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Student attendance.
- Thread starter FLounder
- Start date
Not shocking, winners get fans, losers lose fans, and nobody in LA gives a **** unless it is the trendy social event to be seen attending.
Winning is a panacea. The school could also make it more fun for the kids too, like a drawing for semesters worth of free tuition!! But oh well.
It was bad last year, but I would be shocked if the rams averaged 2k.
That looks low, but it was a bad attendance season.
Part of that was the home schedule. When you've got two 1-AA teams and only 4 conference games, it's not a very attractive slate. Especially when you're coming off a 1-11 season that didn't see a home win.
Overall CU attendance numbers (this doesn't relate to students) were also affected by a change in policy. AD Mike Bohn used to artificially inflate attendance numbers with huge single game ticket discounts, which had a long-term consequence of deflating the brand value. Rick George stopped that and the numbers we saw last year were more reflective of what the reality had been from the back half of Hawkins through Embree.
The other thing that's hitting our numbers a little bit is the switch from the Big 12 to the Pac-12. Big 12 fans travel a lot better. That used to give us a bump of 1k-2k per home game versus the baseline for a Pac-12 opponent. For some opponents like Nebraska, it could be as high as 10k extra visitors. Long-term, this is a good change since it puts the onus on marketing CU instead of marketing to draw attendance off the opponent being played.
Anyway, long answer to give some background on how a lot of things came together. CU's been in transition and we're pulling ourselves out of hitting bottom after years of mismanagement of the football program & franchise.
ramfan
Well-Known Member
The east side of Hughes, the student section, was maybe half full most of the year. At full capacity that is supposed to be 10K. Some games were more than half full, some less, but I can't imagine we only averaged 2K. CSU's average attendance was like 20K or something, so 3-4K students would seem about right. What was CU's average attendance? Certainly much higher than CSU's, but with only 3K students? Seems odd.
I've got a long running feud with the attendance issues of CU's current crop of students. Pussies, all of um :lol:
ramfan
Well-Known Member
Our students don't attend well at this point either, but given that CU's overall attendance is so much higher than CSU's that 3K average looks crazy out of place. With only 3K students I'd think your attendance numbers would be REALLY low, like close to CSU's, and that isn't the case.
Last year we dipped below 40k. I want to say it was 39k and change.
If it was the end of the 1st Q, I'd buy it. Some of those games there were handful of students in the first few rows and then empty up to the top.
I agree that this is a low estimate. We do have a lot of non-students sneak down into the student section, but still.
Anyway, we're a long way from where we need to be -- a lower bowl full of students stretching from the SE 40 through the S End Zone.
I wonder how many CU students attend on other tickets with parents etc.? Don't have any idea but I do seem to see more than a few students seated in the rest of the stadium.
Beyond that student attendance is pretty predictable. If the games are fun to go to the students will show up, if they aren't fun students find other things to do. When CU was losing games by 35 points or losing to Sac State under Embree it wasn't a good time for the students. Once they find something else to do then you have to win them back. CU is going to have to do that.
CSU saw student attendence drop consistenly in the years they were going 3-9. Last year they started winning home games against schools they had lost to prior years. The students who went had reason to have a good time. If they can continue they should start to see a gradual increase again in student attendance.
In the long run CU will have notably higher student attendance than CSU. Playing a PAC schedule instead of an MWC schedule creates more interest and CU football is a more integrated part of the campus culture. That said as bad as CU has been recently student attendance dropping to low levels doesn't surprise me.
The decision to keep Hawk an extra year and then to go cheap hiring Embree is going to take work to overcome.
Beyond that student attendance is pretty predictable. If the games are fun to go to the students will show up, if they aren't fun students find other things to do. When CU was losing games by 35 points or losing to Sac State under Embree it wasn't a good time for the students. Once they find something else to do then you have to win them back. CU is going to have to do that.
CSU saw student attendence drop consistenly in the years they were going 3-9. Last year they started winning home games against schools they had lost to prior years. The students who went had reason to have a good time. If they can continue they should start to see a gradual increase again in student attendance.
In the long run CU will have notably higher student attendance than CSU. Playing a PAC schedule instead of an MWC schedule creates more interest and CU football is a more integrated part of the campus culture. That said as bad as CU has been recently student attendance dropping to low levels doesn't surprise me.
The decision to keep Hawk an extra year and then to go cheap hiring Embree is going to take work to overcome.
BlackNGold
Club Member
3K looks a little low but I think some of the night games really impacted the attendance. It was miserably cold and the students were off doing something else all day. USC game was horrible.
:wave: No sneaking necessary.
Yeah, I remember when it was so packed you could be ****faced and if you fell forward onto the rows in front of you, it was a soft landing and they just pushed you right back up. Nowadays you'd break your neck!! It's getting dangerous out there with low attendance . . .
Yup. I'm so old I remember cup fights.
I'm so old I remember bowl games.
I was a baby at the time, so someone fill me in. What was the average attendance of Folsom during the glory days (early 90's)?
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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
FLounder
Think Positive and life will be Positive.
Full.
Fair enough. Sometimes I wonder how I got into college at all...
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Well, back in the late 80's early 90's, I seem to remember there were about 10-12000 student tickets available, and they sold out. Just my memory though....
Buffskier
Club Member
As recently as 2007 - student tickets would sell out when the freshman got onto campus or maybe even during orientation... Hell, less than 10 years ago you needed to show up early to games in order to make sure you got a seat it would get so full down there. There were definitely some rowdy games as recently as 2007 (Oklahoma comes to mind).
And drunk.
I was at CU from 86-91. We would have fraternity pledges go and save a section of seats for us. They'd go down to the game about three hours early and just get obliterated. By the time the game started, the pledges were all completely sh*t faced. I heard that a couple year later, CU started a policy that said you couldn't save seats anymore. That was a very bad idea.