How many of you will be playing more night games than usual? I know at Marshall, majority of our games are night games. With this, I am expecting a definite boost to our average attendance, hoping the same for others in the conference.

Is there anyone in our conference who can/will step up to be our Top 25 team once again? Could we possibly get two teams in Top 25?

As for basketball. How close are we to getting a 2nd bid to the NCAA Tournament? If we could start consistently getting 2 bids then it would help a lot. Time for the so called basketball schools to step up and deliver. This is the year we need to get multiple bids.

At the end of the day, its time to start looking for some silver linings, and I am trying to find them. Please chime in and help me out here.

Nope - homecoming against WKU is a 1:30 kickoff. Huge disappointment there. I'm assuming unannounced TV is dictating that somehow. Our first two home games kickoff at 6, but after that, two 1:30 kicks and a 4:30 on beIN.

Right now, our first 4 home games are scheduled for 6PM. I hope that doesn't change. We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining. Evening games are great for attendance.

Noon games in the late summer are miserable and absolutely impact our attendance. People still come to the games, but a lot of people (especially students) clear out at half time because it is unbearable.

Basketball, I don't see a 2nd bid coming unless we just have teams that surprise in OOC play. We do have several teams that appear to have strong OOC schedules this year though. If we have a team that wins a good number of those, who knows.

WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

(06-15-2016 01:37 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

Don't plan on Vanderbilt bringing a huge crowd....

(06-15-2016 01:37 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

This ODU fan will be in BG to witness our first victory vs WKU since forever in FB. Really excited never been there but should be a good trip driving past ODU's Kryptonite looking at you MT, Grinding my teeth.

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining.

If we can consistently compete to be in the bowl picture each year, I have no doubt that we could get 20K-25K for every game. Our fanbase has shown they will show when the product gives them something to be excited about (baseball games downtown/soccer national championship game).

Price is slowly winning back the fans with putting a solid brand of basketball on the floor. It takes a little time to erase a decade of mediocrity and no tournament appearances. With a fast start to season, we could definitely bring attendance up to somewhere around 5.5K-6K.

All that being said the biggest boost to our program would be Judy Rose retiring.

(06-15-2016 01:37 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

I think the morning kick offs have really killed a lot of us. Possibly more than we ever realized.

Who knows, if we all see a decent uptick in attendance, this could end up being a good thing.

It's much harder to attract the casual fan when the game kicks off at noon or earlier. Invite a friend to spend the day playing corn hole, grilling out, and drinking beer before going to the game that evening.....much easier.

(06-15-2016 01:52 PM)Blue Raider Dave Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:37 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

Don't plan on Vanderbilt bringing a huge crowd....

Yes WKU fans know that to be the truth, anything outside of Memorial for Vandy fans is off limits...Played them in basketball one season and they had about 30 fans in Bridgestone Arena for game who made the 2 mile trek down the street...

(06-15-2016 02:14 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:52 PM)Blue Raider Dave Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:37 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

Don't plan on Vanderbilt bringing a huge crowd....

Yes WKU fans know that to be the truth, anything outside of Memorial for Vandy fans is off limits...Played them in basketball one season and they had about 30 fans in Bridgestone Arena for game who made the 2 mile trek down the street...

They brought a hundred or so fans to our game with them at Bridgestone.

Now, they seem to bring decent crowds for baseball-- mostly local bandwaggoners

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)wh49er Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining.

If we can consistently compete to be in the bowl picture each year, I have no doubt that we could get 20K-25K for every game. Our fanbase has shown they will show when the product gives them something to be excited about (baseball games downtown/soccer national championship game).

Price is slowly winning back the fans with putting a solid brand of basketball on the floor. It takes a little time to erase a decade of mediocrity and no tournament appearances. With a fast start to season, we could definitely bring attendance up to somewhere around 5.5K-6K.

All that being said the biggest boost to our program would be Judy Rose retiring.

We can do better than that for sure.

(06-15-2016 03:05 PM)PSCNiner Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)wh49er Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining.

If we can consistently compete to be in the bowl picture each year, I have no doubt that we could get 20K-25K for every game. Our fanbase has shown they will show when the product gives them something to be excited about (baseball games downtown/soccer national championship game).

Price is slowly winning back the fans with putting a solid brand of basketball on the floor. It takes a little time to erase a decade of mediocrity and no tournament appearances. With a fast start to season, we could definitely bring attendance up to somewhere around 5.5K-6K.

All that being said the biggest boost to our program would be Judy Rose retiring.

We can do better than that for sure.

This year? I doubt it, not early in the season anyway. We have fallen a long way. You don't win fans back after a few wins. If we can get out of OOC play with wins against Wake, Oregon State, and Davidson (and clearly against teams like Elon, App, and ECU) and don't get embarrassed by Maryland and Florida, I think we'll see some fans coming back, but we're at least a full good season away from getting back to our peak.

(06-15-2016 01:20 PM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  How many of you will be playing more night games than usual? I know at Marshall, majority of our games are night games. With this, I am expecting a definite boost to our average attendance, hoping the same for others in the conference.

Is there anyone in our conference who can/will step up to be our Top 25 team once again? Could we possibly get two teams in Top 25?

As for basketball. How close are we to getting a 2nd bid to the NCAA Tournament? If we could start consistently getting 2 bids then it would help a lot. Time for the so called basketball schools to step up and deliver. This is the year we need to get multiple bids.

At the end of the day, its time to start looking for some silver linings, and I am trying to find them. Please chime in and help me out here.

