(08-26-2019 06:27 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(08-26-2019 05:25 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

(08-26-2019 04:29 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(08-26-2019 02:49 PM)Pounder Wrote:  

(08-04-2019 06:15 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  They have the $38 million events center built in 2007 and their $2.5 million baseball stadium built in 2013. Those are recent investments in athletics that just say, "We are a D1 school."

Just because somebody overbuilt doesn't mean they can survive what they built. A 30,000 seat stadium and a post-closure renovation did not save or revive U of the Pacific football, for instance.

Of course, the audit matters. My observation is the facilities can't bail out anyone without fans or boosters to help.

When the Pacific football team was disbanded in 1995, the Stadium had been in existence for 45 years. Completely different from Chicago State. The basketball facility is only 12 years old and it is paid for. Chicago State is not dropping basketball. So comparing Pacific to Chicago State does not work.

The facilities are assets. It is better to have the facilities than to not have them. There are many schools that would love to have their events center as their on-campus basketball arena.

I'm sure there are and I'm sure they could pack more than 400 people in the 7,000 seat arena. They have the cavern because some state senator allocated funds from the Illinois Treasury to pay for the whole thing, oh and he put his name on it too.

Exactly. The state paid for it and the state senator that pushed it through got his name on the building. Tells you a lot about the state of Illinois. The point is, they have it, now how do they get the fans to show up? They have averaged over 1,000 per game in the past, as recently as the 2015-2016 season, when they averaged 1,091 fans. That season they drew 1,957 for UMKC, 1,902 for UTRGV, 1,783 for GCU, 1,733 for Valpo and 1,703 for WIU.

So the immediate goal should be to get attendance to 1,000 per game. There were 44 D1 schools last season that averaged under 1,000 per game. So they are not alone in that regard. Fixing their basketball program and improving enrollment is just part of the work-in-progress that the school is going through.

"Attendance" numbers are funny. Chicago State has never played in front of 1700 people against GCU. The most might have been 500, with 400 of those being GCU students/alumni/fans and/or player families.