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meangreenbob

By meangreenbob
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meangreenbob Veteran

meangreenbob

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UTSA will do well attendance-wise because they're the only game in town in San Antonio. The closest college football team to San Antonio is Texas State up the road in San Marcos. UTSA has that whole city...the eighth largest in the U.S...all to themselves.

It seems like there's a certain segment of folks on here who are dead set on comparing apples and oranges when it comes to what they think our attendance ought to be versus the empirical reality of our situation. Yes, we're the fourth largest public university in Texas by enrollment. I'd venture that we also have the largest percentage of commuter students of any public university in Texas (Houston might give us a run for our money here). So, we may be the fourth largest public university, but we don't have he fourth largest public university enrollment living in Denton.

We're essentially a suburban commuter university (35,754 Fall 2011). If you're going to compare our athletic attendance to other universities, compare it to universities that are like us: Texas State (34,114 Fall 2011), UT Arlington (33,449 Fall 2011), and Houston (39,820 Fall 2011). In my opinion, Texas State is the most comparable; like UNT, it's essentially a suburban commuter university even though San Marcos is no more a suburb of Austin than Denton is of Dallas. It's very close to us in enrollment and, though not as much of a commuter school as UNT, it still has a strong commuter contingent.

Our attendance is better than Texas State's. They're FCS and their stadium isn't new and shiny and awesome like ours, but our attendance is better.

In my estimation, the big problem is that there's no model for doing what we're trying to do here. I proposed an equation earlier in another thread, but that's simply something that I cobbled together out of observation. We didn't just build a new stadium to add more seats to accommodate more fans. We rarely ever filled our old stadium, a place where we had capacity to burn more times than not. We built a newer, bigger stadium to try to lure more fans with the new stadium factor in the short run and give us room to grow attendance under the expectation that as we become more successful in the long run that more fans would show up.

I think that's the solid, conservative model we've created that we're working from, and I think it's a good one. If I had access to game-by-game attendance demographic numbers, I could build you as good a model of attendance as you will find anywhere. What kind of student shows up to games? I'd wager more freshmen and sophomores than juniors and seniors. Why? The freshmen never knew anything of Dodge Ball and the sophomores were only subject to half a season of it. Who comes to one or two games versus who comes to every game and why every game versus why only one or two? Focus group a random sample of each group and find out. Use those findings to inform policy.

We can figure this out, but right now we're sailing in uncharted waters. The one thing I'd implore folks around here to think about, though, is stop and consider who you're comparing our attendance to before you do it. Yes, UTSA draws more people. That's because our situation isn't comparable to theirs. Apples and oranges.

Please know and understand that I'm not in any way trying to be disrepectful because I appreciate the time you took to respond but in all honesty your post is nothing more then a longwinded excuse.

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Quoner Mentor

Quoner

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Please know and understand that I'm not in any way trying to be disrepectful because I appreciate the time you took to respond but in all honesty your post is nothing more then a longwinded excuse.

Never get tired of dusting this off...

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GrandGreen Grand Master

GrandGreen

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Why even compare UTSA and NT? UTSA is the only college or pro game in a huge metropolitan area. They have all the excitement of a new team and are apparently giving away tons of tickets. The excitement at UTSA will soon wear off and they will have to sell the majority of tickets not give them away or at huge discounts.

I think UTSA has an excellent chance at moving quickly up, their first year team is actually better than I would have thought. They have a lot going for them but lets wait a few year before anointing them the next Boise State.

UTSA or TSSM has little to do with NT at this time. NT must substantially improve their product and not take 4 or 5 years to do it. I unlike many don't think any giant steps were made this year, I see a lot of improvements in the basics but little in the outcome. NT is a more disciplined team but still makes a lot of errors and has found no rhythm on either side of the ball. Those 4 or 5 wins looks a lot better but they were all against bad teams and I don't think there has been much improvement from the Canales lead injury ridden team of last year.

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Green Mean Contributor

Green Mean

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I just don't get how people can be disappointed in where this program is headed.

Given our awful and forgettable history I can understand the kneejerkyness...I think the thing that makes many on the board more jumpy is because of all this realignment stuff. I still say that we're still FBS and we at least have a history of being an FBS team and if you told me we'll win 4-5 games this season I would have taken it in a hearbeat given what's been going on the past 7 years here.

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Eagle1855 Newbie

Eagle1855

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None of this is really very difficult to understand. It's all simple economics and opportunity cost. Most people don't want to work their schedule and empty their wallets to watch a bad team play a bunch of never-heard-ofs. We play a bunch of teams that casual college football fans have either never heard or are certain they are Div II schools.

Figure out how to build a winning program, then the rest follows.

UH was winless 10 years ago, no one showed up to games. This weekend, I attended a game vs SMU that was the largest crowd in Robertson history. It was awesome.