UTEP's 7 home games are 6pm (5 games) 5pm (1 game) and the last game of the regular season vs UNT does not have a start time yet.

UTEP has started an ad campaign for the Army game and some noise for the opener vs NMSU and supposedly season ticket sales are doing ok. Probably won't reach our record of 24k season tickets until we have a couple of winning seasons in a row, this year and next!

I think UTEP is ready to breakout.

I know you guys can get a lot of fans as well. Excited to see how much these evening start times help you guys out.

Here is our home schedule, and I'm pretty pumped about it. Still wish we could get the WKU/MTSU games split up but its all good.

September

Morgan State 6:00
Akron 12:00 (Noon)
Louisville 8:00

October

FAU 7:00
Charlotte 5:30

November

MTSU 7:00
WKU TBA

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  Right now, our first 4 home games are scheduled for 6PM. I hope that doesn't change. We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining. Evening games are great for attendance.

Noon games in the late summer are miserable and absolutely impact our attendance. People still come to the games, but a lot of people (especially students) clear out at half time because it is unbearable.

Basketball, I don't see a 2nd bid coming unless we just have teams that surprise in OOC play. We do have several teams that appear to have strong OOC schedules this year though. If we have a team that wins a good number of those, who knows.

So you think you can average over 15,000 this year? If you can get to that 16-17,000 mark those first 4 games, it should definitely help.

If you can average 15,000, you guys might go ahead and expand the stadium before next season?

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)wh49er Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining.

If we can consistently compete to be in the bowl picture each year, I have no doubt that we could get 20K-25K for every game. Our fanbase has shown they will show when the product gives them something to be excited about (baseball games downtown/soccer national championship game).

Price is slowly winning back the fans with putting a solid brand of basketball on the floor. It takes a little time to erase a decade of mediocrity and no tournament appearances. With a fast start to season, we could definitely bring attendance up to somewhere around 5.5K-6K.

All that being said the biggest boost to our program would be Judy Rose retiring.

Wow Judy Rose is still there? I remember when I lived in Charlotte in the early 90's, how adamant she was about UNCC not starting football program. I guess I assumed her retiring or leaving was the big reason you now have football.

(06-15-2016 06:52 PM)Herd-in-ATL Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)wh49er Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining.

If we can consistently compete to be in the bowl picture each year, I have no doubt that we could get 20K-25K for every game. Our fanbase has shown they will show when the product gives them something to be excited about (baseball games downtown/soccer national championship game).

Price is slowly winning back the fans with putting a solid brand of basketball on the floor. It takes a little time to erase a decade of mediocrity and no tournament appearances. With a fast start to season, we could definitely bring attendance up to somewhere around 5.5K-6K.

All that being said the biggest boost to our program would be Judy Rose retiring.

Wow Judy Rose is still there? I remember when I lived in Charlotte in the early 90's, how adamant she was about UNCC not starting football program. I guess I assumed her retiring or leaving was the big reason you now have football.

Uh, she is now telling everyone how hard she has worked to bring football to Charlotte for the past three decades. She needs to go like 10 years ago.

(06-15-2016 02:13 PM)FlyHawk98 Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:37 PM)WKUFan518 Wrote:  WKU has much better luck drawing bigger crowds at night, that's a fact.....Tricky with our 1st game which is a night game though as Sept 1st. is a Thursday night, expect a lot of students to attend, but not sure how other crowd will be....Next home game vs. Vandy is a 230 game, with even the mention of an SEC team, I think that game sells out despite early afternoon time....Next game vs. Houston Baptist is a Night game, could be a pretty good crowd despite opponent.....Next game vs ODU is Homecoming and at night so that should be a fairly good crowd at least before Halftime...Last 2 games in Nov., 1 game 230, other game 530 probably depends on if cold or not and our record....Whatever weather, I would hope this season will have an uptick in average attendance just due to zero Noon kickoffs which will help a lot...Last season we had 3 or 4 games with 11am kickoffs which was not great for our average attendence....

I think the morning kick offs have really killed a lot of us. Possibly more than we ever realized.

Who knows, if we all see a decent uptick in attendance, this could end up being a good thing.

It's much harder to attract the casual fan when the game kicks off at noon or earlier. Invite a friend to spend the day playing corn hole, grilling out, and drinking beer before going to the game that evening.....much easier.

Our two biggest crowds were 10:30am and an 11:00am Sunday game... Followed by I think Purdue on Sunday.. Go figure

(06-15-2016 06:52 PM)Herd-in-ATL Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)wh49er Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:28 PM)Niner National Wrote:  We have 17,700 at our FAU game last year and it was legitimately packed until it started raining.

If we can consistently compete to be in the bowl picture each year, I have no doubt that we could get 20K-25K for every game. Our fanbase has shown they will show when the product gives them something to be excited about (baseball games downtown/soccer national championship game).

Price is slowly winning back the fans with putting a solid brand of basketball on the floor. It takes a little time to erase a decade of mediocrity and no tournament appearances. With a fast start to season, we could definitely bring attendance up to somewhere around 5.5K-6K.

All that being said the biggest boost to our program would be Judy Rose retiring.

Wow Judy Rose is still there? I remember when I lived in Charlotte in the early 90's, how adamant she was about UNCC not starting football program. I guess I assumed her retiring or leaving was the big reason you now have football.

The biggest reason we have football is the grassroots efforts by alumni and students. Talk to her now and she will give you the impression she was responsible for the creation of our program.

Also, any other AD would of expanded our stadium 2 seasons ago but she thinks we have "a nice little stadium." She runs our athletic department like it existed back in '95, her mindset probably hasn't changed much since you left.