Key tweets, and it's all gone to Hell. | Page 305 | The Boneyard

Key tweets, and it's all gone to Hell.

Billy Jack said:
“. . . down to 10,278” ???

You’ve just made my case. UConn’s low point in the Big East, a season in which Calhoun left us on probation, had higher attendance than ANY season in the AAC, including the post-NC season.

Someone’s going to have to explain to me why attendance hit a low point of 7800 in the AAC, why attendance remained below 10,000 for 4 straight seasons in the AAC, and why attendance immediately jumped back up over 10,000 in the first post-Covid season in the Big East.

Don’t you think that the administration had statisticians doing sophisticated analytics on all this stuff before they made the decision to return to the Big East? Or do you think they just made that decision on a whim?
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Yeah not so much. Here’s what the big drivers were:
1. Attendance was dropping and had been for at least 5-6 years.
2. Attendance in 2014 was basically flat at 10,300 or so. 2015 it actually went up a bit, which is typical after a NC. then you are right, it went down again but stayed around 10,000 in 2016. Then in 2017 and 2018 it cratered, but take a guess what else cratered in those years. Those were the last 2 Ollie seasons when we lost games to Wagner and Northeastern, and set a record for losing blowouts. 2019 Hurley arrived and attendance clicked up to 8600+- then in 2020 the last Big AAC year and when were were back in consideration for the Tournament and lo and behold, attendance bounced up to just under 10,000 again (9,890 I think). 2021 was the COVID year so no numbers but a pulse with a tourney bid and 2022 saw a jump again to 10,345. But still way below the 2006 peak, and despite a pretty solid team and the return to live games and the New Big East, it was BELOW 2015 and 2016. Using your logic, more fans attended games when We were in the AAC than in the NEWBIE. But in reality more fans attend games when the team is good than when it is just ok or bad. The conference might have a marginal impact but the quality of OUR team is the real driver. I also suspect, though I didn’t do any analysis to prove it, that there is a season to season carryover. So 2015 wasn’t that good a team, but there was some positive vibes from winning the title which brought more fans to see them the next season. The 2010 team was sort of meh, so attendance went down in 2011 and didn’t rebound until later in the season. Some thing happened in 2020, I imagine…a team that looked to be decidedly average suddenly caught fire so attendance rebounded late in the year.

So how’s that for providing an argument and backing it up with data which pretty clearly refutes your opinion unsupported by a more thorough look at the facts? As I said in my first post, you cherry picked data and argued that attendance cratered because of the AAC. The truth is attendance remained pretty much within the range it had been in the later years of the Calhoun regime including the National Championship year by the way. Then when the team crashed attendance followed suit. When the team recover, attendance recovered. That’s what the actual data show and that’s pretty consistent with the general rule of thumb about sports teams.
 
Attendance and sagarin ratings don't really matter either. That whole thing is kinda silly.

#1 TV viewership (how many people actually watch you)
#2 Value of Brand (how many people donate, interact in social media, etc.)
#3 TV market - less important for those without a TV linear network. This is a diminishing value. As more and more programming goes to streaming -- # of subscriptions matters much more -- thus your TV viewership + quality of your brand is very important
#4 Investment in sports - proves the university cares and the community cares. This shows up in the quality of facilities.
#5 Revenue sports success - if you're not good in football you better be really good in men's hoops
#6 Academics - mostly focused on research. USNWR are mostly garbage. You want to be good in the areas the AAU cares about - a better metric from USNWR is the global universities rankings.
#7 Geography/ease of transportation - Geography matters more if it's a 2 hour bus ride from the airport. Teams want to hop off a plane and be there.
# 8 Everything else - non-revenue sports and pretty much anything else.
 
