Football Attendance

[leatherneckcountry]

I wonder if there are Stats anywhere to see how much the students attendance has dropped and see how much attendance drop with everyone else to see if it's just a student thing or a overall attendance decline from every end.

[ST_Lawson]

I wonder if there are Stats anywhere to see how much the students attendance has dropped and see how much attendance drop with everyone else to see if it's just a student thing or a overall attendance decline from every end.

It's not specific to us or our conference, but this study looks at the possible reasons and stuff: http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nac ... ve2015.pdf

Needless to say, the schools that are actually increasing their student attendance (and full-game attendance as opposed to showing up but then leaving at halftime or whatever) are few and far between. Most schools are struggling with the same issues, but it does seem to have hit Western harder than it seems to be with other schools.

The other thing to keep in mind that we've discussed before is the method of counting attendees. Everyone does it differently, and in some cases, those differences in how a school counts attendance could affect the numbers one way or the other.

Also: http://www.espn.com/college-football/st ... ball-games

And some suggestions: http://magazine.iavm.org/article/how-to ... -at-games/

Personally, I'm still of the opinion that we need to move the students to the middle section right behind the team. Put the die-hard non-students on either side of the student section and you'll have a pretty loud and energetic home side for games, which will hopefully get more students interested and enjoying games.

[Neckfansince71]

So official attendance at Homecoming was 5,631. How many of us would not have batted an eyebrow if the annouced attendance had been say.........7621? jc

[wiu712]

The population of Vermillion, South Dakota is 10,844. The enrollment at USD is 10,261. So it appears that listed population for Vermillion does not include the USD students.

Macomb's population is 18,352 which includes the Western students who live in the city limits.

While the demographics for Vermillion and Macomb are similar, USD has the Dakota Dome. So weather is not a factor for their home football games.

USD had a home game this past Saturday (Oct 28). The attendance at that game was 8,498. Western had 2,247 for its home game on Oct 28.

[Neckfansince71]

Isn't there such a thing as "Bear weather" in Chicago? Seems like that is looked at as an advantage? But you gotta really wanna sit in the stands at Hanson on a cold, windy, dismal day!

So I am still interested in my earlier question.......5631 vs. 7621???? Could we have bought the later even though the former might have been more accurate?? jc

[sealhall74]

Isn't there such a thing as "Bear weather" in Chicago? Seems like that is looked at as an advantage? But you gotta really wanna sit in the stands at Hanson on a cold, windy, dismal day!

So I am still interested in my earlier question.......5631 vs. 7621???? Could we have bought the later even though the former might have been more accurate?? jc

NFS71, if I am Matt Tanney, I get the staff photographer to take his camera out to midfield at the end of 1st Quarter to take a panoramic shot of the entire field and stands. Send that photo up to a couple of grad students and have them each count how many heads they see. Take the average between the two of them and call it a really good day at the office.

[Neckfansince71]

Which equates too???? jc

[sealhall74]

Which equates too???? jc

My uneducated guess is that most crowd sizes guesses for reasonably large crowds will fall within a roughly normal distribution centered around +/- 20% away from the actual attendance.

[Neckfansince71]

Exactly! 5631 x .20 = 1126 1126 + 5631 = 6757 Well you get my point! I think TV had a habit of using +/- .30! Love this statistical philandering! jc

[rocki]

Not to look ahead too much, but our last game of the season is at home against SIU; and will be the weekend that most students head home for Thanksgiving break. (Yes, we all know their attendance could be better when they are here, too, but that's a story for another day) Wonder if there is anything the athletic department could do to try and generate some extra interest from the local population - it's saying the game is on ESPN3 so it's going to be really sparse without the Purple Platoon there. Anyone got any wonderful ideas that can be put into play fast?