25,375

[Jetskies]

UAB kickoff. I do not believe it was raining yet.

would not surprise me if a lot of the crowd has a direct connection to a player or coach.
The casual birmingham fan is too busy watching Bama or other SEC games on tv, to bother showing up here.

So - don't complain about the Rent attendance.
IMO we're lucky to get, what we've gotten.

G5 for the vast majority (except maybe Wazzu or boise state or similar), is just not a draw.
Not our fault, just the way it works.

 

[UConnDan97]

View attachment 104780 UAB kickoff. I do not believe it was raining yet.

would not surprise me if a lot of the crowd has a direct connection to a player or coach.
The casual birmingham fan is too busy watching Bama or other SEC games on tv, to bother showing up here.

So - don't complain about the Rent attendance.
IMO we're lucky to get, what we've gotten.

G5 for the vast majority (except maybe Wazzu or boise state or similar), is just not a draw.
Not our fault, just the way it works.

Their poor attendance and our ability to expect better from our crowd are not linked.

You've already alluded to the fact that UAB is, at best, the 3rd collegiate option in Alabama (Troy would try to argue that UAB is the 4th best). On the other hand, UConn is our only FBS team. Furthermore, we know what we looked like when we were winning consistently.

If we want to be with the big boys, we have to act like it. If we want to be marginally better than the 4th best team in Alabama, we should try to dream bigger...

 

[Jetskies]

Their poor attendance and our ability to expect better from our crowd are not linked.

You've already alluded to the fact that UAB is, at best, the 3rd collegiate option in Alabama (Troy would try to argue that UAB is the 4th best). On the other hand, UConn is our only FBS team. Furthermore, we know what we looked like when we were winning consistently.

If we want to be with the big boys, we have to act like it. If we want to be marginally better than the 4th best team in Alabama, we should try to dream bigger...

agree with most of this.
It's kind of a chicken/egg situation.

win and they'll come, and then we'll be back to playing pitt/cuse/rutgers?
or, they come first, then we win, then we get to the party and start playing pitt/cuse/rutgers again?

either way, my point was that the G5 in general is not a draw. save for the few quality programs still in the G5, we've reached saturation.

I guess i'm just trying to see the glass as half-full.
I think we will get 40K+ fans again once we're playing a P4 conference schedule, but until then I do not think anything UConn does is going to get the crowd season average above that 25K-ish mark.

 

[ZooCougar]

View attachment 104780 UAB kickoff. I do not believe it was raining yet.

would not surprise me if a lot of the crowd has a direct connection to a player or coach.
The casual birmingham fan is too busy watching Bama or other SEC games on tv, to bother showing up here.

So - don't complain about the Rent attendance.
IMO we're lucky to get, what we've gotten.

G5 for the vast majority (except maybe Wazzu or boise state or similar), is just not a draw.
Not our fault, just the way it works.

Sort of a similar situation. UAB killed their program and then revived it. UConn unintentionally did that. And that's what it looked like in the bad years.

 

[RSTuthill]

Well, the public are not stupid. Start beating P4's again and they will come. Right now things are slowly improving beating lower level G5's. If ever UConn plays Syracuse or BC again at the Rent and UConn are favored by 6.5, watch the attendance spike. And as much as HCPP gets badmouthed here, the night his team almost beat Michigan was magical. For situations like that the Rent will be full. No problem.

 

[huskymedic]

 

[CJasmer]

agree with most of this.
It's kind of a chicken/egg situation.

win and they'll come, and then we'll be back to playing pitt/cuse/rutgers?
or, they come first, then we win, then we get to the party and start playing pitt/cuse/rutgers again?

either way, my point was that the G5 in general is not a draw. save for the few quality programs still in the G5, we've reached saturation.

I guess i'm just trying to see the glass as half-full.
I think we will get 40K+ fans again once we're playing a P4 conference schedule, but until then I do not think anything UConn does is going to get the crowd season average above that 25K-ish mark.

Key is being at 25k mark with all tickets sold and not a significant number given away for free. What was the number of season ticket holders this year?

 

[Scrutineer]

I looked it up myself. Some growth which is good, I'd love to see more games attended like NC State last year. I suspect next year we'll continue to get up there.

	2021​			2022​			2023​			2024​
Holy Cross	18,782		CCSU	22,442		NC State	36,526		Merrimack	32,351
Purdue	14,817		Syracuse	25,114		FIU	20,405		FAU	20,144
Wyoming	12,538		Fresno St.	20,952		Duke	29,038		Buffalo	20,347
Yale	18,596		BC	25,527		Utah State	21,227		Temple	28,921
Middle Tenn	10,698		UMass	23,430		USF	21,704		Wake Forest	30,122
Houston	12,685		Liberty	15,107		Sacred Heart	19,053		Rice	23,711
									Georgia St.	22,028
Average	14,686			22,095			24,659			25,375

It's pretty clear that if we schedule attractive opponents the fans will come out. Look at Syracuse, BCU, Duke, Wake Forest, NC St. and Merrimack......

 

[Hskies4Ever]

Our ‘26 schedule is murderous.

UNC
MD
IU
JMU
SU

It’s going to be awesome

 

[Hskies4Ever]

Honestly, considering who we played at home, this isn’t terrible. It’s not what it used to be, but if we keep winning and get into a power conference, attendance will continue to improve.

 

[kemba]

It was definitely the most consistently full in years as far as people in the stadium. Some of that was bad luck with weather last year, like the duke game was bad weather or else it would have been a big in the stadium crowd. Hopefully though also we are building momentum

 

[jdb50]

There were very few students attending from the Temple game and the last 2 games at end of the season which makes the attendance figure surprising and explains the high number for Merrimack.

 

[Stinger92860]

Does anyone remember the rumored target number the B12 was looking for from us? I recall 25K+.

 

[Hskies4Ever]

Does anyone remember the rumored target number the B12 was looking for from us? I recall 25K+.

It was at least 30k. I think it was 35k.

 

[Coult]

It was at least 30k. I think it was 35k.

If the conversations continue next offseason I hope the B12 ADs/Presidents would be able to acknowledge the difference in attendance against teams with any type of hype (proximity [Temple] or ability [Wake Forest/NC State/Duke]) coming in at that 30k mark or higher. Either way it is not as if it would be an auto-triggered invite, but feels like that box should be nearly checked with a 2025 similar to 2023 and 2024 if they were projecting out a B12 schedule.

 

[Hskies4Ever]

If the conversations continue next offseason I hope the B12 ADs/Presidents would be able to acknowledge the difference in attendance against teams with any type of hype (proximity [Temple] or ability [Wake Forest/NC State/Duke]) coming in at that 30k mark or higher. Either way it is not as if it would be an auto-triggered invite, but feels like that box should be nearly checked with a 2025 similar to 2023 and 2024 if they were projecting out a B12 schedule.

If we have a decent 2025, we will hit the metrics in 2026. That home schedule is tremendous.