(01-14-2015 06:54 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(01-14-2015 12:11 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(01-14-2015 12:03 AM)Rick Gerlach Wrote:  

(01-13-2015 11:16 PM)At Ease Wrote:  

(01-13-2015 09:43 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  Winning.

More precisely, winning is, to a nearly complete extent, a sufficient condition for being exciting. In the short term, it is probably possible to be exciting without winning, but in the long run, winning is what attracts.

If winning was the definition of excitement, one would have expected the attendance to have picked up over these last 2.5 years.

Recent experiences over at Reckling might best exhibit the disconnect between the two.

For the fans who come, winning is generally more exciting than losing.

The attendance issue, IMO, is more about getting people to care enough to show up. The issue isn't likely to be whether they are excited by winning (or not), but whether they care enough to come or whether they have other priorities.

I come unless I have a family conflict. With all three of my kids heavily into athletics at this point in time, I have more conflicts than I used to. There will come a time when that (sadly) is no longer an issue, and my attendance will be at 100% again. As it is, my kids love coming to the games when they aren't playing in one themselves.

Apart from that, I'm not going to watch another game on TV, or plan activities that don't involve my kids. Saturday work is easy enough to schedule to avoid an issue.

Rice fans who care either will come regardless of the opponent, or will be more likely to come if they think we may win.

Rice alumni who don't really care need a bandwagon to join to show up (read: winning often) or an invitation from classmates.

Non-Rice sports fans are much the same, but add a 3rd reason to come (1. we're playing their school, 2. invited by a Rice friend, 3. chance to join a winning bandwagon), but in theory they have lots of TV games and their own schools to compete for their interest.

In pretty much every case, the chance to root for a winning team is going to appeal to the casual or non-Rice fan (the latter either adopting Rice or rooting for his school when they are in town).

Unless you personally know a player on the team, there isn't much incentive for a casual fan to adopt a losing team to watch.

Rice starts in a hole in that regard. 29 straight losing seasons and 45 plus years between bowls takes time to overcome (this is what Antarius alludes to when he says friends ask him whether we won any games this year (or last year), as we prepare for bowl games).

We really do need to continue winning more than we lose if we want to reach casual Rice fans or any non-Rice interest. People are already too busy watching the Big 12 or SEC on TV (or in person).

Got news for you, Rick-- the casual fan who watches the Big 12 or SEC on TV will not notice-- and could care less-- if Rice posts another 6 consecutive seasons of 7+ wins and Bowl appearances if the only teams we can beat are nobodies (in the college football landscape) ranked outside the Top 75. Simply racking up wins against the dredge of college football is not going to get us anywhere that we're not now. You keep touting our unprecedented 3 year run (which is in reality been a 2 1/2 year run), but we have just one quality win during that span....and it was against a G5 team 99% of the football watching public doesn't care about (outside of watching a movie about the program's rebuild from the horrific plane crash).

I'm not sure what your point is here.

It's not that we don't need to win.

Is it that no one really cares unless the majority of our games are against P5 schools? If so, that means our attendance will improve when we get into a P5 conference (I'll agree with that by the way)?

Of course we won't get into a P5 conference unless our attendance and fan interest improve. Kind of a Catch 22.

I know it's not to play all our games on the road to fool people into thinking the great crowds are there to see us.

All I said in the post above was that, generally speaking, more people will show up if we're winning games (winning more than we're losing, and hence getting bowl recognition) than if we are losing the majority of our games.

It's not that controversial a topic/concept. At Ease (correctly) has pointed out that Rice attendance is not good even when we're winning. I just don't see the alternative (losing) as a particularly helpful strategy with regard to attendance.

I'm not arguing that we're going to bring in tons of casual fans, but even non-SEC, non Big 12 casual (non-Rice) fans would rather watch an SEC or Big 12 game in the comfort of their home on TV than come to Rice Stadium to watch a losing team. My last sentence above was about casual non-Rice fans, not die-hard SEC-rooters.

Rick, my point is pretty crystal clear and has been consistent; you are simply choosing to ignore it. You keep talking about win totals in pointing to our "unprecedented" 3-year run, and concluding that we continue to make progress, and appear (in almost every one of your posts) to conveniently ignore the quality (or more to the point, total lack of quality) of wins over this "historically successful" period. My point is that unless we can start beating teams ranked in the Top 50/75 (let alone Top 25 - 35), and consistently compete with teams ranked in the Top 35 - 50-- and not simply rack up 7+ wins each season against teams ranked outside the Top 75 (with the majority coming against teams ranked in the bottom quartile of the FBS division), the perception of Rice nationally and to those not following Rice or CUSA football will not change. No one else will notice and no one will care.

As for the historically unprecedented claim-- yes, that's true in terms of win totals and bowl appearances, but that's only because the level of competition has markedly decreased and virtually every team with a winning record now goes bowling. We had plenty of Rice teams over the past 50 years, particularly those in the '70s and '90s, that competed far better against quality and elite competition than we have over the past 3 year run.