football attendance

[wardly]

it looks like we finally will get what we have wished for: a national conference with a regional division apparently made up of UTEP,UTSA,RICE,TULSA,TULANE[i think La.TECH will go east], and NORTH TEXAS. major programs fans go to watch their team play regardless of who their opponent is. mid-major programs such as UNT go to watch who their team is playing. we now have no excuses not to increase attendance based upon our competation.

[playoffpush]

Attendance is not going to bump up as much as anyone think's it is. Rice, Tulsa, and Tulane do not travel at all. UTEP will probably bring 5k extra fans, they travel pretty well. UTSA is yet to be determined. The teams in the east aren't going to bring anyone. These aren't big time schools, they aren't going to garner much more interest than the SBC teams.

Edited May 1, 2012 by playoffpush

[DeepGreen]

Attendance is not going to bump up as much as anyone think's it is. Rice, Tulsa, and Tulane do not travel at all. UTEP will probably bring 5k extra fans, they travel pretty well. UTSA is yet to be determined. The teams in the east aren't going to bring anyone. These aren't big time schools, they aren't going to garner much more interest than the SBC teams.

The days of relying on visiting teams' fans to help fill our stadium MUST END!! No excuses for Apogee not filling to capacity at each and every home game.

[GreenFlag]

Attendance is not going to bump up as much as anyone think's it is. Rice, Tulsa, and Tulane do not travel at all. UTEP will probably bring 5k extra fans, they travel pretty well. UTSA is yet to be determined. The teams in the east aren't going to bring anyone. These aren't big time schools, they aren't going to garner much more interest than the SBC teams.

Gotta disagree with you there. In games we've played Rice and Tulsa at Fouts they were well attended by visiting fans and UTEP is supposed to be a big lift. I know our fanbase will respond better too. I think this is a 5,000 bump in our regular attendance. I agree about the eastern teams.

No need to expand Apogee just yet.

[MeanGreenTexan]

Attendance is not going to bump up as much as anyone think's it is. Rice, Tulsa, and Tulane do not travel at all. UTEP will probably bring 5k extra fans, they travel pretty well. UTSA is yet to be determined. The teams in the east aren't going to bring anyone. These aren't big time schools, they aren't going to garner much more interest than the SBC teams.

The issue is not, and never should be, "how many fans will the other team bring?", rather, how many UNT fans show up?

Apogee is not huge. There are over 100K alumni in the metroplex. We need UNT fans to come out and fill up Apogee consistently.

The past few Tulsa & Rice home games have been pretty full with more UNT fans than FIU/WKU games. I'm not sure if it was because the Tulsa and Rice games were early in the year, and the yearly, "This year will be different" feeling was present. Either way, I look for this trend to continue.

[Harry]

I think the key may be getting the students engaged. Last year with the move to Apogee we saw a decline in student attendance. Part of that was due to the new location but I also think the student ticket policy might be an issue as well. With the new pedestrian bridge we should see a bump but identifiable teams won't hurt either.

[casual fan]

Playing other Texas schools gets us a lot more news coverage. SBC games never did. We also need to get some annual home and home non conference games going with TT, TCU, SMU, Houston, Baylor, etc.

[Rudy]

I renewed my season tickets yesterday morning. Last night we get word about the CUSA invite...

You're all welcome.

[KoldBeer]

The key is getting more North Texas fans at the game. Very few schools bring a lot of fans to conference games. You have to get a fan base that travels because they can't go to home games (Nebraska used to do this when they traveled to old Big 8 schools). But playing CUSA fans should bring a few more fans but I'd guess 1,000 or so a game. The key is now UNT is playing schools the general sports fan has heard of. Playing Tulsa sounds better than playing La-La. Hopefully, this will engage the people in and around Denton to go see the game. We now have the stadium and a good conference. It's put up or shut up time.

[Cooley]

Our coaching staff will have to step up their game in recruiting. On paper, 2012 was disappointing. See the % increase in men's basketball; with better recruiting.

[TheRiojas_AD]

We have GOT to change the culture of the school. Nothing will happen if we don't do this. Coach Mac got a good start by doing the stadium tour during orientation...We still have strides to make, but this is going to be a marathon not a sprint. The fans need to be completely sold out to the program.

You have to ask yourself what makes the Dallas Cowboys continually sell out..DESPITE their dismal record. What is that one magical thing that makes it happen?

Now that athletics has established itself from a marketing persepctive with CONSISTENT branding and logo's, its going to be easy to blast our name all over the state. People still don't know who we are, but everyone recognizes the longhorn logo in an instant.

