(01-07-2020 11:32 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-07-2020 11:13 AM)mturn017 Wrote:  

(01-07-2020 10:36 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-06-2020 07:09 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  

(01-06-2020 04:25 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  To me, it's the most relevant thing. It's a joke to have fully-funded teams playing before nobody, that means the fan base of the school doesn't care so why should anyone else?

If you have no attendance, you are just spending money from somewhere to field an artificial team for who knows why? you might as well just conduct the games on an empty studio lot. Or better yet, to save anyone from getting hurt and on scholarships, just use CGI to simulate a game for XBox or streaming.

I mean, without attendance, what on earth is the point?

There's more than one way to gauge program interest besides the nebulous concept of NCAA-recorded attendance. TV ratings, donations, booster-club memberships. I'm not going to insult you by saying that a school with attendance averages above 100,000 is fundamentally no different than one with averages below 20,000, but that's an effect, not a cause, of a program's strength, and not the primary one.

Ultimately, fans don't win games, they don't boost a school's academic credentials, and their attendance or lack thereof alone won't cause a program to fall below standard. If an FBS program is struggling, it won't *just* be because they don't meet an attendance benchmark. They'll have other issues more pressing, even if it's not as publicly evident.

Attendance is a 'nebulous' concept, but let's face it - to the extent that it is, it is because universities have made it nebulous by coming up with clever ways to cook their books so as to present a better image of the program and to stay technically in compliance with FBS requirements. It doesn't have to be that way, if everyone is honest and third-party auditors tally the numbers.

As for other ways to measure a program, you mentioned TV ratings, donations, and booster members, I seriously doubt that the bottom-level scroungers do well on any of them either, do you? And that's even if we grant their validity.

As for your second statement, true, fans don't win games, but what does winning games matter if it happens before no attendees? What's the point of playing the games? At that point the football team's existence is basically self-referential. Having the team is an end in itself, an absurd situation. Again, might as well play them on an ESPN studio lot with canned applause, or else convert the real football team to an E-team for Playstation 5 or whatever.

What other valid standard for FBS should there be other than real attendance? I just don't see how a program whose attendance overlaps with FCS attendance can claim to be in the same level as ones that average 2x, 3x, 4x the attendance.

Nebulous indeed. How does USF post over 30K in attendance and have less than 3.2M in ticket sales? Our stadium didn't even hold 20K in that year and we had greater ticket revenue and over 3 times the amount of donations as the Bulls. If USF hadn't vaulted into the BE and gotten the TV revenues and later the exit fees they'd be middling to bottom in G5 resources. Your team should be in FCS. The only support evident is coming from TV networks.

You make a good point about ticket sales - you can sell a lot of tickets if you price them very low, effectively subsidizing the sale from other money, that's another way to cook the books.

As for ODU vs USF, are you including sales of all athletic tickets or just football? I'm sure ODU sells a lot more basketball tickets but that's not relevant to a discussion of football program status. If you guys did earn more football ticket revenue than USF, well congratulations.

FWIW, I am not exempting USF from my proposal at all. The 20,000 standard should be the same for everyone and books should be uncooked, audited by third parties. If my Bulls can't meet the standard then yes, we should be dropped down too.

That said, USF plays at a stadium owned by another entity, the TSA, so IIRC, our "butts in seats" numbers are typically more valid than those of schools that own and thus control their stadiums, because the TSA counts attendees at USF games and can report those numbers without USF being able to massage them.

I couldn't find data on USF football ticket revenue so it includes all sports. I know what ODU brings in from basketball though and even if 100% of USF's ticket revenue came from football we're still bringing in more per person. Frankly though, I don't care about USF or how they support their programs or how many people attend their games. That's their problem and maybe the AAC's. Not mine or the NCAA's. This conversation is purely for dick measuring on message boards, IMO. As Cyniclone stated there are other measures of support and by many of those measurements USF is not hitting the mark for their station. Do you support the same for Div I basketball? We could force a lot of programs down to Div II or make another subdivision as we have in FB. It would frankly make more sense than the FB proposal because the argument that the number of Div I basketball teams has become unwieldy is a lot stronger than the same argument for FBS football, which as I stated earlier is the only legitimate reason for the NCAA to step in and put these kind of restrictions on membership. Otherwise it's an issue for the school to tackle and of course message board fodder.