(11-03-2014 05:27 PM)toddjnsn Wrote: My proposal -- tickets sold to People whether they're there or not (like season ticket holders) -- and for groups & businesses in their "sales" for the ones who show up in those. Take that, and allow up to 15% of those "sales" to groups & businesses to account in attendance that DIDN'T show. Basically allowing for it to count -- just by not much for those who didn't attend. Maybe even allow it to go up to 25% of non-showing "sold" aka "traded" tickets to groups/businesses if the attendance would otherwise be under 10,000.
I have no real problem with this, Kimbo's suggestion, or strict turnstile. I still like the idea of accurate turnstile counts best just because I think it provides the best estimate of just how many each school is drawing regularly.
My suggestion for a starting point would be to give each MAC school a five-year window to hit specific benchmarks for average attendance per season. Over a five-year period, each school would be expected to hit one of these targets: 10K, 11K, 12K, 13K, and 14K. It wouldn't matter in what year/order a school reaches its targets. For example, WMU next season with MSU and CMU coming in should easily reach 14K attendance and could check it off as having met that goal (and would then only need to reach the 10K, 11K, 12K, and 13K goals). The next year, if we sucked, maybe we only average a little over 11K, but would still reach that attendance goal (then needing to hit only the 10K, 12K, and 13K goals). The key, though, is that this is all based on ACTUAL attendance (with the possibility for slight Todd-style or Kimbo-style adjustments), eliminating the possibility of counting the sale of large blocks of tickets to Pepsi or some other company or booster in the attendance figures.
If a member school fell short of the bare minimum 10K target the first year- say, EMU or Miami, for example, as rebuilding programs were to average a little over 8K in the first year - they would be given time to make up the difference over the course of the following four years. So, for example, if MSU were coming to EMU the next year and the game sold out, EMU could meet both the 14K goal and the previous year's 10K goal. One thing I like about this plan is that it allows a one-time big game like MSU coming to help a program's attendance, but ultimately, each program would still need to draw on a fairly consistent basis to meet the other benchmarks.
I intentionally kept the benchmarks lower than the NCAA expectation of 15K in an effort to be fair to all MAC schools. If all members schools were given time to prepare before beginning this process, each school could plan and promote accordingly in an effort to meet the overall goal.
Over a five-year period, if a school met the overall goal, they would average drawing over 12K over a five-year period. This can hardly be considered an unrealistic expectation. Any member school averaging below that mark over such a long period IMO deserves to be questioned whether or not that program belongs at the FBS level, and the MAC should be able to proceed from that point to do as the conference sees fit and necessary.
Not trying to push this - and feel free to dismiss this as fantasy - but NIU is talking about expanding their stadium, and I see a conference that could potentially be divided over time between the haves (those who draw consistently well) and the have-nots (those that fail to do so). I think a plan like this would allow the MAC to acknowledge they do, indeed, have an issue, and would demonstrate they are trying to give all of its members a fair chance to show improvement in a very important area.
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EMU: Stop embarrassing yourselves and lying about attendance