We have got to have that same appeal and recognition. We are poised for great things, but the marathon has just begun.

[Green Mean]

We should not rely and want other fans to fill up our stadium...I want 31,000 UNT fans....lets pack Apogee with our own people.

[UNT86]

The key for us is getting a "name" opponent early in the season AND getting one late as well.

Look at the years we played Army, Navy, and Kansas State late in the year.

My hope is that the conference will give us a "name" to play at home late in the season.

What would our average attendance have been this year if Marshall or Southern Miss had come instead of WK or MTSU?

My guess is over 20,000.

[Eastwood Eagle]

I think perception will effect the attendance. Speaking on behalf of students, I have heard many classmates and friends discount UNT football because we were in the worst division in football. They will see this as move that UNT is getting better and they won't be embarrassed to say we are playing no name schools.

[GreenFlag]

We zoomed past the MAC, WAC, SBC, and even the MWC when it comes to football prestige. Football is just better in CUSA.

It will be a bump in attendance. As much as I enjoyed our time in the belt and wish everyone well in that conference, this is huge for us. We have some serious work to do to get competitve in our new home.

[SCREAMING EAGLE-66]

--- This a two way win..... opponents that our fans and alums know will bring more of our people in. As for for their fans..... they will bring more than Troy etc. but also there are a lot of these CUSA alums that live in the Dallas area that may come... not so of Troy etc.

--- Now we just need to win a lot more games... that helps as well.

---We are now back to where we were in the late 70's... We had been in the conf with Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Tulsa, etc. and then Fry gambled on being admitted to the SWC and lost (thanks to SMU efforts) and worse the NCAA forced us to drop back and need to join the Southland when the large conferences just about did in the smaller conferences and independents. Lamar and UTA, and West Texas (for a while) just quit football as did a lot other schools nationwide..

Edited May 1, 2012 by SCREAMING EAGLE-66

[SilverEagle]

We have GOT to change the culture of the school. Nothing will happen if we don't do this. Coach Mac got a good start by doing the stadium tour during orientation...We still have strides to make, but this is going to be a marathon not a sprint. The fans need to be completely sold out to the program.

You have to ask yourself what makes the Dallas Cowboys continually sell out..DESPITE their dismal record. What is that one magical thing that makes it happen?

Now that athletics has established itself from a marketing persepctive with CONSISTENT branding and logo's, its going to be easy to blast our name all over the state. People still don't know who we are, but everyone recognizes the longhorn logo in an instant.

We have got to have that same appeal and recognition. We are poised for great things, but the marathon has just begun.

ABSOLUTELY! It's great that Mac is doing his part (could you imagine DD or TD doing a stadium tour or selling to anyone who will listen like Mac?), but EVERYONE IN THE ADMINISTRATION AT NORTH TEXAS NEEDS TO BE DOING THE SAME THING!.....Did I mention EVERYONE?

And as to depending on other schools to fill our stadium. In theory, I totally agree that it must be us filling the stadium. But forgodsakes what casual fan, or more accurately "uncertain fans" would want to go and see us play F-who? or WK-who?. And those schools were never going to fill up the 4K allotment that we set aside for visitors.

And losing games to the F-who's and WK-whos? of the world just make it worse.

[PlummMeanGreen]

Lets see now...

There are almost 7,000,000 citizens in our DFW backyard;

There are almost 700,000 citizens in Denton County (of which 120,000 live in Denton)

There will be almost 37,000 UNT students this Fall

There are well over 100,000 NT alums in DFW (one campus publication even says 209,000 who attended UNT at least 1 semester)

And...................... putting 31,000 Mean Green fans inside Apogee Stadium is a problem?

GMG!

[TIgreen01]

I think the key may be getting the students engaged. Last year with the move to Apogee we saw a decline in student attendance. Part of that was due to the new location but I also think the student ticket policy might be an issue as well. With the new pedestrian bridge we should see a bump but identifiable teams won't hurt either.

Any word on whether the student ticket policy is going to be tweaked for this upcoming season? The pedestrian bridge will help, but only so much...

[GrandGreen]

--- This a two way win..... opponents that our fans and alums know will bring more of our people in. As for for their fans..... they will bring more than Troy etc. but also there are a lot of these CUSA alums that live in the Dallas area that may come... not so of Troy etc.

--- Now we just need to win a lot more games... that helps as well.

