(10-01-2016 11:00 PM)slycat Wrote: App St - 24,782
Texas St - 22,845
USA - 14,741
Idaho - 13,392
NMSU - 8,142
This I guess is our new normal. Even after going 11-2 with a bowl victory in our first season of bowl eligibility, and even after getting to host a program like Miami, we can't get near 30,000 EXCEPT against someone like Miami. It's so weird that more people were going to see games against Elon, Furman, Wofford, and even Samford or NC A&T back around 2007-2011 than are going to see actual FBS schools hosted in Boone. Heck, our previous all-time attendance record came against Elon, not against anyone from the Sun Belt or a fellow G5 team.
I don't know why this is. I thought for a while maybe the drop in attendance was a response to declining performance in the early 2010's, bottoming out in 2013 and the first half of 2014. Sometimes a fanbase needs to time to buy back in. (I'm not making excuses, just saying that that's a pattern with a lot of schools.) Also, I thought for a while that declining attendance may have been in part a backlash against App for the less-than-pretty ending to legendary coach Jerry Moore's career.
But those things were several years ago now. I'm beginning to think that the decline in attendance is actually just part of a larger, national trend. Power 5 schools that used to always sell out don't anymore. College kids aren't necessarily into watching sports the way they were 15, 10, even 5 years ago, at least not as many of them. They leave at halftime whether App is up by a lot, down by a lot, or if the game is close.
Fellow App State fans, and fans of other Sun Belt schools, what do you think about our schools' struggles to draw large crowds even when we're good?