Western had a lot of school spirit back in the 60's and 70's. Western was NAIA until 1972 when it moved to NCAA Division 2.HoosierNeck13 wrote: Sun Oct 19, 2025 10:00 am I really don't think dropping to D2 is the answer-would lose what school spirit there is.
Absolute truth. Rickety old wooden bleachers on the east side and that was the place to be. Filling up those Peach Blossom plungers with Schnapps you smuggled in. That is school spirit IMO but I am sure others disagree. To me, what division you play in has little to do with schoolj spirit.. In fact, most big D1 programs, common ordinary students are lucky to even get a ticket to see a game - have to win a ticket lottery. That is the case this weekend at Iowa State. My wife's niece goes there. You have win a lottery to quality for student tickets. She is a sophomore and has yet to see a game. So we are treating her and her boyfriend to their and our first Cyclone homecoming game. I have also been to a handful of St Ambrose games last couple of years. Not a lot of people but real good school spirit IMO. Lots of music and dance in addition to the football. It is whatever you want to make of the situation.wiu712 wrote: Tue Oct 21, 2025 11:03 amWestern had a lot of school spirit back in the 60's and 70's. Western was NAIA until 1972 when it moved to NCAA Division 2.HoosierNeck13 wrote: Sun Oct 19, 2025 10:00 am I really don't think dropping to D2 is the answer-would lose what school spirit there is.
Some of the largest crowds at Hanson Field came during that era.
I remember those days - we were packed shoulder to shoulder on those old, swaying bleachers, and having the time of our lives. I miss those days, and the fun going to games was. It is really too bad that kids these days don't seem to have the school spirit and fellowship we did back in the day. This was way before even Gateway Conference days, so we were still outliers as far as name recognition schools go, but they were our team and we loved cheering them on. Yeah, I tend to get sentimental over the "olden days"sealhall74 wrote: Tue Oct 21, 2025 11:58 amAbsolute truth. Rickety old wooden bleachers on the east side and that was the place to be. Filling up those Peach Blossom plungers with Schnapps you smuggled in. That is school spirit IMO but I am sure others disagree. To me, what division you play in has little to do with schoolj spirit.. In fact, most big D1 programs, common ordinary students are lucky to even get a ticket to see a game - have to win a ticket lottery. That is the case this weekend at Iowa State. My wife's niece goes there. You have win a lottery to quality for student tickets. She is a sophomore and has yet to see a game. So we are treating her and her boyfriend to their and our first Cyclone homecoming game. I have also been to a handful of St Ambrose games last couple of years. Not a lot of people but real good school spirit IMO. Lots of music and dance in addition to the football. It is whatever you want to make of the situation.wiu712 wrote: Tue Oct 21, 2025 11:03 amWestern had a lot of school spirit back in the 60's and 70's. Western was NAIA until 1972 when it moved to NCAA Division 2.HoosierNeck13 wrote: Sun Oct 19, 2025 10:00 am I really don't think dropping to D2 is the answer-would lose what school spirit there is.
Some of the largest crowds at Hanson Field came during that era.
Smartphones, social media, streaming sports...I think it's all contributed to it. Even mighty Alabama was struggling with it: https://www.espn.com/college-football/s ... yette-gamemay wrote:Thu Jan 01, 1970 6:29 am IMO, a lot of schools have a line of demarcation around 2008/2009 when smartphones were popularized where student attendance at sports started rapidly declining.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin And then add in the just plain stupidity going on. I went to the Wisconsin game a few years back when we played there. The student section gets filled by monitoring all students through one and only one entrance where no doubt they check them for things that should not be brought in. The student section did not get completely filled in, one row at a time from bottom to top, until about midway through the 2nd quarter. Maybe it is better now but that was a shocker for me to watch in progress. IMHO, all tailgating needs to shut down 20 or 30 minutes before game time, whatever lets ALL fans be in their seats at kickoff. ISURed enforces that rule I believe. However, last week, they had to adjust game start time because of weather so they did not enforce the rule that day. I gathered lots of empty seats not usually empty and ISURed got beat. NDSU has had that rule for decades and you see how they get things done. Regardless of talent on the field, I think some games are lost when the home team kids look into the stands and see a bunch of empty seats. No one will convince me otherwise.ST_Lawson wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 8:54 amSmartphones, social media, streaming sports...I think it's all contributed to it. Even mighty Alabama was struggling with it: https://www.espn.com/college-football/s ... yette-gamemay wrote:Thu Jan 01, 1970 6:29 am IMO, a lot of schools have a line of demarcation around 2008/2009 when smartphones were popularized where student attendance at sports started rapidly declining.
