Hero Sports put out a list of the FCS attendance leaders.
https://herosports.com/2021-fcs-attendan...ders-bzbz/

Here are some of the highlights.
1. Jackson St 42,293
2. Montana 24,584
3. JMU 19,631
4.Montana St 19,176
7. JSU 16,809
8. NDSU 15,101
10. UD 12,844
13. UNH 11,576

And this one stood out for all the wrong reasons...
45. Sam Houston 7,283

Props to Jackson St for crushing it. UD and UNH were the highest remaining members of our old conference. I'll admit I was surprised that UNH was that high.
Soft Houston at 7k going to FBS is everything wrong with teams moving up to FBS. I will be shocked if they are successful at the next level.

It's a little hard to compare playoff teams to non-playoff teams because of the attendance drop off that most schools experience during the playoffs. Obviously Montana performed really well and SHSU performed really poorly regardless of playoff impact, but it's difficult to compare a JSU or NDSU to a UD or UNH. Their numbers don't look that far off, but I suspect there's more differentiation if you were to per perform an apples-to-apples regular season comparison.

JMU had a 21k average until our two playoff games drug the number down. SHSU also had playoff games and is probably a bit higher than the 7k final average. I agree though, SHSU may be able to compete in a crappy CUSA conference, but they won't be competing financially. When you only draw 7k fans a game, there's only so many donors you can tap to help pay the bills. Throw in the fact that CUSA's current and future media payout prospects are bleak and yeah... SHSU could very well drop off as a program. Even more so if KC Keeler were to leave.

Montana crushing it considering their official capacity is 25,203, which they went over 3 times this year including their largest crowd ever of 26,856 vs Montana St. Their Friday night playoff game was in line with their regular season at 24,065.

JMU averaged 21,769 through the regular season and then had 11,743 and 14,690 for the playoffs bringing the average down.
Morehead - 22,229
Maine - 22,108
Nova (Family Weekend) - 25,035
Elon - 21,029
Campbell (HC) - 23,571
Towson - 16,644
SE Louisiana - 11,743
Montana (Friday) - 14,690

Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

(02-07-2022 11:21 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

Definitely a concern, but I think it will be much easier to get fans excited about an FBS rivalry game over an early round FCS game against a team with little fan interest.
Going FBS will change the culture for sure.
The good news is there's a lot of indications that JMU fans are ready. As long as fans stick it out through the transition, I expect the attendance to be high.

(02-07-2022 11:21 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

I'm not too worried about this. Based on what we've seen from our Thanksgiving weekend FCS playoff games, I agree that a Thanksgiving weekend game in Harrisonburg is going to suffer from an attendance standpoint for the foreseeable future, but maybe not as much as it did in FCS. I'm less worried about the other late-season game.

The difference between FCS and FBS is advance notice. The FCS playoffs are difficult to attend, because there's so much uncertainty. First of all, we don't whether JMU will make it to any given playoff round. Even if we assume that JMU will make it to every round and host in every round, we don't know the day or time of the games. In FBS, season ticket holders and other fans will know about these final games up to eight months in advance. JMU could even strategically plan to reopen dorms/limited dining on Friday or Saturday of Thanksgiving weekends when we host a football game.

I do agree that we'll see some drop off in attendance late in the season due to a combination of Thanksgiving, exams, company holiday parties, etc., but I just don't think the decline will be as steep as it was in FCS with more advance notice.

(02-07-2022 11:41 AM)We Are the Dukes of JMU Wrote:  

(02-07-2022 11:21 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

I'm not too worried about this. Based on what we've seen from our Thanksgiving weekend FCS playoff games, I agree that a Thanksgiving weekend game in Harrisonburg is going to suffer from an attendance standpoint for the foreseeable future, but maybe not as much as it did in FCS. I'm less worried about the other late-season game.

The difference between FCS and FBS is advance notice. The FCS playoffs are difficult to attend, because there's so much uncertainty. First of all, we don't whether JMU will make it to any given playoff round. Even if we assume that JMU will make it to every round and host in every round, we don't know the day or time of the games. In FBS, season ticket holders and other fans will know about these final games up to eight months in advance. JMU could even strategically plan to reopen dorms/limited dining on Friday or Saturday of Thanksgiving weekends when we host a football game.

I do agree that we'll see some drop off in attendance late in the season due to a combination of Thanksgiving, exams, company holiday parties, etc., but I just don't think the decline will be as steep as it was in FCS with more advance notice.

I agree that the advance notice is a lot more conducive to making the trip. The one thing that will be kind of nice, regardless of who is our last week rival in the SBC is that we only have to worry about that dropping our attendance every other year, unlike the FCS playoffs where we are just about guaranteed to host the early round. In this case we most likely won't hit a double whammy of hosting both weekends in the schedule, some years our away host will take the hit instead.

