It is way too easy to be simplistic and bitch about how people should be supporting this, or that, or got spoiled or whatever. People are not obligated to be interested in anything. UConn has three sports that cost a bit for the fan to support. In my case, I have football seasons tickets and pay a pretty penny for very good seats. I share seasons tickets for men's hoops games in Hartford. It just gets to the point where, as much I love the women's team, the most I feel I can do is go to an occasional game. And it is clear from this board, that some men's team fans have little interest in the women's game and vice versa. I also have many other things going on in my life that take me away from CT often enough that it makes no sense for me to buy season's tickets I'd have trouble using during the winter months. That is, I understand, personal to my circumstances, the point being, who knows what may lead even interested fans not to buy a live ticket. I live 45 minutes from Hartford and well over an hour from Storrs - not the most centrally located spot for lots of otherwise interested people.
There is no doubt that in the case of the women, some of the old guard fans have either become too old to attend, or so shunted about in seating under UConn's donation-rewarding point system that they got disgusted and stay home. TV has an impact as does the economy. The disparity between teams in women's game is striking when a UConn is on the court and that probably attributes to some lack of interest. That is ironic, because UConn women's hoop fans would probably be as uninterested in women's hoops as is the case in a huge number of colleges if Geno hadn't landed here and we had the sort of team that our women regularly steamroll.
Empty seats in all of the 3 revenue sports that located in sections that are pretty well sold out to season's ticket holders is hard to explain other than many are corporate owned and, except for "big" games, go begging. My football section always has too many empty but sold seats. A whole other topic is how dead the fans are in those "suit" sections. At this weeks men's game vs. UNH, I was trying to get people around me to make a little noise. Why attend if you are going to treat as sporting event as if you are in a movie theater, but if you paid lot for choice seats, I suppose you can be silent as a giraffe if you please. It should be clear that the attendance at the men's game was lousy.
Which leads me to another attendance issue: Students. Students now get the some of the worst seats and a lot of games are in Hartford. While attendance by many non-students has always been part of the UConn hoops scene, there seems to be less general interest by students in the very special women's program, and it ain't all that great except for big games in the men's program. For the men, it was not always that way. Even lesser opponents elicited more student interest.
I need to stop now that I've warmed my blood after freezing my fanny at the football game.
