omnicarrier Wrote:The Bearcats have indeed had an attendance problem in terms of football. I believe three factors play heavily into that 1) no tradition in terms of college football; 2) lack of any 'good' rivals outside of Louisville; and 3) Nippert itself.
Nippert is not the reason why the fans don't show up. In fact, I think most UC fans would prefer to play at Nippert instead of at PBS. The crowd is closer to the field, the stadium is on campus, and there is a lot of bars within walking distance of the stadium. PBS is a different story, where you have to take a water taxi across the river to go to any decent bars, and they are big chain bars instead of the local bars around campus. The only thing PBS has going for it is better tailgating, but UC has been working on this over the past few years and continue to try to make the tailgating experience better at UC.
The 29,000 (28,806) that showed up in 2002 was pretty much a sellout that year because they had removed the endzone seats by the scoreboard for the current work going on at that end of the stadium. The capacity is listed at "near 30,000", but I have not seen an exact number that will fit without the 5,000 seats in that endzone. I can tell you, there weren't any seats to be found, and a lot of people were standing behind the south end of the endzone due to the stadium being so packed.
All that said, I can't see UC moving the game to PBS this year. They want to build a fan base of people who will go to Nippert first and foremost, so moving the very first NBE game (or at least the first big name from the NBE) would seem to be a dumb idea. I don't expect any game to be moved unless the team is in the top 10 (Louisville, possibly this year) or a team is going to bring enough people to push the attendance to 45K or higher.
I'm looking forward to the construction around the stadium to finish, as I think that can only help with the attendance around the stadium. A handful of season ticket holders I know have been complaining about how bad it is to get into the stadium (although I don't seem to have any problems going in from the south side), so who knows how many casual fans are not coming due to the construction right now...