One of the topics evolving from SouthGaEagle's "Map" thread:

Interesting...however, some of the official websites don't show this data. Can anyone help with the unknowns?

School - Avg Att - Capacity - % Filled

BEL 1351 5000 27%
CAM 821 947 87%
UCF ??? 5100 ???
ETS 4611 ??? ??? (what's the MiniDome's basketball capacity?)
FAU 535 5000 11%
G-W ??? 5500 ??? (probably fairly high)
GSU 999 5000 20%
JAX 1120 1500 75%
KSU 493 ??? ???
LIP 1389 5028 28%
MER 1464 3200 46%
UNF 677 5800 12%
STE 2120 5000 42%
TSU 2145 4000 54%

Hope UNF & KSU get jumps in attendance from going D-1.

UCF: 1283 average/game. 25% filled

Minidome's capacity for basketball is 9,500.

Found on the Atlantic Sun website:

Mercer is listed as having 1529 on average at home.
Gardner-Webb had 2556 average at home
FAU's was a little less at 523 (sad!)

All other numbers were the same :)

heres the link (you have to scroll down a page or two to find the attendance numbers

<a href='http://atlanticsun.org/sports/mbbasketball/0405/asun.MBBstatpack0405.pdf' target='_blank'>Atlantic Sun Final Stats</a>

Cambells had a nice percentage by the way! Reminds me of Porter Gym at Mercer that held 500 people. We had no problem selling that out!

ETSUfan1 Wrote:Minidome's capacity for basketball is 9,500.

That's more than Georgia Tech :eek:

Well, it will be easier for us to have more attendance with our new facility next year. Our new arena will hold 4,000, I'm not sure how much the old arena held but it wasn't impressive at all. Plus a jump to Division 1 will help as competition will be better.

Jeremo-- Having a new arena is awesome, I'm happy your school is taking the jump to D1 so seriously. You guys obviously want to make an impact quickly.

Didn't KSU win the national championship 2-3 years ago? I can't believe you are only drawing 500ish. Enrollment? Alumni base size? External factors?

KSU won the Division 2 national championship last year. Our enrollment is around 17,000. The place we were playing our games was a very small gym that any high school gym would look better than. Also, KSU is known for having more non traditional students. However, KSU is working very hard to turn that around to making a KSU a traditional college environment. I really do believe that next year, with our brand new facility (4,000 seats), and new and better competition, KSU will have more students in attendance. I also think that next year I will be playing drumset for the KSU pep band, so if you're at a KSU game come up and say hi to me.

It seems like there will be enough hype to draw close to 4,000 fans out of 17,000 students (not to mention locals) to the brand new D1 arena.

I will for sure be up there in some kind of Mercer shirt when we are @ KSU. So I'll probably be easy to pick out in the crowd.

I was in the UCF pep band the last few years. We just missed eachother. If you want the breakdown on your "Competition" ....

The tournaments are the only time you'll see another band.

Schools with marching bands tend to play louder and more exciting, schools w/o are usually more musical with less 'bad habits'.

Stetson has the best sounding band, but doesn't travel to the mens or womens tournaments. That could change?

GWU was in a formative stage, at least thats what they brought to Nashville last year. A combination of students/faculty/others? totaling around 15 people. Conference lets you travel up to 30.

FAUs pep band was like GWUs a few years ago but has become more solid as they now have football/marching. Don't know if they travel or not since they're all the way down in Boca Raton...and I haven't seen FAU make it past the first round in recent years.

Belmont has a fine band, they hosted the tournament the last 2 years, but I assume they'd travel to ETSU this year.

Campbell has a good band and brought them all the way to Orlando 3 years ago for the womens asun tournament. Thats hardcore.

I don't think UNF is there yet. No clue about ETSU.

Just thinking, if the C-USA tournament is in Memphis next year, and the timing worked out, I'd make a week trip to Tennessee and see the A-Sun tournament.

Well, I'm a music education major at KSU and we have some quality musicians. Most of are faculty performs with the Atlanta Symphony, Atlanta Opera or some big group in the area. I marched with Georgia Southern University about 3 years ago, so I did the whole college marching band thing. Hopefully our pep band will step it up and sound good because it sounds like there are a lot of good pep bands in the conference.

Thats awesome st, I wish Mercer would expand it's band and get a regular one that could get better every game. Right now we have a small one that only shows up to select games, but they are pretty good for their size.

I went to UCF @ Mercer 2 seasons ago...they actually sat us (visiting general admission) in the seats where your band sat and then had us move when they realized the band was showing up.

Mercer was like GWU and FAU a few years ago. A small group just kind of thrown out there with horns and music. It's hard to get people motivated without room for incentives in your athletic budget. Most cheerleaders are on scholarship, but bands seldomly are. Until you can motivate a group with solid instrumentation to show up each and every game - it's hard to improve.

It's not impossible to change the situation. The most cost effective way to do it would be to award 1-2 credit hours of elective credit for participation in the "class." Another is to get a sponsor to provide t-shirts and pizza at the games. What college students won't play for food? :)

You also need to find leadership - a director or even qualified grad student that is into athletic bands and can create a program that is fun for the students involved, let alone a crucial part of the atmosphere. Without an athletic band program, you may just have faculty that are not interested in pep bands - thats when I suggest athletics soliciting for a grad student or maybe looking into the local community.

Or just have someone call up Belmont or Stetson and ask how they handle it.

That definitely makes perfect sense. I don't know jack about playing instruments, so I hope someone here does that can lead the group well.

As for UCF @ Mercer two seasons ago... I believe that was when we got pounded by UCF, if it was in the University Center (one of the first losses we had in that arena).

That was the game. I was attending a convention in Atlanta that weekend, so came up a day early on Thursday with about 5 others to catch the game and see the new center. We did have one of our more exciting games that night with back to back ally-oops.

Like I posted in another thread, the facility is great, and would be ideal for the tournament for size and layout reasons alone. Just like the Curb Center, but would look half as empty. The only thing I didn't like was the open endzone...it was just wierd seeing the visiting team come running in from space instead of a tunnel. It would be cool to put a huge bear head there or something and have Mercer run out it and the other team run out the tunnel under the stands. Well, it looks good in my head anyway.