8,183

[gampelcrazies]

Even though the announced crowds have gone down. This problem started the last few years they were in the big east.

 

[alexd]

It was a morgue and people tried to stay positive but man at the end especially people wanted to poke their eyes out.

The last 7 minutes took 35 minutes

August....let me know when you're coming to games.....I'm at all the XL games. Would be great to hang out again.

 

[August_West]

August....let me know when you're coming to games.....I'm at all the XL games. Would be great to hang out again.

Im at most of the XL games and some gampels life schedule permitting. Had family in tow last night.

 

[alexd]

Im at most of the XL games and some gampels life schedule permitting. Had family in tow last night.

We're always at the Rockinghorse before games.

 

[August_West]

We're always at the Rockinghorse before games.

I know

 

[Waquoit]

@Waquoit agrees I think?

I'm done. All I know is that we are undefeated in the XL and haven't won a game in Gampel this season.

 

[8893]

I'm done.

If true, I'm disappointed. I truly enjoy your spirited defense of the XL and tweaking of those who argue against it.

Is it about missing all the free BWW wings this year?

 

[upstater]

I don't think anyone would argue that attendance would better in the Big East. That concept makes me miss when upstater was trying to argue the AAC was a better basketball conference than the newest Big East.

Evidence please. Show it, because I never said that. I can however provide you with plenty of posts the last 3 years when I said the opposite.

If there was a time I made that argument, it was likely the year we got our doors blown off by Louisville, then proceeded to destroy the best team in the Big East the very next weekend, on route to a national championship. Maybe in March of 2014. Not after then--never said anything like that.

 

[Letsgohuskies11]

I still cant forgive us for sitting on our ass when conference realignment was going on and not proactively getting out when our sports teams were doing a lot better

 

[Padutch5]

Maybe someone already knows, but it feels like it's been a long time since the announced attendance at the XL Center for a scheduled regular season game hit this kind of low (I think the first AAC tourney game 2 years ago may have been announced lower).

It's crazy to think about what the atmosphere was like 20 years ago compared to today.

I think attendance will get a whole lot worse before it gets better:
Last night was probably the worst play I have seen. Nobody could hold onto the ball. Did we have 2 fast breaks all night? Kevin has quite a job to bring this team together. People forget that attendance was sinking before the end of the beloved Big East.
As mentioned, the inane games during the many breaks, the many breaks make for a lack of real excitement. D- 3 games move along. Besides keeping fans at home, tv breaks are killing the game. I assume those of you who actually go to the games have noticed we haven't had any performers at half time [other than kids teams] or performing the national anthem pre game.
As someone already mentioned, UCONN's ticket strategies are turning many off. We have had season tickets for 15 years, as well as football season tickets and have contributed regularly. We still have seats on the curve behind the basket. Our seats are still surrounded by people who bought one game tickets on the internet. Next year, I probably will not buy season tickets but go to just one or two games. Why fight the system. I no longer need to buy season tickets to be assured of a seat.
There were less that 75 students at the game. [Almost as many as at the last football game]. What is the size of the student body, 20,000plus?

 

[champs99and04]

Can you really blame the fans though?

We have had every semblance of a rivalry, which is the lifeblood of college sports, ripped away from us due to no fault of our own. To expect fans to keep showing up to games against teams they have never heard of, and not even beating these teams regularly, is a hard order in a pro sports region.

Is this really an AAC thing, though? We have always played games like this. Playing BU is actually a lot closer to the intended college basketball experience than a game against Houston, theoretically.

Perhaps you could argue that the residual effect of playing in the AAC has depressed attendance/excitement, and I would agree, but there are bigger problems at play, the most obvious among them being that this might be our worst team in some time.

And you look at recruiting since Ollie took over...there hasn't really been a drop-off. In fact, it's probably improved, so in a vacuum, the conference shouldn't be effecting the attendance of a non-conference game when the conference hasn't proven to have an effect on the recruiting. We're just bad.

I tend to agree with @whaler11 and @superjohn that this is a combination of A) college basketball not being as compelling a product as it once was, and B) people being less likely to send dollars on spectator sport in this day and age.

The biggest factor, though, is that it's not good to watch. I'm probably going to swallow my better judgement and head to New York on Monday, but this is far from all of those other times - even as recently as a month ago, remarkably - where I would have crawled to the end of the earth to get to the game.

 

[pnow15]

I think that low attendance is a good sign for the State of Ct. It means we have a lot of smart people who were not willing to shell out good money to see BU play anything. This game should have been played on campus. Didn't we just have an election result due to the fact that a lot of middle class guys don't have a lot of extra money laying around. UConn needs to adjust too.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I am not sure what is going on. I am involved in youth basketball, and the youth numbers are solid. AAU seems to be booming. I was at a high school rec league game last year and there were over 50 people (mostly kids) in the stands on a Sunday night to watch some pretty bad basketball.

Yet Florida State looks like they got 500 for a game against Minnesota.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Yes, and I wasn't trying to say that the issue is unique to UConn. FSU has a good team and they played in front of NO ONE at home against Minnesota on Monday. I was watching LSU last night and the building was completely empty (the game was about the quality of intramural basketball).

The thing is it wasn't THAT long ago when teams that weren't NCAA tournament teams would still have 14-15k in the building for a Fairfield.

