Only three MAC teams played at home, but i'm surprised to see NIU had the top attendance when Toledo was playing a top 25, Western Michigan had a winning record, and we were playing arguably the worst 1-AA team in the nation and both teams were winless.


Northern Illinois - 20,936
Toledo - 20,096
Western Michigan - 19,768

How can Toledo not be sold out with Frenso, MAC doesn't get that many marque games as it is.

templefootballfan Wrote:How can Toledo not be sold out with Frenso, MAC doesn't get that many marque games as it is.

Toledo was 1-1, and in a city of fairweather fans right now all they care about is OSU. Plus a ticket was $34 a piece.

utpotts Wrote:

templefootballfan Wrote:How can Toledo not be sold out with Frenso, MAC doesn't get that many marque games as it is.

Toledo was 1-1, and in a city of fairweather fans right now all they care about is OSU. Plus a ticket was $34 a piece.

I would give my right arm to see Fresno in Huskie Stadium.
Looks like I have nothing to worry about.

huskie1stdown Wrote:

utpotts Wrote:

templefootballfan Wrote:How can Toledo not be sold out with Frenso, MAC doesn't get that many marque games as it is.

Toledo was 1-1, and in a city of fairweather fans right now all they care about is OSU. Plus a ticket was $34 a piece.

I would give my right arm to see Fresno in Huskie Stadium.
Looks like I have nothing to worry about.

Probably not. FYI, Illinois just signed a home and home with Fresno.

Wasn't that Fresno game at some ungodly hour of the night. I caught the end of it after a day/night at the bar. It must not have started until what 9? Thats going to chase away alot of the old screws who don't like to be up and out that late.

emsg06 Wrote:Wasn't that Fresno game at some ungodly hour of the night. I caught the end of it after a day/night at the bar. It must not have started until what 9? Thats going to chase away alot of the old screws who don't like to be up and out that late.

It started at 8:20 pm and ended at 12:30am. It was a long night.

Attendance has been down ever since the first year of mid-week football games in November.

I have to wonder too after watching what the Mountain West is able to do this year in football as a 9 team conference and what the MVC has done in recent years as a 10 team conference if the MAC would be a lot better off with 10 teams.

Buffalo
Akron
Ohio
Toledo
Bowling Green
Miami
Ball State
Central Mich.
Western Mich.
Northern Ill.

This way you play a round robin schedule and if anyone is ranked like Ball State could be this year every MAC school would get a shot at them. Good for rivalries.

Airport KC Wrote:Attendance has been down ever since the first year of mid-week football games in November.

I have to wonder too after watching what the Mountain West is able to do this year in football as a 9 team conference and what the MVC has done in recent years as a 10 team conference if the MAC would be a lot better off with 10 teams.

Buffalo
Akron
Ohio
Toledo
Bowling Green
Miami
Ball State
Central Mich.
Western Mich.
Northern Ill.

This way you play a round robin schedule and if anyone is ranked like Ball State could be this year every MAC school would get a shot at them. Good for rivalries.

Like politics, sports are local. Conferences w/ a sensible footprint and consistency do well. Look at the strides the SBC has made since establishing a logical presence.

I cheer for all the MAC teams, but we all know the MAC is too heavy from a couple of states. An impartial assessment would say that we pare down.

I'd change one team on your list.

DrTorch Wrote:

Airport KC Wrote:Attendance has been down ever since the first year of mid-week football games in November.

I have to wonder too after watching what the Mountain West is able to do this year in football as a 9 team conference and what the MVC has done in recent years as a 10 team conference if the MAC would be a lot better off with 10 teams.

Buffalo
Akron
Ohio
Toledo
Bowling Green
Miami
Ball State
Central Mich.
Western Mich.
Northern Ill.

This way you play a round robin schedule and if anyone is ranked like Ball State could be this year every MAC school would get a shot at them. Good for rivalries.

Like politics, sports are local. Conferences w/ a sensible footprint and consistency do well. Look at the strides the SBC has made since establishing a logical presence.

I cheer for all the MAC teams, but we all know the MAC is too heavy from a couple of states. An impartial assessment would say that we pare down.

I'd change one team on your list.

If we want to be a BCS conference we are going to have to pare down.

Airport KC Wrote:If we want to be a BCS conference we are going to have to pare down.

Kit Cat, we will never be a BCS conference. NEVER.

KC, I don't think becoming BCS conf is realistic. Now filling stadiums & big neutral site games with few better bowl games & soldout Ford field for CG would be start.

Gooch Wrote:

Airport KC Wrote:If we want to be a BCS conference we are going to have to pare down.

Kit Cat, we will never be a BCS conference. NEVER.

Ditto.

It will never happen because of money. MAC schools will never have enough to compete consistently and the BCS schools will never dilute their share of the BCS payday by allowing more teams.

-Dan

MAC will always have Ohio, Miami, Kent State, Akron, Toledo, BGSU, CMU, WMU, EMU,Ball State and Northern Illinois.
Buffalo, and Temple have good location and markets, but their options are getting less and less. Temple likely brings everything to the MAC after 2010 or drops to FCS to play with Charlotte, Georgia State, Old Dominion and others.

utpotts Wrote:

emsg06 Wrote:Wasn't that Fresno game at some ungodly hour of the night. I caught the end of it after a day/night at the bar. It must not have started until what 9? Thats going to chase away alot of the old screws who don't like to be up and out that late.

