OwlJacket Wrote:

wpblazer Wrote:Our point is that your "counterexample" doesn't make sense, as pointed out several times. While I don't entirely disagree with your overall point, to say that time doesn't matter and use UCONN as proof, just doesn't logically work.

Nonsense. The argument is logically complete. It only takes one counterexample to make a statement false. Sorry if you are otherwise confused on the reasoning, but frankly, that's not my problem.

Statement: UAB has poor attendance because they have has division IA football program for less than 10 years and all programs who have had programs for that short of time will have poor attendance.

Points:
UConn has had a division IA program less that 10 years.

UConn does not have poor attendance.

Conclusion: Having a program for less that 10 years cannot be the reason UAB has poor attendance.

That's all I'm saying - and in this case, it very much proof by counterexample.

It is unfair to compare UConn football to UAB football.

Connecticut had Division 1-AA football and an athletic department for many years.

It is fair to compare UAB to South Florida (USF) or Central Florida (UCF) or Coastal Carolina (they just started a football program 3? years ago).

We like to make fun of UAB attendence. It is not easy playing a tough team like the Blazers without a crowd. I do suspect that their home field atmospere does impact how visiting teams play and "get up" for the game.

UAB is growing just fine. Winning solves everything and Alabama is a great state for football.

Nugget's Ghost Wrote:

West Is the Best Wrote:How many fans shw up for the UAB game against SMU?

Keep in mind that the nonsporting nascar event is past history. 

I hope everyone remembers that great crowd Houston had against Oregon this year. National tv game against a PAC 10 opponent and Houston has what, maybe 15,000 there. Talk about embarrassing CUSA. How a Houston fan can post attendance smack is unreal. Houston the city, has four million people in it and Houston can't draw worth squat. Sad.

And they (UH) have none of the excuses UAB can offer.

First, to get back to the original point of thread, namely predicting the attendence at the UAB-SMU game, I use the following formula:

BF + FWF + VF = TA

BF is base fans, which we know from last weekend number about 10,400
FWF is the number of fairweather fans who are distracted by UAT, Auburn, or the sound of a reving engine. I estimate this as equal to BF(10,400).
VF is visiting fans. I estimate this at 562.
TA is total attendence, and therefore my guess for the total attendence is 21, 362.


Second, for those who think that being located in a major city should guarantee big crowds, I would like to point out that if attendence were directly proportional to population, Columbia would lead college football in attendence, and other contenders would be UCLA, USC, and Northwestern. Teams from small towns like Austin, Ann Arbor, College Station, Provo, Knoxville, Tuscaloosa (sp?), etc would have no chance.

draak ijveraar Wrote:and the point of this diatribe was that its the traditional students that make up the bulk of the hard core fan base of a university. its the traditional students that attend the basketball and football games religiously and continue to do so after they graduate. its the traditional students that identify strongly with a university and donate to the athletic department.

So basically you went through all that for a conclusion that is basically wrong.

It is true that traditional students will identify more closely with the university, but what fraction of these students will actually become season ticket holders? If you're like most schools, it's well less than 5%. The students are going to move on, go to school or get jobs elsewhere, or simply get on with their lives and not care about athletics once they are gone and have to pay $$$ for it. Granted, UAB grads are going to be less upwardly mobile than other schools and thus more likely to stay put, but you are still going to lose a significant percentage of the loyal student fan base after graduation.

The schools that do well in attendance and have huge followings do so because they have huge numbers of sidewalk fans. A significant number (if not most) of the SEC school fans have never even set foot in a classroom at the school they root for (and in that sense are like SEC athletes). They identify with the school not necessarily because they went there, but because that's the biggest local team there is to cheer for and that's what their drivers' license says. The same goes for places like Notre Dame and the service academies (though the latter don't have particularly good attendance numbers in most years). Thus because people identify with the school (for whatever reason, be it alumni or other), the attendence reflects that.

I'm not just pulling this out of thin air; Rice, unlike UAB, actually has averaged 50,000+ in their cavernous stadium. Similarly, SMU has been in the top 3 in the nation in overall attendance previously. And Rice only has 40,000 alumni now, so this was back when they only has 10-15,000 alumni. Surely, it wasn't just only alums who were going to the games - the vast majority were random Houstonians who went to the games to see high-quality football played at the highest level there was at the time. But it was sidewalk fans, not alums, who were the key to attendance success.

So if your plan for improving your attendance calls on waiting for a whole bunch more people to graduate and but season tickets, then good luck - I pity you. But if you give the people of Birmingham something exciting to watch that they can identify with and take advantage of it, there's no reason you can't grow to 25,000 average attendance and never putting less than 15,000 in the stands, even on a rainy NASCAR weekend.

