John A. comment.... What say you?

[diggerfoot]

Everybody is responding with their own perspective, some sympathetic, some antagonistic to Altavilla's comments. The one perspective that matters most is that from the student, and not the student who is a diplomat's son with his own car as a freshman (my first roommate), but the average student who goes to the public university because of costs.

For the majority of college sports teams across the country students are the foundation of the fan base. Not only that, but fellow students are what the athletes would most like to see sitting in the seats. Because of the success of the program, coupled with inadequacy of on campus facilities, UConn caters to the student less than perhaps any other college in the country. I see complaints about students not going to games even when the opportunity arises; that's why I framed my previous reply in terms of HABIT. The University makes attending games a difficult HABIT for a student: because of corporate packaging, because of off campus games and because of costs. Now that championships are a HABIT for the team it would require a HABIT from the students to maintain highest attendance levels. UConn makes that impossible.

You can agree with that climate, attributing it to market forces or whatever, but Altavilla's comment remains misguided when the main responsibility for high attendance standards, particularly for niche sports, falls on the very demographic that UConn prevents from forming a habit of attending games.

 

[OneTrickPony]

My entire family, the young and the middle aged, refuse to attend sporting events because of the hideously loud ambiance. Disclosure: we are all (or most of us) musicians, and we can't take the assault on our ears.

I made the decision after my first Hot Tuna concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco...of course after breathing the air in there for a little while, you got lulled into a false sense of security.

 

[Icebear]

I made the decision after my first Hot Tuna concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco...of course after breathing the air in there for a little while, you got lulled into a false sense of security.

Hot Tuna, dang, we really do need to sit down and have a beer some time. We have plenty of life to talk about.

 

[OneTrickPony]

Hot Tuna, dang, we really do need to sit down and have a beer some time. We have plenty of life to talk about.

Agreed...! In the old days in San Francisco you could sit down and have a beer with Jorma and Jack in the little clubs they played in...

 

[CL82]

The university burned a lot of goodwill under Jeff Hathaway, with ticket pricing and season ticket policies. There was an assumption that there was inelastic demand for UConn Basketball. That assumption was wrong. It will take a concerted effort to win the the fans back. They are making an effort but it will be a long row to hoe.

 

[OneTrickPony]

You often can't put the genie back in the bottle...when Perrier misunderstood why people drank their product, they took a permanent 50% loss in market share. Anyone that sacrifices market share to inch up profitability does so at their own risk...