It's an epidemic across the sport. A handful of teams now get the top recruits - 95% of the teams play a version of the game that isn't entertaining and the nature of March means that the regular season is meaningless for everyone but 15 bubble teams.

This isn't old man yells at cloud: The sport was a better watch 15-20 years ago.

You're right about this. Attendance at live sports is down almost everywhere. It's mostly too time consuming, expensive and provides in almost every respect an inferior view of actual game action compared to HDTV. You go for the atmosphere, memories and experience, but as fewer people go, even that dwindles.

Still, if UConn was a one loss team playing well, we would have had closer to 14k in the building.

 

[BUConn10]

Is this really an AAC thing, though? We have always played games like this. Playing BU is actually a lot closer to the intended college basketball experience than a game against Houston, theoretically.

Perhaps you could argue that the residual effect of playing in the AAC has depressed attendance/excitement, and I would agree, but there are bigger problems at play, the most obvious among them being that this might be our worst team in some time.

And you look at recruiting since Ollie took over...there hasn't really been a drop-off. In fact, it's probably improved, so in a vacuum, the conference shouldn't be effecting the attendance of a non-conference game when the conference hasn't proven to have an effect on the recruiting. We're just bad.

I tend to agree with @whaler11 and @superjohn that this is a combination of A) college basketball not being as compelling a product as it once was, and B) people being less likely to send dollars on spectator sport in this day and age.

The biggest factor, though, is that it's not good to watch. I'm probably going to swallow my better judgement and head to New York on Monday, but this is far from all of those other times - even as recently as a month ago, remarkably - where I would have crawled to the end of the earth to get to the game.

The lack of attendence at the BU game is simple. This team is simply not good, in fact they are hard to watch more often than not, combined with the fact that it's a game against Boston University on a weeknight in Hartford and it's not hard to see why people are exactly jumping out of their seats.

Now the poor attendence during conference games, even the year we were defending champs, is due to a poor conference schedule wth no reconizable names that are compelling to the fans. You simply can't expect the fans to show up with the same level of force when the product on the court is significantly reduced in quality, significantly. Top ranked UConn bs Top ranked Cuse/Nova/Gtown on Big Monday vs unranked UConn with 6 losses bs unranked Tulane on Thursday evening isn't even in the same stratosphere.

 

[Waquoit]

The lack of attendence at the BU game is simple. This team is simply not good, in fact they are hard to watch more often than not, combined with the fact that it's a game against Boston University on a weeknight in Hartford and it's not hard to see why people are exactly jumping out of their seats.

Weeknight in Hartford is a feature, not a bug.

 

[Dream Jobbed 2.0]

Lol.

I actually ate my 4th ticket tonight so I could have an extra seat for roominess. True story. Joke was on me though I could have given it away and had 5 extra seats anyway

August so fat when he get an extra ticket HE EATS IT!!'

 

[Waquoit]

August so fat when get an extra ticket HE EATS IT...'

,,,knowing it would taste better with ketchup.

 

[August_West]

August so fat when get an extra ticket HE EATS IT!!'

I did enjoy the double entendre while writing it.

 

[businesslawyer]

Yes, and I wasn't trying to say that the issue is unique to UConn. FSU has a good team and they played in front of NO ONE at home against Minnesota on Monday. I was watching LSU last night and the building was completely empty (the game was about the quality of intramural basketball).

The thing is it wasn't THAT long ago when teams that weren't NCAA tournament teams would still have 14-15k in the building for a Fairfield.

It's an epidemic across the sport. A handful of teams now get the top recruits - 95% of the teams play a version of the game that isn't entertaining and the nature of March means that the regular season is meaningless for everyone but 15 bubble teams.

This isn't old man yells at cloud: The sport was a better watch 15-20 years ago.

In the late 90s, if you didn't have season tickets you didn't go to home games. Period.

 

[Letsgohuskies11]

yet the knicks still sell out

 

[ConnHuskBask]

I think spectator sports (and life in general) has been reduced to people staring at 4 inch LED screens 2 feet from their face.

The average attention span before and after this cell phone Nation is stunning.

 

[lange10]

Boring and bad basketball. Plain and simple. Anyone in their right mind could've told you that neither team would score more than 70 points in last nights game before it took place. Well, crap, it was even worse. The two combined for 100. Our basketball and football teams combined could have the most boring offenses in all of the FBS. Not all are as die-hard as many of us on this board who will attend no matter how bad it gets. Can't blame them for sitting on the couch and drinking away the pain as opposed to attending live.

 

[mjmoney23]

I will say this as a season ticket holder at XL. When I see uconn giving discounts on tickets on Facebook it sickens me to know I paid full price for every game when they are giving some away for 5 dollars (last night). That is a big slap in the face to me as a season ticket holder. My upper level full price seats aren't worth what I paid for them.

 

[freescooter]

Attendance and tv viewing is off pretty much everywhere. One part of it is that too many games are available on tv. Another specific to college basketball is that the regular season is becoming baseball. Too many games that barely matter. Who cares until March? And the next time they expand the tourney they should just take everyone. Basketball is now a playoff sport. And the season is too long. Ought to start the weekend after thanksgiving and play 26 games. Screw the early season Fournier in exotic locales too.