Looking at attendance numbers over the years, there are fewer FCS teams at the top end and more at the bottom end. As an example, this year, there are currently 54 teams averaging under 5k fans per home game and 9 teams under 2k fans per home game. There's actually 28 teams with worse home attendance than we have this year. Compare that to the 2013 season (the furthest back the NCAA statistics site has easily searchable data for attendance) and there were 38 teams averaging under 5k fans and only 2 under 2k fans.
Looking at the overall attendance (page 2 of this document: https://s3.amazonaws.com/fs.ncaa.org/Do ... Attend.pdf) shows that for FBS, the high point was 2010 when the average for all FBS games was 46.6k fans and has dropped down to 42.1k last year. For the FCS, the high point was 1982 when an average of 11.7k fans attended each home game. That has been slowly decreasing every year to the point where it was 8.1k last year. All through the '80s it was over 10k, but dropped below in 1993 and hasn't gotten over 10k since. DII and DIII have seen similar decreases.
Another example...NDSU. In 2008, NDSU's first season in the MFVC, they finished 6-5 overall (we even beat them that year) and averaged 18,032 fans per home game. In 2024, they finished 10-2 in the regular season and won the FCS championship...they averaged 16,789 fans and had under 15k for their last two regular season home games.
So, the point is...it's absolutely not just a problem with us (although I'm sure the downturn in winning % has hurt quite a bit), but how do we get back to winning games even without a full stadium? Winning will help attendance, but I think we have to accept that the days of seeing a packed Hanson Field with 14k+ fans in the stands is over and likely never coming back.
The problem with that is that there is no press box on the east side and no room to add one unless you're tearing out half the stands. I agree that we don't need a west side the size of the current one, but the west side is falling apart, the press box is in pretty bad shape. If we are ever able to rebuild it, they should reduce the width and remove a few rows from the top, make the press box span three sections rather than just one, and add more space between the rows/seating. Drop capacity by about half of what it currently is on the home side, but make it a nicer experience than it currently is. Have an entry gate at the back of the stadium, with bathrooms, concessions, and a couple of exits that lead out into the middle of the stands, where a section can be designated for handicap-accessible seating.wiu712 wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:25 am With the current top attendance numbers at Hanson Field being in the 5,000 - 6,000 range, do we really need to do a complete re-build of the west side ???
Perhaps a more realistic idea would be to move the Home side of the field to the east side. Tear down the old west side, replace it with a much smaller seating area (500- 1,000), and make that the Visitors side.
Scott Lawson - Board Admin In a perfect world, the university would buy up the land between Orchard and Stadium Drive and redevelop that area for athletic use. It does make sense to me to have the main side looking west out toward the rest of campus although you have some visibility issues staring into a bright sun.ST_Lawson wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 3:15 pmThe problem with that is that there is no press box on the east side and no room to add one unless you're tearing out half the stands. I agree that we don't need a west side the size of the current one, but the west side is falling apart, the press box is in pretty bad shape. If we are ever able to rebuild it, they should reduce the width and remove a few rows from the top, make the press box span three sections rather than just one, and add more space between the rows/seating. Drop capacity by about half of what it currently is on the home side, but make it a nicer experience than it currently is. Have an entry gate at the back of the stadium, with bathrooms, concessions, and a couple of exits that lead out into the middle of the stands, where a section can be designated for handicap-accessible seating.wiu712 wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:25 am With the current top attendance numbers at Hanson Field being in the 5,000 - 6,000 range, do we really need to do a complete re-build of the west side ???
Perhaps a more realistic idea would be to move the Home side of the field to the east side. Tear down the old west side, replace it with a much smaller seating area (500- 1,000), and make that the Visitors side.
I'm thinking something similar to maybe DII Lenoir-Rhyne's Moretz Stadium but a little less wide:
The section with the press box at the top wouldn't have to be as tall, because you'd be entering at the top of the hill, so it'd start closer to the top. Just have it be one story of attendee facilities and two stories of press box, maybe with a couple of high-level donor suites.
