I struggle with CUSA reaching from ODU to UTEP and FAU to WKY. IMHO with poor TV coverage it is too difficult to build up conference attendance spread out like that. People have to many convenient options today to regularly travel for 8 plus hours to see a game.
These are the realist OOC teams I would like Charlotte to regularly schedule home & home games with whose fans would travel well to Charlotte. Appalachian St, Liberty, ECU, Duke, Wake Forest, Coastal Carolina & Georgia St.
We need to play our conference games and build up our own fan base. However, we need to develop some regional rivalries that could help boost our average attendance. Who are some realist regional teams that could help boost your teams attendance?
(07-29-2018 01:00 AM)Rabonchild Wrote: [ -> ]I struggle with CUSA reaching from ODU to UTEP and FAU to WKY. IMHO with poor TV coverage it is too difficult to build up conference attendance spread out like that. People have to many convenient options today to regularly travel for 8 plus hours to see a game.
These are the realist OOC teams I would like Charlotte to regularly schedule home & home games with whose fans would travel well to Charlotte. Appalachian St, Liberty, ECU, Duke, Wake Forest, Coastal Carolina & Georgia St.
We need to play our conference games and build up our own fan base. However, we need to develop some regional rivalries that could help boost our average attendance. Who are some realist regional teams that could help boost your teams attendance?
So you just need to contact the SEC and Big10 and ask them to stop screwing up NCAA athletics by cherry-picking programs that will help their conference and hurt the others. Also ask them to share revenue more equally, stop changing the game/recruiting/... rules every year to their benefit, and cease the "conference paid" game officials so that games can be called fairly instead of in the favor of the "conference" that the referees work for.
Houston comes to Denton in 2019 and they travel well. We play SMU every year (40 miles away) and they don't bring many fans. When we play in them Dallas we travel well and fill several sections of their stadium. Would love have TCU and other Big 12 schools come to Denton. We do have Texas Tech at home scheduled for 2027. Some of the closer Sun Belt teams would be good as well.
This is a great site for future schedules if you haven't checked it out before:http://www.fbschedules.com/ncaa/conference-usa-football-schedules.php
For football, though every game to date has been a sell-out, not every game has been fully attended. So I suppose there is room for improvement, but there really is not much we haven't already done or scheduled that I can think of. This includes VA Tech, UVA, ECU, UNC, NC State, and Liberty. Cross-town FCS Norfolk State and cross-river FCS Hampton have always drawn well, as well as in-state FCS VMI. As Liberty grows into its status as an FBS Independent, a regular home-and-home with them could be a winner, and a round-robin with VA Tech and UVA every year would also be a home run. All three are already scheduled in Norfolk, but an every-year rivalry game is not a given for UVA and Liberty. The series with VA Tech is in fact pretty well sewed up for the foreseeable future with home games in Norfolk in 2018, 2022, 2024, 2027, 2029 and 2031. All we have to do is win some those, and we have a budding rivalry.
As for basketball, I really should leave that to my roundball bretheren, but I will take a stab at it. The three teams I think we should be playing regularly are VCU, VA Tech and UVA. VCU is already a regularly scheduled rivalry game, but we need to once again start winning our share. VA Tech has refused to play us for a while now, ever since Seth Greenberg got torqued after losing to the Monarchs in Norfolk. UVA -- now that's another frustrating story. Many of you may not know that ODU Coach Jeff Jones played at UVA and coached there as one of the youngest of D1 coaches. He was eventually let go under somewhat of a cloud, and he moved on to American University before coming to Norfolk. Our AD also had time at UVA. I really don't know how all this plays together, but for whatever reason now, UVA just is not interested in scheduling the Monarchs. Hopefully, with a little time, this impasse can be broken down for both Tech and UVA.
Personally I think the problem to solve is the home team not attracting fans no matter who they are playing. Till that problem is solved there's no fix.
Every team in this conference has fought at one time or another to get away from a regional conference. If you take in all the factors of cost, more things to do, almost every game on TV, large, clear, screens, with slo-mo and the ability to stop play...take a **** or get a beer, without missing a play.....
attendance is not any worse than in those golden days of playing the regional teams your school fought so hard to get away from.
Unless you can grow your fanbase to where they want to see the home team or at least willing to spend the dollars on season tickets...if they stay home and watch. There is no fix. Because if your fanbase only comes out on that prefect weather day, playing that prefect opponent....
those days are not going to happen often, no matter how much you dream about it. The problem isn't who you are playing its the fact fans have listened to espn talking heads so much about what is bigtime.....
the home team is not worth their time or money because it's not the SEC or ACC or...
Well the two OOC teams who would flat-out make the dome a sellout in the blink of an eye would be Texas A&M and Texas, but they'll never come. The Alamodome seats 64K, but A&M's Kyle Field seats 102,733 and has had as many as 110,631 for a game. Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium in Austin has a 100,119 capacity and had a record attendance of 102,315. So neither of those schools would ever agree to play in what's a very modest Alamodome. And it's not like they might come to gain a foothold in San Antonio as a recruiting ground because they already own San Antonio as a recruiting ground, and have for many decades. lol
Aside from those two, Houston always brings fans, as we do to Houston. We're currently 1-1 against Houston and do have a home-and-home series scheduled against them from 2022-2025.
