Attendance Ideas and Solutions

[GV Dad]

Just gonna toss this out there because I am far removed from the college scene and what makes students "tick" these days.

GV Dad, you have a college age kid. If he wasn't playing football, what would be some of the incentives that would appeal to him in regards to game attendance? Giveaways at the gate? Contests? I'm not trying to be a smarta$$, I just really don't know. So many kids are buried in their phones now that I don't know what (other than a massive internet/cell tower outage) would get their attention.

Honestly, knowing my kid, he would go because the girls are going. I know we don't have a big Greek presence on Campus, but if they could get the sororities to make it a priority to go, Fraternities would follow. Also, if he was in the dorm and everyone on his floor was excited to go he would be right with them. Kids all want to go where the "group" is going. They definitely have a heard mentality. The trick is to get the ball rolling with student attendance. Then it will likely take care of itself. Not sure what led to poor student attendance, but seeing old pics and hearing the stories, something happened along the way to change it. And it's not decreased enrollment. I don't think we are seeing the the same % of the student body showing up, even at lower numbers.

[Western_101]

I agree with the posters here that said a reward system. 5 points for football games (7 if we are on break or it's the last home game, where weather is often inclement). 2 points for a basketball game.....and so on. At the end of the school term if the student earns 50 points they get $100 Visa Card. Additionally for those students who swipe their card and show up one lucky student will wind $1000 for a football game and $500 for a Basketball game.

I know when I was a poor student that would certainly incentivize me. I'm sorry aside from illegally plying students with alcohol, free admission, free pizza and whatever just doesn't move the needle. GV Dad is right about kids want to be where the "group" is or where other students cool or otherwise are.

Yes, I know literally paying students to attend has a whiff of desperation and a hint of impropriety. However, with this generation I think the only thing that will work is just giving them the Damn $$$$$.

[Western_101]

There is some irony in my last post. NCAA forbids boosters to even buy student-athletes a meal.

Would the football players like a full stadium/or would they resent students getting paid while they beat their brains in for their entertainment?

[BobLovely]

I will add that back in the days of consistently better attendance most home games had a 1:00pm kickoff. That is, except for the September night games when the weather can still be hot in Macomb. A 1:00pm kickoff allows those driving in on game day to drive back home at a reasonable hour. My parents, who lived in Peoria, often attended day games when I was a student at Western.

Bob

[Western_101]

RedNeck wrote: ↑Wed Oct 03, 2018 6:57 pm
I don't understand why MSU's schedule is ranked tougher than ours? Attendance, yeah there were like 800 people at Plaster Field for the mighty Lincoln whatever they are. My guess is non-counter games are not even acknowledged when ranking a schedule.

St_Lawson wrote: They aren't, at least where Massey is concerned. MSU currently has the 39th toughest schedule in the FCS according to Massey Ratings. We're at #4. This is SoS based on teams we've played already...if you go on estimated SoS for all opponents this season, we're #3 and MSU is #7, but that's only because 1-7 are all MVFC teams

Sorry, there does seem to be consensus that Massey composite is more accurate. Old habits die hard and I was basing my comments of of Sagarin.

[GV Dad]

I will add that back in the days of consistently better attendance most home games had a 1:00pm kickoff. That is, except for the September night games when the weather can still be hot in Macomb. A 1:00pm kickoff allows those driving in on game day to drive back home at a reasonable hour. My parents, who lived in Peoria, often attended day games when I was a student at Western.

Bob

Agreed, 1:00 would be a better game time. Even 2:00, but much after that is too late. The bulk of the attendance will be folks from within a 1-3 hr drive.

[ST_Lawson]

I will add that back in the days of consistently better attendance most home games had a 1:00pm kickoff. That is, except for the September night games when the weather can still be hot in Macomb. A 1:00pm kickoff allows those driving in on game day to drive back home at a reasonable hour. My parents, who lived in Peoria, often attended day games when I was a student at Western.

