http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/10/1...cincinnati

Moving into the Dolphins' stadium was the worst decision Miami has ever made. You're never going to have a collegiate atmosphere at an NFL stadium, and SunLife is like 40 minutes away from their campus.

Agree with you there BSM, it's just not a good venue for them. IMO They have 2 options:

1) A really nice 45-50K on campus stadium (I would imagine something similar to TCU's nice new redo of Amon Carter Stadium)

OR

2) Tarp off all of the upper deck of SLS to reduce it down to 45K which will make it look a lot better on TV.

But clearly, option 1 is the far superior one.

Miami still makes a boatload of revenue from tickets and donations, even if fewer people show up to watch their games than USF has to watch theirs. Miami is a fickle fanbase. If they were in contention, those seats would be filled.

(10-20-2014 08:59 AM)Gray Avenger Wrote:  http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/10/1...cincinnati

Why is this an example of "Power Conference" hypocrisy? It just shows that Miami had extremely sparse attendance at their game versus Cincinnati.

(10-20-2014 09:16 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  Miami still makes a boatload of revenue from tickets and donations, even if fewer people show up to watch their games than USF has to watch theirs. Miami is a fickle fanbase. If they were in contention, those seats would be filled.

This is true for all of their teams, no doubt. It's kind of hard to keep the interest of an region that is mostly full of transplants and immigrants, with beautiful weather year round and a million other things to do.

(10-20-2014 09:56 AM)All Dukes_All Day Wrote:  

(10-20-2014 09:16 AM)CommuterBob Wrote:  Miami still makes a boatload of revenue from tickets and donations, even if fewer people show up to watch their games than USF has to watch theirs. Miami is a fickle fanbase. If they were in contention, those seats would be filled.

This is true for all of their teams, no doubt. It's kind of hard to keep the interest of an region that is mostly full of transplants and immigrants, with beautiful weather year round and a million other things to do.

South Florida in general has terrible attendance issues. Hurricanes, Dolphins, Marlins, nobody seems to want to attend sports games in that area.

The ACC always struggles with attendance - during football season.

I mean, did you see the attendance for that game last week between Pitt and VT? That should have been a BIG attendance game, Pitt playing at home versus a nearby ACC rival, and yet the stands were sparsely populated.

Apparently Miami is claiming attendance of 44k for that game. >_>

Tulane games looked like that in the Superdome. Tulane is actually a good point of comparison here as well since they're also a small private school in a town with one million other things to do.

Another good example of this effect (and this one is on the P5 scale) would be with TCU's poor attendance 2 years ago. They're top 25 this year, so the fans are showing up in big numbers. The only problem is that they can't HOLD the fans if they're losing.

The key "area of need" here is an OCS. Miami are in the ACC, so a 40k-45k place would make a good investment.

Private schools - as a rule of thumb - should look to build small, high quality stadia going forward. 70K isn't happening if you're not a public school. Notre Dame and USC are the exceptions to the rule.

(10-20-2014 09:03 AM)BoiseStateOfMind Wrote:  Moving into the Dolphins' stadium was the worst decision Miami has ever made. You're never going to have a collegiate atmosphere at an NFL stadium, and SunLife is like 40 minutes away from their campus.

It was their only alternative to building their own stadium. They are a small private university, not a public university with big influence in their state legislature, so they couldn't tap into tax dollars for a publicly-funded stadium or a $400 million renovation of the old Orange Bowl stadium. If they want their own stadium, they need a few super-rich donors to fund it, like Stanford or TCU or Baylor.

Plus USC at 40K students is bigger than most public P5s out there

My opinion for what little it is worth is that Miami is a terrible sports market and the 'Canes issues just reflect the market. FIU and FAU haven't drawn in accordance with their records when they were doing well and the pro teams have had their struggles. I'd add Atlanta to my tough market to crack list as well.

(10-20-2014 10:54 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  Plus USC at 40K students is bigger than most public P5s out there

USC has more students than 7 of the other schools in the Pac-12.

