Rice Postgame

[ZombieLew]

@charlotteguy88

A lot of green in that Elon gym tonight on a Monday for a bball program that hasn’t been good in forever. Yet we can’t get 15K for a home football game with a bowl game in play? That’s concerning. Our fans need to learn football is now our most important sport. You can get by with having 5K show up to bball. You can not get by with 13K or 14K at football.

I’d venture a guess that almost every person who traveled to Elon for the game last night was in The Rich on Saturday.

A few hundred look a hell of a lot more impressive than a small SoCon gym than do a few thousand in a small C-USA stadium.

[919R]

@akjones989

[quote=“charlotteguy88, post:118, topic:30622”]A lot of green in that Elon gym tonight on a Monday for a bball program that hasn’t been good in forever. Yet we can’t get 15K for a home football game with a bowl game in play? That’s concerning. Our fans need to learn football is now our most important sport. You can get by with having 5K show up to bball. You can not get by with 13K or 14K at football.

I think it really comes down to bringing a culture of winning to the program. Take the Panthers for example. 5 years ago that stadium was pretty bare. This season hasn’t been good for them, but the previous seasons have created a more impassioned and loyal fan base. This program is still very young. Charlotte just needs to market itself and bring in the right recruits and the fans will come. Plus, new students come every year. Retain 500 alumni for the next season and there’s a good chunk of the stadium in 5-10 years.[/quote]

Seriously? ??? You mean the stadium that has been “Sold out” for every game since ~1997?

[Ninerfan2012]

@ZombieLew

[quote=“charlotteguy88, post:118, topic:30622”]A lot of green in that Elon gym tonight on a Monday for a bball program that hasn’t been good in forever. Yet we can’t get 15K for a home football game with a bowl game in play? That’s concerning. Our fans need to learn football is now our most important sport. You can get by with having 5K show up to bball. You can not get by with 13K or 14K at football.

I’d venture a guess that almost every person who traveled to Elon for the game last night was in The Rich on Saturday.

A few hundred look a hell of a lot more impressive than a small SoCon gym than do a few thousand in a small C-USA stadium.[/quote]

The probably with our fan base isn’t the hardcore fans. We have a pretty decent core for a G5 team that hasn’t had any success in 10 years.

Our problem is that we don’t have any casual fans. Losing mixed with our s**ty AD doesn’t help fix that.

[wx40niner09]

Ah I wish I had saved the photo but it was from a random follow on twitter and WKU had nobody in the stands this past weekend. They are competing for a ship too. We might not be the only ones dealing with such attendance issues.

Regardless will be there for senior day this Saturday! Go Niners!

[ImfromClayton]

The previous two post are a direct correlation. WKU doesn’t have “casual fans” either. Neither do we. It’s almost impossible to follow G5 schools without being hardcore these days. It’s so easy to follow P5 schools these days and we are facing the same struggles we faced 10 years ago television wise. It takes serious effort to follow a school like ours. That’s why our bandwagons either take longer to form, or don’t form at all, and at cold weather games, our attendance stinks regardless of what’s on the line.

One way I think we could help that, and improve our league as a whole is to literally give away our TV rights. We are barely making anything on TV revenue as it stands, and we just make it harder for fans to follow. I wish we would show all of our games for free somehow, computer/TV or otherwise. That would allow for more people that are interested in the program to follow regularly.

[akjones989]

@919R

[quote=“akjones989, post:120, topic:30622”][quote=“charlotteguy88, post:118, topic:30622”]A lot of green in that Elon gym tonight on a Monday for a bball program that hasn’t been good in forever. Yet we can’t get 15K for a home football game with a bowl game in play? That’s concerning. Our fans need to learn football is now our most important sport. You can get by with having 5K show up to bball. You can not get by with 13K or 14K at football.

