Just curious what folks think the attendance will be for our game against WCU at Bristol. Saw a story on WJHL that said anything over 6000 and we get 20% of the revenue, with BMS getting the other 80%. How many folks do you guys think will come? I'm gonna say 15,000.

8,000-9,000

10,000 (if the weather is good). Wonder what the world record is for empty seats during a sporting event?

The Orioles hosted the White Sox in an empty stadium while Baltimore was dealing with the violence of the Freddie Gray demonstrations. However, Camden Yards' seating capacity is less than 50,000. Probably the record was set at a soccer game. There have been several instances where soccer contests were played in empty stadiums as penalty for prior misbehavior by unruly fans.

Seating capacity at BMS is about 160,000 (not counting the temporary infield seats that will be set up). So, whatever the record is, expect it to be broken on September 17th. We'll show those "footballers" they can't keep up with real American football!

If weather is good I would say somewhere between 8,000-10,000.

Pretty much all FCS schools average around 6k-10k. A couple of states that don't have FBS programs like North Dakota and Montana skew the numbers.

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_r...e/2015.pdf

People see the attendance numbers for the power 5 schools and think all levels of college football should be that. Plus lots of non-power 5 FBS schools are pretty much just flat out lying about their attendance.

If you build it, they will come...to the UT/VT game.

I speculate 7,000 to 10,000 for ETSU, possibly a boost over regular attendance. However, I don't expect many students to travel that far even with accomodation.

We are a second year FCS program which will be playing mostly freshmen and sophomores. I look at it as a gesture by BMS to help the program take another step up the ladder of a football program. It will give publicity and exposure that could not be afforded otherwise. Attendance at FCS and FBS games are two different things entirely and I am not putting any attendance expectations on the game. I will be there supporting the Bucs and enjoying the experience.

I'm optimistic. I think 13k to 15k.

Since they decided to set the gametime for 1:30 and UT having a home game at noon, they'll have a hard time busting 10,000 people.

I've said all along that gametimes must be set at times when the Vols aren't playing. Yet here we are again, assuming people will pick ETSU over UT.

Any chance that some type of regional TV will pick this game up and is responsible for the game time?

I was looking at the ticket prices/ section yesterday. $95 to be behind the end zone close to the field, $65 to be on the race track bleachers, etc. I just dont see the demand for these prices. But as the university gets 20 percent of the revenue- I hope they sell well.

(07-30-2016 06:22 AM)prosec34 Wrote:  Since they decided to set the gametime for 1:30 and UT having a home game at noon, they'll have a hard time busting 10,000 people.

I've said all along that gametimes must be set at times when the Vols aren't playing. Yet here we are again, assuming people will pick ETSU over UT.

UT only plays 4 away games this year. We have to have 6 home games so that means at least 2 will overlap typically. That's when you have to be creative with start times and schedule around UT.

This Bristol game is even more challenging because you have big headliners playing Rhythm and Roots that night in the same town, so you don't want to go head to head with that either. Good opportunity to play there, but not the best timing. Thursday night before the Battle at Bristol would've been best, but I'd say Bristol didn't give us that choice.

Since they decided to set the gametime for 1:30 and UT having a home game at noon, they'll have a hard time busting 10,000 people.

I've said all along that gametimes must be set at times when the Vols aren't playing. Yet here we are again, assuming people will pick ETSU over UT.

(07-30-2016 07:55 PM)prosec34 Wrote:  Since they decided to set the gametime for 1:30 and UT having a home game at noon, they'll have a hard time busting 10,000 people.

I've said all along that gametimes must be set at times when the Vols aren't playing. Yet here we are again, assuming people will pick ETSU over UT.

I'm in total agreement with you, they don't need to go head to head with UT. This Bristol game was complicated because you also have Rhythm and Roots going on at the same time. The headliners will likely play Saturday night after the UT game, so you had a choice to make. Go up against UT vs Ohio playing in Knoxville or Loretta Lynn and the area's biggest music festival right down the street. Not an easy call and I don't honestly know which choice would've been better.

The other option would have been to not even do the game at all and play at Kermit Tipton. I'm sure the conference has something to do with when you play at home vs away. Hopefully they're helping us out given UT an hour and a half away. About everyone else in the conference could make the same argument though.

Looks like UTC has 3 home games the same as UT home games, and we have 4. With typical conference scheduling, that will probably flip-flop next year. It also appears they'll go up against UT vs Florida on 9/24 with a 2 pm home game that day. I'm sure UT and Florida will be at 3:30. UTC went ahead and scheduled a time for that game without even waiting to see when UT would play. They're just as close to Knoxville as we are.

Guessing BMS had more to do with the start time than ETSU.

UTC has established its program. ETSU has not, except for the die-hard ETSU athletic supporters. If you dream of a packed-out campus stadium, you need to broaden that base. Rank-and-file college football fans around here have other favorite teams, and for most of those, it's UT. Even a majority of ETSU fans are interested in UT football (including me - I have degrees from both institutions).

So I think it's simple - for those dates where you can't avoid your home game coinciding with UT's home game, you employ as much schedule flexibility as possible to at least let fans see the UT game on TV. I understand that may be impossible, especially when CBS waits until the last minute to decide what game takes the afternoon priority slot. But for this game, UT had its time announced long ago for noon. Seeing that, I just assumed I'd get to go to both games, which is one wonderful day for me. But now I can't because Loretta Lynn is singing in Bristol and we think it's really neat to play a game at a 90+% empty racetrack.

It's tough to do night games at the FCS level because teams don't want to pay an extra night of travel. You don't really think about that, but damn it's expensive to house 85 football players and support staff, even at a group rate. I'm sure these schools get a heck of a deal (I'd love to accumulate the points on those rooms, holy crap), but it's still expensive. You're paying food, travel, lodging for all that, I'm sure the departments probably have a gentleman's agreement to help each other out which leads to a lot of day games. For ETSU, they need Tennessee to be good so they're constantly playing in prime time slots. ESPN gets first pick in a lot of games, and they typically play SEC teams at night.