B1G Leaderfield Standings 2021-22

3-Michigan
4-Ohio State
12-USC
15-UCLA
24-Wisconsin
28-Minnesota
36-Northwestern
41-Michigan State
43-Penn State
46-Maryland
48-Rutgers
49-Nebraska
52-Illinois
53-Purdue
55-Iowa
64-Indiana

Standings for non-B1G/SEC brands who want a seat at the table:

2-Stanford
6-North Carolina
8-Notre Dame
11-Virginia
14-Florida State
17- North Carolina State
21-Duke
23-Oklahoma State
26-Arizona State
27-California
29-BYU
30-Washington
31-Oregon
33-Virginia Tech
34-Louisville
35-Arizona
38-Texas Tech
40-TCU
42-Iowa State
44-Utah
45-Wake Forest
47-Baylor
50-Miami
51-Oregon State
58-Colorado
61-Kansas
62-West Virginia
65-Clemson
68-Georgia Tech
69-UCF
72-Syracuse
73-Pittsburgh
79-Kansas State
85-UConn
89-SMU
90-Washington State
91-San Diego State
97-Memphis
99-Houston
102-Rice
109-Boston College
112-USF
113-Boise State
139-Cincinnati
157-Fresno State

I think I hit all ACC/PAC/Big 12 teams and others who have popped up as possible expansion teams for those three leagues if the SEC and B1G raid some more.
 
LoyalFanCT said:
if we start to win attendance will skyrocket.
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If my aunt had balls, ….

More seriously, obviously attendance will go up if we win but I’m hard pressed to see how, playing as an independent at a time when attendance is down at a lot of sporting events, it’s ever going back up to where we were before everything collapsed. I hope I’m wrong.
 
businesslawyer said:
If my aunt had balls, ….

More seriously, obviously attendance will go up if we win but I’m hard pressed to see how, playing as an independent at a time when attendance is down at a lot of sporting events, it’s ever going back up to where we were before everything collapsed. I hope I’m wrong.
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There’s probably a better chance of that happening as an independent than in the American. But whether you want to sneer at it or not, winning is the key regardless. Hopefully we now have the right man at the helm to make that happen.
 
businesslawyer said:
If my aunt had balls, ….

More seriously, obviously attendance will go up if we win but I’m hard pressed to see how, playing as an independent at a time when attendance is down at a lot of sporting events, it’s ever going back up to where we were before everything collapsed. I hope I’m wrong.
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I think if UConn wins, fans will come back. I think fans were about to come back after the Houston upset in 2015, but the program went backwards after that. The following season, UConn had 29.3k for a Labor Day Friday night opener against Maine which is pretty good.

The main group I go to games with went from 2 to 3 games per season to ~1 game because the team played so poorly. When the team wins, people want to go and want to go to more games.
 
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UConnJim said:
I think if UConn wins, fans will come back. I think fans were about to come back after the Houston upset in 2015, but the program went backwards after that. The following season, UConn had 29.3k for a Labor Day Friday night opener against Maine which is pretty good.

The main group I go to games with went from 2 to 3 games per season to ~1 game because the team played so poorly. When the team wins, people want to go and want to go to more games.
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I am inclined to think you are both right to some extent. I don’t think we get 38000 regularly. But 31-32 on a pretty consistent basis is doable, with the odd sell out for a big game whether that be big Name or sort of rival. I do think an upset/good winning streak/will work wonders. But a national ranking with a string of wins (does an unbeaten UConn belong in the playoffs Argument on various sports talk shows would of course be great).
 
LoyalFanCT said:
if we start to win attendance will skyrocket.
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If you mean if we go 35-2, yeah probably. But a couple of other things keep attendance down too. A big one is cupcake row that opens the season. When we play a string of Central Connecticut, Howard, UMBC, UNH, you just are not getting much of a crowd. Then there is this tendency to play national opponent in the early season on neutral sites. When we first started our rise you could sell tickets to watch UConn play against a team of traffic cones. Those days are over. Then when you play most of your name opponents in fake tournaments in the Bahamas or MSG or wherever you lose games that would bring big numbers. Those events have multiplied like rabbits over the past decade. So instead of having 15000 for Kansas in Hartford and 15000 at Kansas for UConn next year both teams play in front of crickets in the Battle for Some Casino in the Azores.
 
