Fling out the Purple and the Gold, We're Marching On.
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His wife indicated they are just downsizing, not leaving.wiu712 wrote: Tue Oct 31, 2017 5:59 pm Heard today at the gym that Charlie Fisher has his house up for sale. Reportedly he has said that he does not like Macomb.
I wonder if you can bring your own lawn chair for the lawn. That is always my preferred option to view any sporting event.wiu712 wrote: Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:55 am Our game at Illinois State is a sell-out (13,391). They are selling "Lawn" (standing room) in the north endzone. This is their Family Weekend game.
Western sold all of the tickets in their allotment. So there should be a big Western crowd at the game.
Family Weekend games at Western used to bring in big crowds. But we only had 3,217 at this year's Family Weekend. Last year's Western Family Weekend game had 6,732.
The smaller Freshmen class of recent years is probably the reason for the decrease in attendance for Family Weekend.
All valid points but these population demographics were the same 30 years ago when when we would draw considerably more fans for football and basketball games. So I disagree that it is all about location. I think what has changed ALOT is the diversity of the student population. Not saying it is a bad thing but kids today are into their own things and sports is just not a big priority for most of them when they have all of the modern-day toys to play with. Hell, last night I damn near ran over some HS age kids who were out trick-or-treating on their motorbikes and ATVs (damn things had no lights).ST_Lawson wrote: Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:44 pm LocalYokel, you're definitely right on the local population issue. A few years back, me and another guy on AGS put together a bunch of numbers relating to things like location, enrollment, stadium size, local population, etc. for all the FCS schools. Our basis of local population was a 20 mile ring around the school (or stadium, if the stadium is not on campus). Out of all FCS teams, here's the "bottom" 10 in that ranking:
1. Alcorn State, 28,060
2. South Dakota, 28,690
3. Southern Utah, 29,955
4. South Dakota State, 34,387
5. Northwestern State, 42,440
6. Western Illinois, 43,629
7. VMI, 52,861
8. Montana State, 56,875
9. Morehead State, 58,250
10. Grambling State, 65,397
For MVFC teams, those same numbers are:
South Dakota, 28,690
South Dakota State, 34,387
Western Illinois, 43,629
Southern Illinois, 141,073
Northern Iowa, 162,573
Illinois State, 163,061
North Dakota State, 167,177
Indiana State, 172,226
Missouri State, 311,815
Youngstown State, 613,208
Now, for the South Dakota schools, there's a couple of things there that are working in their favor. South Dakota is a small enough state that USD and SDSU are the state's "flagship" universities and are the only DI schools in the state. By SD standards, they are actually fairly large towns...Brookings is the 4th largest town (and it's barely larger than Macomb) and Vermillion is the 11th largest (and it's about the size of Monmouth). Because of this, they get much more focus from the state government in terms of funding. They are also both an hour (or less) away from the largest metro area in South Dakota (by far)...Sioux Falls. So, where do the majority of college educated alumni go to get jobs once they've graduated...cities...metro areas, etc.
What do you have within...say, an hour of:
Vermillion - Sioux Falls (metro area population ~250k), Sioux City IA (~168k), Norfolk NE (~24k), Yankton (~14k)
Brookings - Sioux Falls (~250k), Watertown (~21k)
Macomb - Quincy (~40k), Galesburg (~32k), Burlington (~25k), Canton (~14k), Monmouth (~9k)
The total population of all the cities larger than like 10k people within an hour of WIU...including Macomb...is barely 150k. Sioux Falls alone has ~100k people more than that in their metro area, plus an airport, as well as being the headquarters of Sanford Health (280 locations, 27k employees, heavily involved in investing in healthy living and exercise...hence the Denny Sanford Premier Center, the Sanford Pentagon, Sanford Fieldhouse, USD's Sanford Coyote Sports Center, and SDSU's Sanford-Jackrabbit Athletic Complex, for example).
So, when USD students graduate, where do they go...Sioux Falls, Sioux City...both an hour or less away...an easy drive up and back for a Saturday football game.
When WIU students graduate, where do they go...Peoria, Quad Cities, Chicago...all further away. I'm sure we have a few die-hard fans that can make it back from QC and Peoria on a regular basis, but I highly doubt we see too many Chicago-area alumni coming back for more than a game or two each season.
Really, it's all about location. We just don't have large enough population centers nearby to draw alumni who are close enough come back to the majority of games.