(02-07-2022 11:13 AM)Potomac Wrote:  JMU had a 21k average until our two playoff games drug the number down. SHSU also had playoff games and is probably a bit higher than the 7k final average. I agree though, SHSU may be able to compete in a crappy CUSA conference, but they won't be competing financially. When you only draw 7k fans a game, there's only so many donors you can tap to help pay the bills. Throw in the fact that CUSA's current and future media payout prospects are bleak and yeah... SHSU could very well drop off as a program. Even more so if KC Keeler were to leave.

Regular season games played at their home stadium averaged 7,339.

SHSU will have their work cut out to draw 15k fans. Of course the way things are currently structured, schools can effectively cheat by doing things like selling tickets to their booster club or a sponsor dirt cheap, and then counting "sold" tickets. Believe I saw the FBS committee is considering new criteria that could change things.

(02-07-2022 12:12 PM)JMURocks Wrote:  

(02-07-2022 11:13 AM)Potomac Wrote:  JMU had a 21k average until our two playoff games drug the number down. SHSU also had playoff games and is probably a bit higher than the 7k final average. I agree though, SHSU may be able to compete in a crappy CUSA conference, but they won't be competing financially. When you only draw 7k fans a game, there's only so many donors you can tap to help pay the bills. Throw in the fact that CUSA's current and future media payout prospects are bleak and yeah... SHSU could very well drop off as a program. Even more so if KC Keeler were to leave.

Regular season games played at their home stadium averaged 7,339.

SHSU will have their work cut out to draw 15k fans. Of course the way things are currently structured, schools can effectively cheat by doing things like selling tickets to their booster club or a sponsor dirt cheap, and then counting "sold" tickets. Believe I saw the FBS committee is considering new criteria that could change things.

I REALLY hope this changes, especially since schools are cheating and it's obvious and nothing is ever done about it. There are many schools over-reporting and have no business being in FBS. Schools should be finding ways to bring in fans and instead are just finding ways around it.
Perhaps give some leniency towards weekday games to a degree. But when a school week in and out is barely selling tickets, they need to go down.
In my opinion, it would good for FBS and FCS by doing this. Those FBS schools moving down could compete and bring back fans and earn their way back up.

(02-07-2022 11:21 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

Good point about the FBS calendar still playing regular season games on Thanksgiving weekend. We know it will be lower attendance. However, what will be interesting to find out is if it is lower PAID attendance. Because of holiday travel, I think it will only be successful if JMU tries to get locals to that game. For those that are in the valley and not travelling, it is an easier proposition to get them to buy tickets for one game on a Saturday after Thanksgiving. No need to worry about it every other year when it becomes ODU's problem.

If the 6th home game is going to bring less revenue than a normal 6th game in the former FCS world, JMU may need to rethink how it maximizes attendance/revenue in the 1st and 2nd home games before conference play starts each year.

(02-07-2022 12:46 PM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  

(02-07-2022 11:21 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

Good point about the FBS calendar still playing regular season games on Thanksgiving weekend. We know it will be lower attendance. However, what will be interesting to find out is if it is lower PAID attendance. Because of holiday travel, I think it will only be successful if JMU tries to get locals to that game. For those that are in the valley and not travelling, it is an easier proposition to get them to buy tickets for one game on a Saturday after Thanksgiving. No need to worry about it every other year when it becomes ODU's problem.

If the 6th home game is going to bring less revenue than a normal 6th game in the former FCS world, JMU may need to rethink how it maximizes attendance/revenue in the 1st and 2nd home games before conference play starts each year.

Hopefully the rivalry will make a difference. App continually struggled with post Thanksgiving home games. Both during the FBS and FCS playoff eras. They moved the Georgia Southern game to that weekend this past season and we sold out.

(02-07-2022 12:46 PM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  

(02-07-2022 11:21 AM)Potomac Wrote:  Our prospects of drawing well the last two weeks of the FBS regular season are low. Once students leave for a break, forget it. Most aren't tuned into football by that point.

The ODU/JMU rivalry game is going to have to rely on generating enough buzz to make students want to come back (good luck haha) and to make alumni want to travel on a holiday week (also good luck haha).

Good point about the FBS calendar still playing regular season games on Thanksgiving weekend. We know it will be lower attendance. However, what will be interesting to find out is if it is lower PAID attendance. Because of holiday travel, I think it will only be successful if JMU tries to get locals to that game. For those that are in the valley and not travelling, it is an easier proposition to get them to buy tickets for one game on a Saturday after Thanksgiving. No need to worry about it every other year when it becomes ODU's problem.