It started at 8:20 pm and ended at 12:30am. It was a long night.

Screw ESPN. I was at the game it was the most uneven, drawn out, slow paced football game ever. between all the media timeouts, replays, injuries and sloth half the folks lost interest even though it was a really good game (other than the lack of flow). The crowd was pretty involved but would have been nuts had they actually let them play instead of stopping to sell ads every 4 minutes.

Attendance at Toledo has declined ever since they started showing most of the big games on TV. either folks stay home to watch or they come and leave early, tired, and bored cause they spend most of the night waiting for play to resume.

If that game had been played in 3 hours everybody would be back next week.

Get rid of replay, now. it sucks. takes forever. kills the flow of the game. makes the refs chicken (let the booth make the tough call). and gets it wrong half the time anyway. it's horrible.

Control the media. ESPN pays us next to nothing to televise our games and turns em into adathons, often at off hours on weekdays. their broadcasts kill crowds and hurt homefield advantage. if we play on tv let's at least push from some limits on media timeouts and length of timeouts. presently, it's ridiculous. three people around me were sleeping during the OT against fresno. it was high drama. a great contest. but after tailgating, a late tv start, and 4 1/2 hours of choppy play and media/replay breaks some of us were just over it.

1st step would be get rid of OT, dumbnest thing NCAA did. they turned 6 ties into 50 OT games a season

pono Wrote:Attendance at Toledo has declined ever since they started showing most of the big games on TV. either folks stay home to watch or they come and leave early, tired, and bored cause they spend most of the night waiting for play to resume.

I've got to disagree. Our largest attended game ever was 36,852 for Navy in 2001. It wasn't on national TV, but it was on locally in the Toledo area and it was on live as this was before BCSN.

We've had games against Bowling Green with 30-32K in attendance and either ESPN or ESPN2 televising. 31,981 on a Tuesday night ESPN game against BG in 2004. 34,900 for a 2000 game against Marshall on ESPN.

Our attendance really started to change around 2003 or 2004, and seem to make the biggest hit in 2006. I don't agree though that you can blame TV for it.

I have to say, the Toledo attendance figure is a disappointment.

rocketfootball Wrote:

pono Wrote:Attendance at Toledo has declined ever since they started showing most of the big games on TV. either folks stay home to watch or they come and leave early, tired, and bored cause they spend most of the night waiting for play to resume.

I've got to disagree. Our largest attended game ever was 36,852 for Navy in 2001. It wasn't on national TV, but it was on locally in the Toledo area and it was on live as this was before BCSN.

We've had games against Bowling Green with 30-32K in attendance and either ESPN or ESPN2 televising. 31,981 on a Tuesday night ESPN game against BG in 2004. 34,900 for a 2000 game against Marshall on ESPN.

Our attendance really started to change around 2003 or 2004, and seem to make the biggest hit in 2006. I don't agree though that you can blame TV for it.

nah, i think you made my point. our big attendance figures were from 2000-2003 with it in decline ever since. these past 5 years are when we've had a lot of espn games, plus the addition of replay. its hurt the flow of big games and moved around some game times. plus, espn telecasts intially bring people out as a novelty and new thing, but over time they hurt attendance unless you just have great support.

i especially think the espnu games suck cause it doesn't get shown outside the sports bars but it still means endless media timeouts, refs taking twice as long on replays, and late or midweek gametimes.

maybe its just me, but i really prefer attending games that aren't on tv. if the fresno game was in the cold we'd have had an eastern crowd by the time the fourth quarter finally rolled around

We had the most ESPN games in 2004 with 7, but only 2 of them were at home. The majority of our nationally televised games have been played on the road.

From 2000 through 2007 we have had 31 games on the ESPN Networks, with just 9 of those games played at the Glass Bowl.

2007 - 3 ESPN Games with only 1 at home (highest attended home game of the season)
2006 - 6 ESPN Games with 3 at home (Actually our 3 highest attended home games in 2006)
2005 - 5 ESPN Games with only 1 at home (20,912 for the game played with cold temps and some snow - pretty average crowd compared to the other games in 2005)
2004 - 7 ESPN Games with 2 at home (one was the highest attended game of the season and the other was average compared to the rest of the home games)
2003 - 3 ESPN Games all on the road
2002 - 2 ESPN Games all on the road
2001 - 3 ESPN Games with 2 at home (one was the MACC Game against Marshall and was poorly attended, but was a weeknight and we were given about a week and a half to sell tickets for it)
2000 - 2 ESPN Games with 1 at home (2nd highest attended game of the season)


Back in 2000 we actually had over 30K for a game against I-AA Weber State. No way a I-AA game in 2008 gets even 25K now, and I'm talking with no TV. The main difference is that there is not a buzz about this team being so good and supposed to run through the MAC like back in 2000 and 2001, which were our two best home attendance averages ever. 2001 we averaged over 30K, despite having 2 home games on one of the ESPN Networks and a 3rd on TV 5 in Toledo. That 3rd game on TV 5 in Toledo was the Navy game, which happens to be our single game home all-time home attendance record of 36,852. I refused to believe that TV is hurting our attendance very much at all.