I think it really comes down to bringing a culture of winning to the program. Take the Panthers for example. 5 years ago that stadium was pretty bare. This season hasn’t been good for them, but the previous seasons have created a more impassioned and loyal fan base. This program is still very young. Charlotte just needs to market itself and bring in the right recruits and the fans will come. Plus, new students come every year. Retain 500 alumni for the next season and there’s a good chunk of the stadium in 5-10 years.[/quote]

Seriously? ??? You mean the stadium that has been “Sold out” for every game since ~1997?[/quote]

I’ve also seen some “sellouts” at Charlotte with no one in the seats next to me. A lot of those tickets are sold/donated to organizations to count towards the numbers. I do believe there will be a time wheee the program will gain more traction.

[NinerGreene]

I think some on this board would go to the Super Bowl and complain that all of the seats weren’t occupied the whole game.

[919R]

@akjones989

[quote=“919R, post:122, topic:30622”][quote=“akjones989, post:120, topic:30622”][quote=“charlotteguy88, post:118, topic:30622”]A lot of green in that Elon gym tonight on a Monday for a bball program that hasn’t been good in forever. Yet we can’t get 15K for a home football game with a bowl game in play? That’s concerning. Our fans need to learn football is now our most important sport. You can get by with having 5K show up to bball. You can not get by with 13K or 14K at football.

I think it really comes down to bringing a culture of winning to the program. Take the Panthers for example. 5 years ago that stadium was pretty bare. This season hasn’t been good for them, but the previous seasons have created a more impassioned and loyal fan base. This program is still very young. Charlotte just needs to market itself and bring in the right recruits and the fans will come. Plus, new students come every year. Retain 500 alumni for the next season and there’s a good chunk of the stadium in 5-10 years.[/quote]

Seriously? ??? You mean the stadium that has been “Sold out” for every game since ~1997?[/quote]

I’ve also seen some “sellouts” at Charlotte with no one in the seats next to me. A lot of those tickets are sold/donated to organizations to count towards the numbers. I do believe there will be a time wheee the program will gain more traction.[/quote]

Of course, but there is quite a difference in not having every single seat filled and a stadium being “bare”. The

[Mr_Bojangles]

@TRLeader

[quote=“charlotteguy88, post:118, topic:30622”]You can not get by with 13K or 14K at football.

Yes you can. Plenty of other colleges avg that or less.

It’s not ideal…and it’s not gonna get the stadium expanded…but 90% of every football program operates in the red.
It’s just the reality and the cost of adding the sport of football to the athletic budget in this day and age.[/quote]

I was curious as to which FBS programs averaged 14k or less, so I looked up the numbers from 2015. I guess we can consider these teams our peers…

Charlotte 14,618
Northern Ill. 13,942
North Texas 13,631
Kent St. 12,561
Idaho 11,653
Massachusetts 11,124
Georgia St. 10,347
Ball St. 7,974
Eastern Mich. 4,897

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_records/Attendance/2015.pdf

We are averaging 14,344 at home this year and need about 16,000 on Saturday to get up to the average from last year.

[woodniner]

Hard to increase when the AD does not promote the games at all. I think a 3rd grader could sell out the rest of the seats in our stadium with a little work. We take the attitude of “built it and they will come” instead of actually putting in some work to sell it out.

15k should be an easy sell out.

[austinniner]

[quote=“woodniner, post:130, topic:30622”]Hard to increase when the AD does not promote the games at all. I think a 3rd grader could sell out the rest of the seats in our stadium with a little work. We take the attitude of “built it and they will come” instead of actually putting in some work to sell it out.

15k should be an easy sell out.[/quote]

THIS - I would love to see some marketing effort regarding our $revenue$ programs, which I consider to be in this order:

Football
Men’s Basketball
Men’s Soccer/Baseball
Women’s basketball

[system]

[quote=“austinniner, post:131, topic:30622”][quote=“woodniner, post:130, topic:30622”]Hard to increase when the AD does not promote the games at all. I think a 3rd grader could sell out the rest of the seats in our stadium with a little work. We take the attitude of “built it and they will come” instead of actually putting in some work to sell it out.

15k should be an easy sell out.[/quote]

THIS - I would love to see some marketing effort regarding our $revenue$ programs, which I consider to be in this order:

Football
Men’s Basketball
Men’s Soccer/Baseball
Women’s basketball[/quote]

clt says that is a false order. All teams on campus are equal.