STLouis Blazer Wrote:My guess would be a blowout victory for UAB.

So if UAB wins a game but no one is there to see it does it still count?

Not that I want to get involved in this, but Owljackets logic doesn't work with UAB. Rice may only have 40,000 alumni, but that amount has been generated for how long? I don't know Rice's history, but I am betting somewhere over 60 years, making it twice the age of UAB as a school. "Sidewalk fans" don't appear over night, it takes word of mouth and years to generate that kind of following. UAB has some, even ones that are bigger fans than most of the alumni (Tom Stallings), but we have only had 10 years of football to generate those fans. Most of which have been medicore teams at best, in a state where most of the sidewalk fans have been committed to one of the winningest teams in college football. And usually committed since before UAB existed.

But this whole thing is just a useless debate. We will see the final attendance numbers at the end of the season and we will see where UAB ranks in the conference.

What I really know is what you mean by "Granted, UAB grads are going to be less upwardly mobile than other schools and thus more likely to stay put"?

gotigers1 Wrote:

STLouis Blazer Wrote:My guess would be a blowout victory for UAB.

So if UAB wins a game but no one is there to see it does it still count?

Unfortunately for Memphis, yes.

OwlJacket Wrote:The schools that do well in attendance and have huge followings do so because they have huge numbers of sidewalk fans. A significant number (if not most) of the SEC school fans have never even set foot in a classroom at the school they root for (and in that sense are like SEC athletes). They identify with the school not necessarily because they went there, but because that's the biggest local team there is to cheer for and that's what their drivers' license says. The same goes for places like Notre Dame and the service academies (though the latter don't have particularly good attendance numbers in most years). Thus because people identify with the school (for whatever reason, be it alumni or other), the attendence reflects that.

Our fan base comes from a population pool that is asked, at birth, to decide, UAT or API. That ain't easy. We are, however, making strides. It won't happen overnight. Are we where we'd like to be? No. Are we making steady, if slow, progress surrounded by a couple of 900lb gorillas? Yes.

BTW, thanks for coming to the Rice/UAB game. I believe that made about 12 of you. (That's not gratuitous, you had it coming for that wiseass "not upwardly mobile" comment.)

39 = twenty from SMU and 19 from UAB, just kidding guys. Not the 20 from SMU, that's probably accurate. But all kidding aside, since its Homecoming and all, I'd guess 25,020.

OwlJacket Wrote:I'm not just pulling this out of thin air; Rice, unlike UAB, actually has averaged 50,000+ in their cavernous stadium. Similarly, SMU has been in the top 3 in the nation in overall attendance previously. And Rice only has 40,000 alumni now, so this was back when they only has 10-15,000 alumni. Surely, it wasn't just only alums who were going to the games - the vast majority were random Houstonians who went to the games to see high-quality football played at the highest level there was at the time.

its just too bad none of those fans were there to watch Rice. They all went to see Texas, Texas A & M, SMU, and Oklahoma.

if UAB were in the SEC and only had 10,000 UAB fans we would still average over 60,000 per game just on the fans showing up to watch the away teams. Braggin about Rice's attendance while in the SWC is pathetic because none of those fans were there to watch your team.

the best thing about the stuck up privateschoolpompusassjerks in cusa is that we get to beat the crap out of them on a regular basis. when we go to rice next year to destroy your pathetic team you will probably try and pass off beef as real bbq. heretic.

draak ijveraar Wrote:its just too bad none of those fans were there to watch Rice. They all went to see Texas, Texas A & M, SMU, and Oklahoma.

if UAB were in the SEC and only had 10,000 UAB fans we would still average over 60,000 per game just on the fans showing up to watch the away teams. Braggin about Rice's attendance while in the SWC is pathetic because none of those fans were there to watch your team.

the best thing about the stuck up privateschoolpompusassjerks in cusa is that we get to beat the crap out of them on a regular basis. when we go to rice next year to destroy your pathetic team you will probably try and pass off beef as real bbq. heretic.

(1) Somebody evidently isn't up on his college football history. There's a reason we play in a 70,000 seat on-campus stadium and you play in a 72,000 seat off-campus place which features a tribute to a coach from an out-of-town school.

(2) At least people were actually there to watch a football game and not a reality TV star concert.

(3) In Texas, we use our meat products solely for their intended purpose and don't need and sauces to cover up the taste residuals of a dual-purpose "farm animal-female companion"