If the 6th home game is going to bring less revenue than a normal 6th game in the former FCS world, JMU may need to rethink how it maximizes attendance/revenue in the 1st and 2nd home games before conference play starts each year.

Yeah I'm very curious to see how attendance is that week. If that is the ODU game then that'll help, but if it doesn't help enough then that might kinda be killing some of the potential of that matchup.

I think over time more and more local fans will show up regularly. After some years of JMU being FBS and being a team that cracks the top 25, sometimes being the only top 25 team in Virginia, then I bet you'll have a lot more people excited to go to the games right here in Harrisonburg. Get them to start wearing purple instead of their orange and blue or maroon and orange when they start to see JMU as playing "real" D1 football.

(02-07-2022 12:32 PM)JMad03 Wrote:  

(02-07-2022 12:12 PM)JMURocks Wrote:  

(02-07-2022 11:13 AM)Potomac Wrote:  JMU had a 21k average until our two playoff games drug the number down. SHSU also had playoff games and is probably a bit higher than the 7k final average. I agree though, SHSU may be able to compete in a crappy CUSA conference, but they won't be competing financially. When you only draw 7k fans a game, there's only so many donors you can tap to help pay the bills. Throw in the fact that CUSA's current and future media payout prospects are bleak and yeah... SHSU could very well drop off as a program. Even more so if KC Keeler were to leave.

Regular season games played at their home stadium averaged 7,339.

SHSU will have their work cut out to draw 15k fans. Of course the way things are currently structured, schools can effectively cheat by doing things like selling tickets to their booster club or a sponsor dirt cheap, and then counting "sold" tickets. Believe I saw the FBS committee is considering new criteria that could change things.

I REALLY hope this changes, especially since schools are cheating and it's obvious and nothing is ever done about it. There are many schools over-reporting and have no business being in FBS. Schools should be finding ways to bring in fans and instead are just finding ways around it.
Perhaps give some leniency towards weekday games to a degree. But when a school week in and out is barely selling tickets, they need to go down.
In my opinion, it would good for FBS and FCS by doing this. Those FBS schools moving down could compete and bring back fans and earn their way back up.

Yeah there are schools that are FBS but belong in FCS and there's one that's clearly the opposite with a handful of others that probably/arguably belong FBS. Everybody being more where they belong would be good for both FBS and FCS, but it seems unlikely for much of anyone to ever drop back down.

Paywall, but the beginning part is pretty instructive -

How FBS schools meet the 15,000 requirement for attendance, and why the rule still exists

Quote:When UMass football opened the 2018 season against Duquesne, the announced crowd at 17,000-seat McGuirk Stadium was 8,684 fans — essentially a half-full stadium. For the next home game against Charlotte a month later, the announced crowd was 10,086.

Over six home games in 2018, including a matchup with BYU at the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium, UMass averaged 10,385 fans, based on the announced attendance. Amid a 4-8 season in which head coach Mark Whipple was fired at the end, there was not much reason to expect big crowds.

But when UMass submitted its annual NCAA attendance audit, it reported an average paid attendance of 15,075 per game.

Why the change? The NCAA requires an average attendance of 15,000 fans per game once every two years to maintain FBS status. But the reality is a number of programs don’t reach that mark, especially in an era in which attendance is falling across the board while the number of FBS schools has grown. Attendance has fallen in the FBS as a whole seven times in the past eight years, and it is currently at the lowest average mark since 1996, according to CBS Sports.

As a result, schools that have trouble reaching the 15,000 mark have to boost their numbers through artificial means. In UMass’ case, an average of 8,657 tickets per game at McGuirk Stadium were credited to “Sam’s Squad,” part of the school’s efforts to get discount tickets into the hands of local charities and other groups.

Gross.

(02-07-2022 11:50 AM)MarginalDuke Wrote:  I agree that the advance notice is a lot more conducive to making the trip. The one thing that will be kind of nice, regardless of who is our last week rival in the SBC is that we only have to worry about that dropping our attendance every other year, unlike the FCS playoffs where we are just about guaranteed to host the early round. In this case we most likely won't hit a double whammy of hosting both weekends in the schedule, some years our away host will take the hit instead.

That's a good point. The thanksgiving weekend home game will only happen every other year, and maybe fans can "rationalize" it as a once every 2 years occurrence. The FCS playoffs at home were every November and December, every single season. It's more of a commitment in less time.

(02-07-2022 02:45 PM)bjk3047 Wrote:  Paywall, but the beginning part is pretty instructive -

How FBS schools meet the 15,000 requirement for attendance, and why the rule still exists

Quote:When UMass football opened the 2018 season against Duquesne, the announced crowd at 17,000-seat McGuirk Stadium was 8,684 fans — essentially a half-full stadium. For the next home game against Charlotte a month later, the announced crowd was 10,086.

