(02-21-2012 07:59 AM)Sultan of Euphonistan Wrote:  Lots of stuff to do and more importantly being close to where your students actually come from can effect a lot of attendance. Kent has a substantial student population that lives on campus but you would be surprised at how many leave for the weekend.

NIU's called a suitcase school as it's so close to Chicagoland that more leave for the weekend than is typical of many other schools. Also, DeKalb isn't very big so fans/alumni live in Chicago or the burbs and most of the fans are closer to Chicago where there's more to do than they are to DeKalb.

Also, Chicago is very much a pro sports town - early football season you're competing with both Cubs and Sox (though Cubs are out of it by then), then also the Bears for the whole season, not to mention the Blackhawks. Whatever attention there is on college football starts with TSISB, even though they aren't an Illinois school, and then U of I and Northwestern.

So there are a lot of reasons for us not to draw as well as some of us might expect, but it's still been disappointing and we should be closer to the levels of most CUSA schools. We were in 2003-04 at least and we've had good teams lately, so I assume the economy is driving much of it.