Winning brings supporters, casual and die-hards alike. And maybe the former later become the latter.

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FirefightnRick Proficient

FirefightnRick

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None of this is really very difficult to understand. It's all simple economics and opportunity cost. Most people don't want to work their schedule and empty their wallets to watch a bad team play a bunch of never-heard-ofs. We play a bunch of teams that casual college football fans have either never heard or are certain they are Div II schools.

A lot of us are working our schedules and emptying our wallets to see us play, regardless of the opponent. About 12,000 of us did it this past weekend.

Rick

Edited by FirefightnRick
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Green Mean Contributor

Green Mean

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A lot of us are working our schedules and emptying our wallets to see us play, regardless of the opponent. About 12,000 of us did it this past weekend.

Rick

I think his point was that when you weigh all the options...then to the casual fan for sure and even good fans that think about it hard is it worth it to them to do all of that and watch a pretty bad team on the field. I don't blame folks for not coming to games either...I mean these are valid questions and points.

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Aquila_Viridis Community Regular

Aquila_Viridis

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One issue we have relative to other schools is that there really aren't too many people out there ASPIRING to attend North Texas. I think a lot of them end up there who wanted to go somewhere else, though maybe they didn't want that bad enough. Some of them - very few it seems - will end up coming around and being thankful that NT was there to help them along the road of life. On the other hand, I know some people, who for whatever reason, aspire to attend places like Baylor. Maybe NT should get more selective and send some more of the other type people to TX State or SFA.

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Green Mean Contributor

Green Mean

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That's really great, Rick. I was referring to the casual fan. But you're never one to miss a chance to pat yourself on the back, are you?

We talk about casual fans but even really good fans...I mean it's not easy just blowing your money on things like this for one especially when the team has been pretty dog gone awful. I mean folks on this board is so quick to ridicule them and telling them they aren't worthy and they don't have school pride and they aren't really fans but people have choices to make and like everything else in life there is nothing wrong with evaluating the cost and benefit to all this. I know a lot of good fans that follow us and want us to win but don't come to very many games if any because they work their ass off and when they weigh the options of spending their hard earned money and dragging their families to our UNT games versus something else...the other items more often than not wins. And yet this board is quick to criticize them and some even have the audacity to quickly point out how much better of fan they are and how much they do and donate. Here we're trying to get more fans to come to our games and embrace UNT and at the same time people scoreboard them or criticize them and that is what probably will keep many away. All this is irrelevant...you field a good and winning team consistently then people will come. This is a TWO WAY street between the university and the fans/students/alumni etc. That is the way things go and the way things will always be.

Hell even last year when UT was in the middle of their 5-7 season there were a ton of empty seats as the season progressed at DKR...and they are freaking UT so what are we then?

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EdwardRRooney Newbie

EdwardRRooney

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We talk about casual fans but even really good fans...I mean it's not easy just blowing your money on things like this for one especially when the team has been pretty dog gone awful. I mean folks on this board is so quick to ridicule them and telling them they aren't worthy and they don't have school pride and they aren't really fans but people have choices to make and like everything else in life there is nothing wrong with evaluating the cost and benefit to all this. I know a lot of good fans that follow us and want us to win but don't come to very many games if any because they work their ass off and when they weigh the options of spending their hard earned money and dragging their families to our UNT games versus something else...the other items more often than not wins. And yet this board is quick to criticize them and some even have the audacity to quickly point out how much better of fan they are and how much they do and donate. Here we're trying to get more fans to come to our games and embrace UNT and at the same time people scoreboard them or criticize them and that is what probably will keep many away. All this is irrelevant...you field a good and winning team consistently then people will come. This is a TWO WAY street between the university and the fans/students/alumni etc. That is the way things go and the way things will always be.

Hell even last year when UT was in the middle of their 5-7 season there were a ton of empty seats as the season progressed at DKR...and they are freaking UT so what are we then?

So you're saying its okay to be a fan and not donate your life savings to the MGC or attend every game no matter what? Now that's a hot sports opinion......I like it.

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Cr1028 Grand Master

Cr1028

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Let us put this in perspective.

Season ticket sales

"Now, having sold 10,002 season tickets through Wednesday, they're rapidly recalibrating what they thought was possible for their first-year program."

"With 16 days until the inaugural game on Sept. 3, Fox said UTSA could finish with as many as 12,000."

"UTSA has currently sold roughly 29,000 seats for the opener, with another 15,000 reserved for students."

They had 56743 for the opener and only 25977 for the Georgia State game. If they are counting 12000 season tickets for every game, that is a significant amount skewing actual attendance.

This is what nearly 26k fans looks like when the home team runs on to the field(what ten minutes before kickoff?).

Picture1.png

Only about 2k additional fans seen here.

Apogee_Stadium_Opening.jpg

I don't trust UTSA numbers.

Edited by Cr1028
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