Leatherneck Nation

Still hoping this I'd not true and I have no idea what could have brought the school to kick him out completely. If it is true kyle Hammond is gonna have to grow up quick and be ready to take some big roles. I will miss Nikko I always enjoyed watching him play.

Here is my 2 cents on this game and attendance:

- First off I predict a big win from a hungry team that hopefully is not satisfied with the Wisconsin game. You should never be satisfied with a loss especially when the first half showed we could compete and the second half they destroyed us. After seeing the first half I think the score should of been 21-10 to be happy at end of the game and it was not even close to that. On to this game, since they will be hungry for a win I am hoping for something like a 48-7 win and no injuries. We need to go into Northwestern with some fire!

- As for attendance at this game, I am guessing it will be around 7,500 and this is partly due to lack of advertisement or special incentives that most schools do. Example- I work in bloomington and spend a great deal of the day listening to the radio. Their coach is on promoting the game approximately twice a week and they have different free ticket give away stops at bars each day of the week during home games. I would have to think they are giving away hundreds of free tickets to the first people who come in to the bars and ask for them. It is a good deal and good advertisement. We need party bars in town to get more involved with the school and put on promotions or air the game whatever it needs to do. The school needs to break more into the Peoria market as well even just for radio advertising or TV advertising. I have never once seen or heard an advertisement for the school on TV or Radio and that is where I live. With such a large market only 70 miles away the lack of interest in advertising is surprising even if Bradley is in town most do not want to go there or it is to expensive for them to go since it is private. ISU is a little closer and does quite a bit of advertisement, but if you do not try to compete you never have a chance of taking some students away. I heard that ISU was up almost 500 students in this freshman class.

WIU0812 wrote:As for attendance at this game, I am guessing it will be around 7,500 and this is partly due to lack of advertisement or special incentives that most schools do.

This will be Family Weekend. And the weather is looking good for the Saturday afternoon game: sunny and mid 60's for the 3PM game.

Attendance at last year's Family Weekend game vs South Dakota was 5,732.

This will also be the celebration of the 1,000th home football game. WGEM and Woodrum Ford have been running ads for the game.

I tell you who they need to go after is advertising on the 94.9 Galesburg radio station as that is a popular one in Peoria and reaches all the way past East Peoria and down to Macomb and probably up to Quad Cities which means it would cover a great deal of listeners and being in Galesburg would most likely be a bit cheaper than a larger city station.

Might as well start an official attendance contest. My $50 in your name for our next big project (TBD) to the Leatherneck Nation member who guesses closest, over or under. Use the same format as my entry below to enter so I can easily find it via search.

AttendanceDrake|sealhall74|6336 (I love palindromes)

sealhall74 wrote:Might as well start an official attendance contest. My $50 in your name for our next big project (TBD) to the Leatherneck Nation member who guesses closest, over or under. Use the same format as my entry below to enter so I can easily find it via search.

AttendanceDrake|sealhall74|6336 (I love palindromes)

You already have my attendance estimate which is 7,500.

AttendanceDrake WIU0812 7500

I can't speak for any other radio stations outside of Macomb, but I can tell you that the commercial stations in Macomb will mention something regarding the Leatherneck football game (this week & every week) every day either morning and/or afternoon. Coach Nielson joins 3 of the Macomb stations live morning shows every Monday... with additional game promotion reads on 102.7fm (the Macomb affiliate of the WSN). I also know a reliable source that can guarantee that same Nielson interview will air during the Macomb HS football broadcasts on Friday nights. I'm certain the games are advertised in the paper & social media.

I honestly do not think the attendance has anything to do with lack of media promotion, and I'm speaking first hand on this. Last year, the athletics dept. did everything right when it came to promoting the Family Weekend game, as I'm sure they have this year. Last year (Family Weekend) the weather didn't exactly cooperate, much like the home opener this year. If Saturday's forecast holds up (for this week), I can't think of a more ideal forecast for the game (sunny & 64), which will cool to 45 overnight.

Winning games certainly helps, and our football program is headed in the right direction. Maybe winning (and not free pizza and I-pads) will get more of the student body to attend home games. If half (or more than half) of the crowd Saturday, are WIU students, we should have a pretty good turnout. I suppose, that's a challenge to the student body.

Well I am definitely glad I am mistaken, guess I just get tired of hearing about ISU and wanted to hear some WIU for a change in the Peoria area lol. Hoping for a good turnout then!

Kipp, any news on internet streaming other than "Coming Soon". I was just on Prestige site, I could not find any thing about the Coach's Monday Morning show there but I did not look that hard (searched for "Coach" and "Nielson" and came up empty). You got six stations for local Macomb. How about making just one of them good for the rest of us sometime soon. That's all folks!

Streaming, engineering and anything "relating to" are all above my pay grade... so, the "coming soon" sounds about right (because that's what I've been told). I guess my point was, the local promoting is hopefully in full force. I do have the audio file saved (what I use at half time of my HS broadcasts). However, I'm the most computer illiterate person I know... if I can manage, I'll try to add the interview on here somewhere.