Our attendance is up. Our arena is too big, makes as average crowd look small. Lots more TV options today than before; so the casual fan can watch more of our home games on the tube - I personally have at the last second skipped out on 4-5 games this year because of this option. I also think our students just are not that into sports...they seemed to wait till Feb before they show up. Its amazing what 1K students does to improve the atmosphere.

6:30 games and the damned mirrored scheduling are probably hurting us this year

But combined women's and men's attendance we may very well be leading the conference.

I was surprised to see how much support MTSU has for the women's program. So I decided to take a look and see if you comment was true (spoiler, it is)

Top 4 Men's Average Home Attendance:

1. ODU 6462
2. UTEP 6113
3. Marshall 5859
4. MTSU 5716

Top 4 Women's Average Home Attendance:

1. MTSU 3780
2. ODU 2395
3. LT 1820
4. WKU 1676

Combined Totals:

1. MTSU 9496
2. ODU 8857

I do know this......... when the Sun Belt held its tourney in Hot Springs, AR, for several years, MT and WKU had by far the best attendance (for all games) even with Arkansas State and UALR closeby. Hot Springs is around a 6.5 hour drive from Murfreesboro and probably further from Bowling Green.

Our fans (and WKU fans) travel to the tourneys. Yes, at least for us, many of those are women's hoops fans.

I do think we should be filling our gym (10,000 or more) up more for the men. The fans like me that do go to all games cannot figure out an answer to the problem. I believe there are multitude of reasons/excuses.

Playing WKU and UAB with our students on break did not help matters. Even I was out of town for UAB (post-Christmas trip).

(02-21-2017 10:37 AM)odu09 Wrote:  I was surprised to see how much support MTSU has for the women's program. So I decided to take a look and see if you comment was true (spoiler, it is)

Top 4 Men's Average Home Attendance:

1. ODU 6462
2. UTEP 6113
3. Marshall 5859
4. MTSU 5716

Top 4 Women's Average Home Attendance:

1. MTSU 3780
2. ODU 2395
3. LT 1820
4. WKU 1676

Combined Totals:

1. MTSU 9496
2. ODU 8857

For a while, IIRC, the men's and women's attendance was pretty close but with recent success of Kermit's squads there has been increased separation. I have fussed about the 6:30 start times. I believe attendance could be a lot better than it is with a later start time. Also the women playing at the same times/days hurts when the men are on the road and vice versa. You would think with a female commissioner that would not be a problem, that she'd do something about it. Not sure she does anything but collect a paycheck.

My biggest concern is the students or lack thereof in the stands. We can't seem to get any consistent attendance from them. Have a big promotion one game and there doesn't seem to be any residual interest from them for the next game. The percentage of gray hairs and no hairs in the fan base is way too high. Need a infusion of youth.