Over six home games in 2018, including a matchup with BYU at the New England Patriots’ Gillette Stadium, UMass averaged 10,385 fans, based on the announced attendance. Amid a 4-8 season in which head coach Mark Whipple was fired at the end, there was not much reason to expect big crowds.

But when UMass submitted its annual NCAA attendance audit, it reported an average paid attendance of 15,075 per game.

Why the change? The NCAA requires an average attendance of 15,000 fans per game once every two years to maintain FBS status. But the reality is a number of programs don’t reach that mark, especially in an era in which attendance is falling across the board while the number of FBS schools has grown. Attendance has fallen in the FBS as a whole seven times in the past eight years, and it is currently at the lowest average mark since 1996, according to CBS Sports.

As a result, schools that have trouble reaching the 15,000 mark have to boost their numbers through artificial means. In UMass’ case, an average of 8,657 tickets per game at McGuirk Stadium were credited to “Sam’s Squad,” part of the school’s efforts to get discount tickets into the hands of local charities and other groups.

Gross.

Wow, more than half of their required attendance minimum is being BSed and given away, largely unused, to local charities.

The NCAA doesn’t seem to put much thought into FBS attendance requirement anymore or else they wouldn’t have invited Sam Houston whose stadium capacity doesn’t even reach the minimal requirement, and is usually half empty. Some schools have local companies like Pepsi buy up large blocks of tickets to get the numbers up. Another school hired an outside firm to promote the games, then bought up the necessary amount to get up to 15k/game and then the AD got a bonus for reaching the bare minimum. Makes sense, a school that has marketing professors needs to pay money to hire a firm that didn’t make much of a difference and bought the tickets (reimbursed by school) and then AD gets bonus. Also, with ESPN putting games on midweek it’s extremely hard to get a crowd on any weeknight yet alone Tuesday or Wednesday. If you live more than an hour or so away, who wants to take leave from work midweek to get to the game in time and then get home very late or next day?

https://www.kjrh.com/news/national/colle...-divisions

http://www.annarbor.com/news/eastern-mic...ttendance/

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/201...at_ea.html

http://www.kentwired.com/latest_updates/...83d93.html

http://www.kentwired.com/latest_updates/...17773.html

Yeah, I don't know how they'd audit it, but if a school doesn't average 80% of the tickets-sold requirement with butts in seats (or tickets scanned...whatever...) for two years in a row, they need to face major financial penalties and postseason bans strong enough to force them down. I mean, listen, if as an FBS school you can't average 12k fans per game...you shouldn't be FBS. You're hurting the brand and making it harder for all the schools you play to motivate their fans. This needs to be resolved. I'm sure SHSU will get a decent bump playing better teams, because we all know the teams they played were awful. That will at least help, but I'd be surprised if they were able to more than double their tickets sold, much less butts in seats. Really hoping they start cracking down on stuff like that. Either have the requirement and enforce it or get rid of it.

(02-07-2022 04:29 PM)jmufan2008 Wrote:  Yeah, I don't know how they'd audit it, but if a school doesn't average 80% of the tickets-sold requirement with butts in seats (or tickets scanned...whatever...) for two years in a row, they need to face major financial penalties and postseason bans strong enough to force them down. I mean, listen, if as an FBS school you can't average 12k fans per game...you shouldn't be FBS. You're hurting the brand and making it harder for all the schools you play to motivate their fans. This needs to be resolved. I'm sure SHSU will get a decent bump playing better teams, because we all know the teams they played were awful. That will at least help, but I'd be surprised if they were able to more than double their tickets sold, much less butts in seats. Really hoping they start cracking down on stuff like that. Either have the requirement and enforce it or get rid of it.

I agree. Having schools like that in FBS also reduces already scarce opportunities for P5 home games.

Just this year, UMass hosted BC in front of a crowd of 12k. To put that in perspective, UMass drew about as many fans to a home game against an in-state ACC opponent that was scheduled years in advance as JMU did for our most poorly attended game of the year against SE Louisiana, which had been scheduled a week earlier. I'm entirely comfortable saying that JMU would draw 40-50k for a home game against VT/UVA (without even counting VT/UVA fans), if we actually had the capacity.

When a BC plays at a UMass, it takes that opportunity off the table for G5 programs that are actually making investments and drawing fan support. Having surplus FBS-in-name-only schools also increases the supply of G5 guarantee games, which drives down the price of those guarantees. That actually provides P5 schools with an incentive to look the other way on attendance, when it comes time to weigh in on NCAA rule setting.