David Benedict Basically Blames Low Attendance on Us

[champs99and04]

I think you're right, and I think that's fair. But at the same time, the wording and even the sentiment behind the wording is very naive on his part, and he's been in this job long enough that he really doesn't have a good excuse for being naive.

I get that the program is in a bad way, and that sucks. But there's no real excuse for the on the field performance being as bad as it's been for as long as it's been. It's bad football, resulting from bad recruiting and coaching, resulting from bad coaching hires. All of that is on the athletic department, though not necessarily DB himself.

It's asinine to think a packed house will result in a successful program. That's simply not how it works. It'd influence a win every now and again, sure. But it's putting the cart before the horse.

Completely agree with your first two paragraphs. With regards to the effect attendance has on success, my thought was that everything can at some point be traced back to revenue and demand. Players win games, but fans - directly or indirectly - make them want to come here (it works the other way as well).

 

[MilliniumPrince]

USC is in the second-largest city in the country and, as noted, is literally NEXT to the Coliseum.

Yale has a great lacrosse team, but if that's the program whose attendance you want to emulate, then we're in real trouble.


125ish programs play on campus. UConn doesn't. Don't act like it isn't an issue- it absolutely is.

Most of the 125 schools have terrible attendance.

 

[Redding Husky]

Counter argument: since this is fantasy, the Storrs folk should have let Storrs develop into the college town it was meant to be.

Very few flagship universities are located in major cities.

Storrs could be/should be Charlottesville or even Champaign/Urbana.

My niece graduated from Delaware and she says Newark, DE is nice. I've never been there, so I don't know.

 

[Hoophound]

It is. I went there last summer. Looked like a great place.