Army or Air Force coming to town would be HUGE because San Antonio is nicknamed "Military City, USA" as it has an Army base (Fort Sam Houston), two Air Force bases (Randolph and Lackland), and Camp Bullis (a 28,000 acre Army camp near UTSA used for training). We once even had a third Air Force base (Brooks), but it was shut down with military down-sizing. Needless to say, San Antonio is home to MANY retired and active-duty military personnel, so I don't understand why UTSA hasn't yet scheduled one of those academies. Navy would even be a big draw because even though San Antonio is Air Force/Army mainly, there are a lot of retired Navy in the city also because they have access to the military bases as well for shopping, health care, and other things.
Texas State brings many fans also because before UTSA got football, we used to be in the same conference with them, so there's already a rivalry there that goes back 2-3 decades, especially since our schools are only about 40 minutes apart. We lead them 2-0 right now in football and, as with UH, have scheduled home-and-homes with them from 2022-2025.
Aside from those, I think the other P5's in the state such as Baylor, TCU, or Texas Tech coming to San Antonio would also draw big, or dare I say it, even OU. We're hosting OU in basketball this year btw; should be interesting.
I don't think where the opponent is form, is as important as the quality of the opponent you attract, and if you can compete with them on the field.
I would say before we can have a serious conversation about how to build attendance through our OOC schedule, some of our programs have to break there addiction to body bag games. It is hard to get fringe followers motivated to come out and watch your team play a mid to lower level MAC program a week after they've been whored out to get their butt handed to them by Alabama.
We need to schedule for success. We need to follow a formula. I think something close to this would be ideal. If you can find regional programs that fit this model, even better.
1 P5 game (Only home and home series)
2 MWC/AAC games (Only home and away series)
1 Independent/MAC/Sun Belt/FCS game (Home only for FCS, and any other you can negotiate... home and away if you have to)
(07-29-2018 02:02 PM)Rabonchild Wrote: [ -> ]Remember, do you have a realistic chance of booking a home and away with the Teams you have listed?
We host Houston in 2018, 2021, and 2023.
We host Texas in 2019.
We'll get the Tigers and Aggies back here at some point.
To be fair, you don't host Texas at your stadium though since they only agreed to play you if it's at NRG Stadium (home of the Texans). And you then also play two games in Austin as consolation. Texas fans will also FAR outnumber you there even though you're hosting, probably by a 4-to-1 margin at the minimum.
As for "hosting" Houston, well they're a cross-town rival, and realistically, they'll also have far more fans in the stadium because they're just a much larger school. So whether you play the Cougars at UH, Rice, or at NRG, you're never truly hosting them in terms of fan support; not even close.
Yes, both of those schools would spike your attendance numbers though. As for LSU and A&M, yeah you might host them again at some point, but I can almost guarantee you it'll also only be at NRG Stadium again, and only because they'd probably rather play you guys than UH because UH might actually pull an upset. No offense, but it's true.
And granted, UTSA doesn't even have a stadium, since we use the Alamodome, but it was still worth mentioning.
(07-29-2018 02:02 PM)Rabonchild Wrote: [ -> ]Remember, do you have a realistic chance of booking a home and away with the Teams you have listed?
Of course Marshall couldn’t get OSU and UK is chicken to play us, but the others have been to the Joan or scheduled. We have Boise and ECU coming in a few years.
(07-29-2018 02:12 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote: [ -> ][quote='Rabonchild' pid='15404277' dateline='1532890973']
Remember, do you have a realistic chance of booking a home and away with the Teams you have listed?
We host Houston in 2018, 2021, and 2023.
We host Texas in 2019.
We'll get the Tigers and Aggies back here at some point.
To be fair, you don't host Texas at your stadium though since they only agreed to play you if it's at NRG Stadium (home of the Texans). And you then also play two games in Austin as consolation. Texas fans will also FAR outnumber you there even though you're hosting, probably by a 4-to-1 margin at the minimum.
As for "hosting" Houston, well they're a cross-town rival, and realistically, they'll also have far more fans in the stadium because they're just a much larger school. So whether you play the Cougars at UH, Rice, or at NRG, you're never truly hosting them in terms of fan support; not even close.
Yes, both of those schools would spike your attendance numbers though. As for LSU and A&M, yeah you might host them again at some point, but I can almost guarantee you it'll also only be at NRG Stadium again, and only because they'd probably rather play you guys than UH because UH might actually pull an upset. No offense, but it's true.
And granted, UTSA doesn't even have a stadium, since we use the Alamodome, but it was still worth mentioning.
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I personally don't like the NRG games, but the money is too good to turn down. It's not my preference for all the reasons you mention. I wouldn't give big-time schools a return trip to Houston unless they agreed to play us in our real home. Our fans are outnumbered, but we usually play much better football at Rice Stadium.
As for the small schools that boost attendance, Rice has recently scheduled ULL, Texas Southern, Lamar, and Prairie View. SMU, Tulane, and Texas State would all draw fans.
We sure ain't gonna pack 'em in with UT Martin, McNeese State, or Alabama A&M. I would love to see the University of Rocky Top play us at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, and designate it as a Home Game for MT. I would also take Kentucky or Louisville (again) at Nissan. Excited to have Duke coming to Floyd in the future but we really need to renew our rivalry with Memphis, and lure any SEC team (other than Vandy cause they do not travel) and any B10 or ACC squads we can get to improve our Home Schedule.