Just think about that. BCU couldn't sell out a game against USC.
We're having issues with attendance. The most widely held theory:
- Lost a lot of season ticket holders with the Spaz disaster for the four years between '09 and '12. The combination of terrible football, increased season ticket prices, increased Donor Based Seating charges for premier seats, increased tailgating costs, increased BCPD presence at tailgates, and even further restrictive tailgating hours. I swear, it was as though DeFilipo and Spaz wrote a script on the best way to destroy a program and then got away with it for 4 years before someone caught on and put a stop to it.
- Some say the decline started earlier with the move out of the Big East. Wake, NCST, Duke, UVa, etc. just weren't attractive to a Northeastern fan base. Even though the move in '05 preceded the attendance dropoff that started in '09, that's skewed by the the fact that almost all ACC teams brought in about an extra 5K tickets to their first games in Boston and the team actually being nationally ranked between '06 and '08. Starting in '09, when we were no longer ranked (good) and the novelty of Boston was no longer a draw for ACC visiting fans, that's when the numbers started showing. This theory holds that BC needs to focus the OOC on traditional northeastern foes to generate interest. This theory would be the one that motivates Bates to sign this series.
- Then some also just point out that '06 was the year that BC started reporting actual bodies through the turnstiles as opposed to tickets sold. This theory suggests that the attendance dropoff isn't as stark as the numbers suggest and if BC can just start winning the numbers will pick up. Adherents to this theory would say that games like USC might've come very close to selling out at the box office, but that only 42K made it into the stadium out of a capacity of 44.5K. Again, tickets sold numbers aren't reported, so we can't be sure on this one. But I'm skeptical.
- Starting in '08 BC's students started skewing away from Northeastern states to a more national student body. Fewer recent alumni staying in Boston.
It's probably a combination of the 4.