freescooter said:
If you mean if we go 35-2, yeah probably. But a couple of other things keep attendance down too. A big one is cupcake row that opens the season. When we play a string of Central Connecticut, Howard, UMBC, UNH, you just are not getting much of a crowd. Then there is this tendency to play national opponent in the early season on neutral sites. When we first started our rise you could sell tickets to watch UConn play against a team of traffic cones. Those days are over. Then when you play most of your name opponents in fake tournaments in the Bahamas or MSG or wherever you lose games that would bring big numbers. Those events have multiplied like rabbits over the past decade. So instead of having 15000 for Kansas in Hartford and 15000 at Kansas for UConn next year both teams play in front of crickets in the Battle for Some Casino in the Azores.
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LOL. You missed that folks were talking about football? Because that is what the realignment decisions are being made on.
 
UConnJim said:
I think if UConn wins, fans will come back. I think fans were about to come back after the Houston upset in 2015, but the program went backwards after that. The following season, UConn had 29.3k for a Labor Day Friday night opener against Maine which is pretty good.

The main group I go to games with went from 2 to 3 games per season to ~1 game because the team played so poorly. When the team wins, people want to go and want to go to more games.
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Herein lies the proble
freescooter said:
I am inclined to think you are both right to some extent. I don’t think we get 38000 regularly. But 31-32 on a pretty consistent basis is doable, with the odd sell out for a big game whether that be big Name or sort of rival. I do think an upset/good winning streak/will work wonders. But a national ranking with a string of wins (does an unbeaten UConn belong in the playoffs Argument on various sports talk shows would of course be great).
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Herein lies the problem. Returning to 38,000 average attendance seems beyond our wildest dreams. We’re hoping for 31-32,000. With standing room, we can squeeze 40,000 into The Rent.

There are 38 football programs which average 50,000+ home attendance. Those are the big time programs. There are another 15 programs which average 40,000+. We’re in line behind them. Big time programs with average home attendance under 40,000 are as rare as hen’s teeth. Where they do exist there is some other compelling reason for their presence in a big time program.

In 2019, we averaged 18,000+ on paper but fannies in the seats were reportedly more like 10,000+. Last year, tickets distributed were about 13,000+. It’s anyone’s guess what the actual number of bodies in the stands was.

Attendance is a good measure of enthusiasm. And there obviously is none. But even if attendance were back in the range of 32-38,000, that’s not a program making the kind of money that would attract interest from a big time league. And unfortunately with our current stadium, attendance is capped at 40,000.
 
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Billy Jack said:
Herein lies the proble

Herein lies the problem. Returning to 38,000 average attendance seems beyond our wildest dreams. We’re hoping for 31-32,000. With standing room, we can squeeze 40,000 into The Rent.

There are 38 football programs which average 50,000+ home attendance. Those are the big time programs. There are another 15 programs which average 40,000+. We’re in line behind them. Big time programs with average home attendance under 40,000 are as rare as hen’s teeth. Where they do exist there is some other compelling reason for their presence in a big time program.

In 2019, we averaged 18,000+ on paper but fannies in the seats were reportedly more like 10,000+. Last year, tickets distributed were about 13,000+. It’s anyone’s guess what the actual number of bodies in the stands was.

Attendance is a good measure of enthusiasm. And there obviously is none. But even if attendance were back in the range of 32-38,000, that’s not a program making the kind of money that would attract interest from a big time league. And unfortunately with our current stadium, attendance is capped at 40,000.
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Those schools are in P5 conferences. We need a comparable schedule to fairly compare attendance.
 
Hoophound said:
Those schools are in P5 conferences. We need a comparable schedule to fairly compare attendance.
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You’re kidding, right?

