as involved in the day to day minutia of the program as we are.

Some of these guys think he’s turned the corner. Now that is scary.

I don’t believe it was feasible for Hill to fire Lambert once he got the job. We were right in the middle of recruiting and spring practice starting up it would’ve put a new staff greatly behind the eight ball.

Other than the App State game The team has played competitively at home and should have had better attendance. I realize the ODU game there were extenuating circumstances but I was disappointed in the attendance Saturday.

With that being said the atmosphere during games is extremely stale. The band plays the same songs every week at half time, this was the first week the field goal kick game went more than one round, the hype man we have during the breaks doesn’t really excite anyone, there was no need for the dig pink to be given the microphone during halftime, and heaven forbid the cheerleaders actually throw free T-shirts out instead of handing them out on the first row.

I do not envy Mike Hill in the least. Lambert despite his recruiting ineptitude is putting a competitive team on the field and the previous mom and pop feel of the games just isn’t exciting for students or alums.

I will continue to support the team and hope Mike can find magic fairy dust to improve the atmosphere around stadium. Regardless I hope my fellow alums and future students will support the team and staff moving forward whoever they may be. When future student athletes visit our campus it be nice to see more than 4000 people in the stadium cheering them on. As much as I love Charlotte if I was a recruit at the game Saturday I wouldn’t give Charlotte another look.

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I was stunned by how everyone around us sat on their asses for most of the game looking like they were miserable to be there. I was the only one shouting in my section until the second touchdown and I even got a few “STFU and sit down” looks for doing that.

It’s literally like our fanbase can only do 3 or 4 football home games a year. 6 is just asking way too much!

We need to send our fans to football reeducation camps.