Bob

I like 1 PM for kickoffs once it's not real hot, although for me personally, Homecoming works WAY better at 3 than it does at 1. It used to be at 1 and I'd run the 5k at 8 AM, finish in about 30 minutes, hop in my car, drive home, quick shower and change, and be back at the Corbin/Olson practice field by 9 AM...that was not a lot of fun. Since it's been moved to 3, we can have alumni band meet at 10, so I have a bit over an hour to do all that and get back to the field. That's a pretty unique situation though, and if moving it back to 1 meant that we could bring in an extra thousand people to a game, I have no problem changing my schedule to make that work.

I'm not sure why the NDSU game is at 6...it's not on like ESPN2 or something...just ESPN+, so it's not like we're trying to accommodate a TV schedule. Otherwise the last two home games are both at 1, so that's something, at least.

[ST_Lawson]

Not sure what led to poor student attendance, but seeing old pics and hearing the stories, something happened along the way to change it. And it's not decreased enrollment. I don't think we are seeing the the same % of the student body showing up, even at lower numbers.

Unfortunately a lot of my numbers are from the Van Alstine era (AD from '01-'12) who was notorious for creative counting of football attendees (there's no way we averaged over 12k fans in '03, '04, and '07 like was recorded).

In 1975, we had an enrollment of 14,285 and average attendance of 12,134 which is 84.94% of enrollment.
Some of the Van Alstine years, our attendance was recorded often in the 80s and 90s % of enrollment.
Since Van Alstine left, that percentage has dropped, but as I said, Van Alstine was inflating attendance numbers.
Another thing to keep in mind is that while we're listed as having an enrollment of 8,502, that's total students...full and part-time...Macomb...Quad Cities...Online...everyone. If you're just looking at students physically at the Macomb campus (both full and part-time)...that number is 6,296 this semester.

[sealhall74]

Not sure what led to poor student attendance, but seeing old pics and hearing the stories, something happened along the way to change it. And it's not decreased enrollment. I don't think we are seeing the the same % of the student body showing up, even at lower numbers.

Unfortunately a lot of my numbers are from the Van Alstine era (AD from '01-'12) who was notorious for creative counting of football attendees (there's no way we averaged over 12k fans in '03, '04, and '07 like was recorded).

In 1975, we had an enrollment of 14,285 and average attendance of 12,134 which is 84.94% of enrollment.
Some of the Van Alstine years, our attendance was recorded often in the 80s and 90s % of enrollment.
Since Van Alstine left, that percentage has dropped, but as I said, Van Alstine was inflating attendance numbers.
Another thing to keep in mind is that while we're listed as having an enrollment of 8,502, that's total students...full and part-time...Macomb...Quad Cities...Online...everyone. If you're just looking at students physically at the Macomb campus (both full and part-time)...that number is 6,296 this semester.

It would be interesting to look at the demographic changes over time. My gut feeling is that the number of students from smaller towns around Illiinois has dropped off a lot. Unless things have changed, those are the kids who dont have much else to do on Friday nights other than go to the HS football game. Big school kids have a lot more options and may not have that school spirit gene ingrained into their DNA. Probably not much different when they show up to a college.

[ST_Lawson]

It would be interesting to look at the demographic changes over time. My gut feeling is that the number of students from smaller towns around Illiinois has dropped off a lot. Unless things have changed, those are the kids who dont have much else to do on Friday nights other than go to the HS football game. Big school kids have a lot more options and may not have that school spirit gene ingrained into their DNA. Probably not much different when they show up to a college.

The factbook has some of that info. If you check out the pdf here: http://wiu.edu/IRP/FactBook17_Full2.pdf and hope down to page 19 (it's labeled page 15, but it's the 19th page of the document) it shows breakdown of new freshmen by home county over the span of 2013-2017. These are straight numbers (not percentages) but it wouldn't be hard to throw that data in a spreadsheet and run some calculations on it.

If you want to take a look at kids from essentially the "Chicago area"...that'd be Cook, Lake, DuPage, and Will counties mostly. Some debate about places like Kane and Kendall counties...they're kinda "fringe" suburb areas.

The counties that are in our immediate vicinity around Macomb are: McDonough, Warren, Henderson, Hancock, Schuyler, Fulton. We don't border but are close to Knox (Galesburg) and Adams (Quincy).