(10-20-2014 09:12 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  Agree with you there BSM, it's just not a good venue for them. IMO They have 2 options:

1) A really nice 45-50K on campus stadium (I would imagine something similar to TCU's nice new redo of Amon Carter Stadium)

OR

2) Tarp off all of the upper deck of SLS to reduce it down to 45K which will make it look a lot better on TV.

But clearly, option 1 is the far superior one.

Ideally, Miami needs a 45,000 seat stadium with hills in the end zones so that when a big opponent comes in (especially Florida State and Florida) or if they are really dominant as in the past, the SRO crowd can total somewhere between 55,000-60,000.

(10-20-2014 10:54 AM)10thMountain Wrote:  Plus USC at 40K students is bigger than most public P5s out there

USC for all intents and purposes is a public school. It's very unique and nothing like what you'd picture as the typical private school.

(10-20-2014 11:10 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  My opinion for what little it is worth is that Miami is a terrible sports market and the 'Canes issues just reflect the market. FIU and FAU haven't drawn in accordance with their records when they were doing well and the pro teams have had their struggles. I'd add Atlanta to my tough market to crack list as well.

Your opinion is worth nothing.

Anyways, pretty much all Sun Belt markets are that way, as not only are they spread out (a huge issue for traffic and moving from one side of the area to another) but most of the people in any given one of them are born in other states and countries.

I just read a stat that 400,000 immigrants moved to the Houston area within the last decade alone! This not to mention all the people who have moved in from other states (myself included) and those who move away. Think about that the next time you clown Houston or Miami attendance. Add in that there's a ton of more entertainment options, especially in Miami and it's obvious why they don't have large attendance numbers.

Miami is a unique school in college sports: their local attendance is subpar, but their national TV value is as high as any school in the country when they're merely halfway decent. In today's college sports paradigm, the TV value is significantly more important than attendance, so Miami continues to be one of the most valuable programs in college sports even with a fairweather private school fan base. There isn't any "hypocrisy" here - schools like Iowa State and East Carolina can outdraw Miami in attendance all day, but Miami is waaaaaaaay more valuable for conference realignment purposes.

But they will at some point have build a program from top to bottom. They were on the verge of downgrading/dropping football but it's as if under Howard (don't ask me to spell his last name) they sold their soul for national prominence.

Also (and South Florida residents can correct me if I'm wrong), but my impression is that an on-campus (or even near-campus) stadium would effectively be impossible for Miami at this point. Coral Gables is an extremely wealthy town and there would be plenty of NIMBY opposition to a large stadium being added. This would be like UCLA attempting to drop in a new football stadium into its home neighborhood of Westwood - that proposal would get killed ASAP with so much rich residents nearby. I've seen the same with respect to a basketball arena for DePaul (as wealthy Lincoln Park residents would have never let an on-campus stadium get built, so the school had to move onto other options). So, we have to be realistic about urban schools in wealthy neighborhoods like Miami, UCLA, DePaul, etc. - there aren't open plots of land around and, even if there were, they would be (a) prohibitively expensive for the purposes of a sports stadium and/or (b) the rich neighbors would crush any proposal even if the land could be bought. I'm not saying that Dolphins Stadium is a great venue for the Canes, but by the same token, what is truly a realistic option? They can't just take over a bunch of unused land in the way land grant universities can.

(10-20-2014 11:54 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  Also (and South Florida residents can correct me if I'm wrong), but my impression is that an on-campus (or even near-campus) stadium would effectively be impossible for Miami at this point. Coral Gables is an extremely wealthy town and there would be plenty of NIMBY opposition to a large stadium being added.

According to the Miami fans and south Florida residents on the ACC board, that is exactly the case. The only spot they had, was the spot the Marlins stadium currently resides, which was the old Orange Bowl spot. Even the MLS team is having a hard time finding land, and they have the city helping them.

I'd say an on-campus stadium for UM would be impossible.

The old Orange Bowl was probably 5-10 miles away from campus (hard to tell because it was city streets). I haven't been there since the late 1980's, but if my memory is correct, it was about a 15 minute drive.