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Who is leaving?


Andrew

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My question is do winning seasons really bring in fans in sports? It seems 50-50 to me. there are pro and college teams who have been historically would and still had large crowds. The Cowboys have been terrible for most of the past 10 years and people still show up to their games. Either people like the sport and the team or they do not. It's pretty simple. Our football team has been terrible yet people show up....

I think what gets people showing up is a sustained period of commitment towards winning. Winning every year is not always easy for mid majors/G5 schools, but at least showing you're committed towards winning is the key, and that gets students who see that to come back as alumni, knowing that the school is going to do all it can to field a winner as often as possible, just like it has done since they were in school.

Think about how many fans we have lost because of Benford. We had decent attendance his first year because of the hype of Mitchell and the team. That attendance plummeted his second year. The fans didn't want him back, and it continues to go down. Had we shown the commitment to winning and realized we didn't have the right guy, maybe there wouldn't have been a big dropoff. But rather than show the fans we are committed to winning, we keep retaining coaches long after the fans want them anymore, in hopes that the AD can say "I told you so" and hope that coach somehow turns it around. Meanwhile, people have stopped coming to the games.

It's like the "'X School' takes basketball seriously" series Tasty did. Even the top mid major programs have bad seasons from time to time. It's the schools that deem that as unacceptable who draw well. The schools that are not okay at all with losing, much less prolonged losing. Those schools get their fans to keep showing up because those fans know their AD isn't going to allow the program to stay down for long, if at all.

Edited by BillySee58
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I probably date to around the same time period. I believe the first game I went to was in 89ish. However, through most of the 1990's, I remember it was a good crowd if there were over 1500 people there.

The game I remeber the most was when we played UT and the seats we were still orange. I do not remember the year though. 89 is to early for me. Maybe 94...? Not sure.

I just remeber George King strocking it.

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I probably date to around the same time period. I believe the first game I went to was in 89ish. However, through most of the 1990's, I remember it was a good crowd if there were over 1500 people there.

he did say 'FANS'...so anymore than 1 would substantiate his claim...

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The game I remeber the most was when we played UT and the seats we were still orange. I do not remember the year though. 89 is to early for me. Maybe 94...? Not sure.

I just remeber George King strocking it.

We played Texas in 1997 in Trilli's first season. About half the fans were Longhorns. The crowd was about 5000 from what I recall.

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We played Texas in 1997 in Trilli's first season. About half the fans were Longhorns. The crowd was about 5000 from what I recall.

Ok so I would say maybe 95-96 was when I started going. There were some decent crowds but I was younger.

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I was there in the Jankovich days. Nobody was there. 1500 was a good crowd.

I could hear my heartbeat when UC Irvine came to town.

I too remember those crowds...well, calling them crowds is a bit rich. But, pretty quiet in the Super Pit during those days.

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Jankovich only had one year in the Big West. Most of his time was in the Southland. Yes, we had bad crowds, but his teams were usually okay. Almost snuck into the NCAA tournament twice. Beat Texas A&M and Rice in the same year once.

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Jankovich only had one year in the Big West. Most of his time was in the Southland. Yes, we had bad crowds, but his teams were usually okay. Almost snuck into the NCAA tournament twice. Beat Texas A&M and Rice in the same year once.

Hey...don't forget the good hair. On a side note...I agree he had some decent teams.

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I watched a game against Tarleton State one year at the Pit that couldn't have had 200 people at it when Jankovich was the coach. He was a good coach, though, He just got stuck with a lazy AD that wanted to pay for the department thru money games on the road in OOC play. Jankovich quit instead of playing that game, so Helwig hired a former UT connection in Vic Trilli, who so was so uber-positive that he said these types of schedules is exactly how UT built up their program, by playing any big-name program at anytime on the road. He forgot that they also had the benefit of playing in the SWC, which featured Arkansas and Houston, both of whom were regulars in the NCAA Tournament, as well as Texas tech in the James Dickey years when they were good, too.

We played in the Big West and played UC-Irvine, Idaho, and other teams outside of our time zone. And by the time we got to conference play, we were usually sitting around 2-10 or so and were just beaten down to a pulp by the Maryland's of the world in OOC.

Craig Helwig is the curb that RV had to jump over to look great to the BOR and the fans, simlar to what Coach Mac had to do after Todd Dodge and Johnny Jones had to do after Vic Trilli. When your hurdle to look better than the previous person is not higher than a low curb, you can usually look pretty good.

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