---We are now back to where we were in the late 70's... We had been in the conf with Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, Tulsa, etc. and then Fry gambled on being admitted to the SWC and lost (thanks to SMU efforts) and worse the NCAA forced us to drop back and need to join the Southland when the large conferences just about did in the smaller conferences and independents. Lamar and UTA, and West Texas (for a while) just quit football as did a lot other schools nationwide..

There will be more visiting fans from regional teams, a few more will travel and they will have a lot more alumni in the area. However, it is not going to be a huge increase; my guess would be max of 1000 in the attendance average. I also don't think that the CUSA teams will excite NT fans much more than the Belt once the new wears off. There will be some increase because NT will get a lot more state wide coverage than they ever have. Good winning visiting teams will bring out more fans, but frankly I don't think playing La Tech, Tulsa, UTSA, UTEP and Tulane is going to improve attendance significanly. The students that don't get excited playing Belt teams are going to complain about not playing UT, OU and the like at Apogee and stay away.

I agree with you the key is winning but I must correct one of your comments because I have seen it many times. When NT left the MVC, Louisville, Memphis, and Cincinnati were all gone. Tulsa was still a member but Fry didn't risk much leaving the MVC as it was about done as a football conference.

[TheTastyGreek]

I definitely think our attendance problems are solved. Now that we've FINALLY:

moved back up to D-1

gotten into a conference where we can establish ourselves as a program

gotten rid of that failed experiment of a high school coach

gotten out of a western conference and into one focused in the south

won our conference championship

made it to a bowl game

had a winning season

won a bowl game

had multiple winning seasons

gotten the national publicity of a NCAA rushing champion

had some players drafted into the NFL recently

won a game against a BCS opponent

gotten the publicity of ANOTHER NCAA rushing champion

scheduled some football games against SMU

ditched that surly coach and his boring offense

brought in a coach who has the respect of the Metroplex

installed this pass-first system that Mizzou got from our head coach

scheduled these home games against service academies

seen the level of play of our conference mates start rising

gotten rid of that failed experiment of a high school coach (TAKE 2!!)

brought in a proven D-1 coach with a history of building a program

started advertising games and ticket packages on television

opened that fancy new stadium

MADE IT INTO Conference USA!!

...I think we're going to see people REALLY take notice and see our attendance skyrocket! Good morning, sleeping giant!

I don't mean to sound negative, because this CUSA move is a great thing for us and I'm very excited about it. But in terms of building up our attendance, it's a nice series of bricks to add to the structure we've been building. Not a magic bullet that will solve everything with one shot. And it seems to me that many of our fans have been fantasizing that every new development is going to be The Magic Bullet that Makes Us Relevant.

We're in a conference with better public recognition and history. That's good.

We're playing our conference games against teams that more casual fans (not totally casual fans... but *more* casual fans) will recognize by name and potentially respect. That's good.

We're playing more schools within a half day's drive, so that we can forge rivalries and competitive relationships with fans we can visit in person (and who can drive to visit us) when gameday rolls around. That's good.

We're in a conference with schools that might have more substantial alumni bases around DFW. That's good.

But anyone who thinks this move is going to solve our attendance problems is going to be disappointed. People are not likely to flood the turnstiles to see (hypothetically) a 3-7 North Texas team face a 1-10 Tulane team. Anyone who thinks we're going to start selling out our stadium or watch our attendance bump by 10k a year because of this is going to be as angry and frustrated as all the people who thought that our alums and Metroplex neighbors would come out in droves just to see architecture last year.

It'll help, some, right away. And it will put us in a position to help OURSELVES a lot 5, 10, 20+ years down the line. But this move isn't the solution to our attendance problems.

Also, SPOILER ALERT: If and when the day comes that we ARE selling 10-12k season tickets and practically selling out Apogee every Saturday... Many if not most people here are going to be angry as hell about what that means for the fan situations to which we've all grown accustomed.

[greenminer]

+1 to you, good sir Tasty.

[Baby Arm!]

4 free tickets to the WingZone when you buy a bucket of chicken......Hey, it worked for UTSA

[An Aquarian]

I think the key may be getting the students engaged. Last year with the move to Apogee we saw a decline in student attendance. Part of that was due to the new location but I also think the student ticket policy might be an issue as well. With the new pedestrian bridge we should see a bump but identifiable teams won't hurt either.

DING DING DING DING! It's next to impossible to get students pumped about playing some schools in the Sun Belt and until our record gets better (which I'm sure it will) people will go based on who we're playing rather than just to watch UNT

[kalebschumann]

Any word on whether the student ticket policy is going to be tweaked for this upcoming season? The pedestrian bridge will help, but only so much...

That's assuming the pedestrian bridge will be done.