Attendance Ideas and Solutions

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ST_Lawson
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rocki wrote: Mon Oct 15, 2018 9:35 am Question: Is that Fall Break contractually-obligated to come at the 8-week mark of the semester ??? If not, perhaps it could have come one week earlier (Oct 6) or one week later (Oct 20) when the team was on the road


Would have made sense to me to have taken it on Monday when a lot of things were closed for Columbus Day............
I actually was able to dig around and find an answer to this too (not from Diana Cassimire...from other sources). Fall break is not required to be any specific weekend, although there's a "range" that it pretty much needs to fit within. They plan out those breaks in like 4 year "blocks" and they do very much take into account other campus events like home football games. What it sounds like is that this year happened to be at the end of the 4-year "block" that they were scheduling and the conference hadn't released the game schedule to the schools yet when the committee was scheduling the university breaks for this year. Just got unlucky and it fell on a weekend of a home game. It is not something that will happen often though, because usually the athletics department does have the conference schedule for at least the next few years (even if they haven't publicly released the "official" schedule yet due to scheduling issues with non-conference games).
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Nothing to be proud of here. In fact, it's downright embarrassing.

MVFC Average Home Attendance thru October 13, 2018:
North Dakota State = 18,692.
Youngstown State = 13,571.
South Dakota State = 13,454.
South Dakota = 9,583.
Northern Iowa = 9,508.
Illinois State = 9,458.
Southern Illinois = 8,569.
Missouri State = 6,908.
Indiana State = 6,150.
Western Illinois = 3,751.
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Neckfansince71
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So I guess we have some work to do! ;) jc
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Not sure what "The" answer is. But I do know it needs to be addressed by EVERYONE who cares about the program and the University. We all can't sit back and hope someone else cares for it. Small steps help. If everyone of the 3,750 fans brought just 1 more person, our ave would be 7,500. How hard is it to find just 1 more person?
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I find it interesting that the top 3 aren't necessarily facilities with domes. 1, 4, and 5 have domes. I get the plus side of having a dome, but on the other hand, I'm old school and like the whole outdoor experience of football. With that said, weather definitely can play into some - not all, but some - attendance issues. Just looking at the top programs fan-wise, they sure seem to be teams that have seen a recent uptick in postseason performances. Obviously successful programs tend to bring out more fans. "Bandwagoners"? Maybe, who knows.
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rocki wrote: Fri Oct 19, 2018 9:12 am I find it interesting that the top 3 aren't necessarily facilities with domes. 1, 4, and 5 have domes. I get the plus side of having a dome, but on the other hand, I'm old school and like the whole outdoor experience of football. With that said, weather definitely can play into some - not all, but some - attendance issues. Just looking at the top programs fan-wise, they sure seem to be teams that have seen a recent uptick in postseason performances. Obviously successful programs tend to bring out more fans. "Bandwagoners"? Maybe, who knows.
Just FYI, #1 (NDSU, average of ~18.7k) has a maximum capacity of 19k and #4 (USD, average of ~9.6k) has a max listed capacity of 10k. I know that many of NDSU's home games are sold out every year and at least USD's game against Missouri State on 10/6 was announced as sold out on 10/2 (Tuesday before the game). It's quite likely that both would have higher average attendance if their domes held more. I've heard NDSU fans with realistic estimates of being able to pull probably 25k for most home games (especially conference games) and over 30k for big games against the other Dakota teams.

Obviously it's not all weather-related, but I think that does play a part. We'll never have a dome (at least, not in my lifetime), so we can't really count on that. The #2 team is YSU, but they have a population of ~600k in their metro area (pretty sure that's the largest of any team in the conference), so they have a lot of local alumni...that helps. SDSU is probably the best one to try to emulate for us. Brookings is a pretty rural city, is only slightly larger than Macomb (they have 22k...Macomb is listed at 21.5k). SDSU has more students than we do currently, but we were pretty close 10 years ago, so it's not like they're twice our size or anything. They have an outdoor stadium (and are much further north than we are) that is only a couple of years old and holds 19.3k people. Their video board is awesome too, but one of the largest scoreboard/video board makers is headquartered in Brookings...so that helps. Still, if we can get our west side stands redone and work to build attendance back up (while enrollment works its way back up), I see no reason we couldn't be averaging pretty close to what they are getting on a regular basis.
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I'd like to see us average 9,000 with an occasional 12,000 game from time to time. I think that is both achievable and healthy for revenue creation for the school. Doesn't mean I wouldn't love to ave 15,000, I just don't know if that is possible with our Hotel room situation. And it's hard to increase rooms when they are only needed 15-20 weekends a year. With this Coaching Staff, a new football building and 9,000 fans in the stands we can look very attractive to recruits.
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GV Dad wrote: Fri Oct 19, 2018 11:43 am I'd like to see us average 9,000 with an occasional 12,000 game from time to time. I think that is both achievable and healthy for revenue creation for the school. Doesn't mean I wouldn't love to ave 15,000, I just don't know if that is possible with our Hotel room situation. And it's hard to increase rooms when they are only needed 15-20 weekends a year. With this Coaching Staff, a new football building and 9,000 fans in the stands we can look very attractive to recruits.
Yeah, that'd be nice. Maybe if enrollment picks back up (and especially if the Center for Performing Arts gets rolling) then there might be a need for another hotel. Won't be a ton more rooms, but it'd help.
Promote the option of staying in Galesburg or Quincy and taking the train in. They're an hour or less by train either way. If someone is used to taking the train into Chicago from Naperville, for example...it's about the same trip duration and the seats are nicer.
Anyone want to bring a sleeping bag and crash in my office? It used to be a dorm room and it's got a great view of the football field ;)

I think a good reasonable goal is to have average attendance equal to campus enrollment. This semester, we have 6,296 students on the Macomb campus. That wouldn't be the ideal average enrollment, but it'd be quite a bit better than what we have now and we wouldn't be last place. Then as enrollment picks back up, maybe we can keep attendance growing with it.
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Let's see...how about we hold on of the largest greek events at WIU...off campus...during the football game. That seems smart:


I don't suppose a better time might have been the afternoon of a 6 PM home game and then have everyone head to Hanson Field afterwards...maybe?
Ideally, find a way to have it in a section of Q-Lot, but I understand that they've had it at their house for a quarter century and moving it may not work so well.
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ST_Lawson wrote: Mon Oct 22, 2018 1:11 pmLet's see...how about we hold one of the largest Greek events at WIU...off campus...during the football game. That seems smart.
The Frats used to be a huge presence at the games. Long-time Western fans will remember that the TKE's would bring a big bell to the games. Similar to this:
Image

They would set it up in the south endzone. They would ring it after every Western score.

That was back in the days of big crowds when people were standing everywhere or sitting on the hillside.
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