Here are football programs from outside the P5 conferences which averaged 39,000+ in their last pre-Covid season:

Notre Dame (76,000)
BYU (60,000)
UCF (44,000)
Memphis (39,000)
 
Hoophound said:
Meh. We have knowingly and willingly let our USNWR ranking drop for the good of the university. We can easily go back to the previous model of two years ago if it gets our AD 50 mill/year. UConn isn’t playing the USNWR game anymore. It’s a ruse that Florida schools are taking seriously. Don’t bring it here as evidence of anything. We were blowing FSU out of the water (like UF is) until we decided not to. Other ranking methods put UConn square in the middle of the B1G.
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I was not the poster who linked the Sports Illustrated article on the rankings of programs desirability...

I did point out the data elements that they used...you seemed butt chafed at the USNWR ranking (actually a strong point for UConn).

The average Sagarin ranking for 2017, 18, 19, 21...as a data point, was certainly more of a disadvantage....and maybe the data element ranking average football attendance for the same years.
 
billybud said:
Five year attendance averages through 2019....rankings...

collegefootballnews.com

Attendance Rankings No. 1-130: 2019 CFN Five-Year Program Analysis

How many people show up? As a part of the CFN Five-Year Program Analysis, the attendance is a factor. Here are the rankings from No. 1-130. Contact @PeteFiutak Beyond wins and losses, attendance mi…
collegefootballnews.com collegefootballnews.com
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We have to be even lower on that list after last year. A new 5-year average would replace 2015 (28,000+) with 2021 (13,000+), which would lower that 5-year average by almost 4,000 per year, thereby dropping us to about 21,000+ per game and a ranking somewhere in the 90’s. Not good.

East Carolina looked good on that list.
 
billybud said:
Five year attendance averages through 2019....rankings...

collegefootballnews.com

Attendance Rankings No. 1-130: 2019 CFN Five-Year Program Analysis

How many people show up? As a part of the CFN Five-Year Program Analysis, the attendance is a factor. Here are the rankings from No. 1-130. Contact @PeteFiutak Beyond wins and losses, attendance mi…
collegefootballnews.com collegefootballnews.com
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We have to be even lower on that list after last year. A new 5-year average would replace 2015 (28,000+) with 2021 (13,000+), which would lower that 5-year average by almost 4,000 per year, thereby dropping us to
 
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UConn fans seem to be pretty fair weather in general. Even basketball attendance dipped significantly during the AAC days. I understand that football is in a brutal place but Mora gives a reason to be optimistic. We've gotta be able to put up better attendance numbers. It's a little embarrassing.
 
Billy Jack said:
You’re kidding, right?

Here are football programs from outside the P5 conferences which averaged 39,000+ in their last pre-Covid season:

Notre Dame (76,000)
BYU (60,000)
UCF (44,000)
Memphis (39,000)
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Two of those schools have enormous fan bases by any standard. The other two (UCF and Memphis) had excellent football teams challenging for major bowls and putting up huge yardage and points with two of the best offenses in the country.
 
Hoophound said:
Two of those schools have enormous fan bases by any standard. The other two (UCF and Memphis) had excellent football teams challenging for major bowls and putting up huge yardage and points with two of the best offenses in the country.
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Well, isn’t that the point?
 
Billy Jack said:
Well, isn’t that the point?
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Lol. I don’t even remember at this point. I think the idea was that UConn’s weak attendance as the worst team in college football and with awful schedule, is an unfair barometer of potential. When we had a solid team in a solid conference, we had solid attendance.
 
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Hoophound said:
Lol. I don’t even remember at this point. I think the idea was that UConn’s weak attendance as the worst team in college football and with awful schedule, is an unfair barometer of potential. When we had a solid team in a solid conference, we had solid attendance.
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:D Yes, If we can build our attendance back up with the help of a competitive schedule or conference, things might change. Even still, in today’s dynamic a 40,000 seat stadium is a hindrance.
 
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Billy Jack said:
:D Yes, If we can build our attendance back up with the help of a competitive schedule or conference, things might change. Even still, in today’s dynamic a 40,000 seat stadium is a hindrance.
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You mean 40,000 is too big or small?
 
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