(04-19-2013 11:36 PM)arkstfan Wrote: If the characteristic is the population of the large market is generally indifferent to the product there isn't a lot of value.
Quote:Large city population and the presence of pro teams hurt attendance. As much as a big school helps attendance, a big city hurts attendance. Medium sized college towns (100,000-500,000) filled their stadiums to 83.7% of capacity (50,000 per game). The same success was shown in larger college towns (500,000-1 million) with 83% attendance (44,000) and small college towns (less than 100,000) 80% (33,000). All this despite sporting average football teams (all hovering around .500). Colleges in cities (1 to 4 million people) attracted less than 40,000 fans to their games, only 75% attendance – below the NCAA average. The performance was worse in the biggest of cities (4 million+) whose colleges outperformed their competitors on the field – 58% W% – but similarly only drew 40,000 fans (70% of capacity).
http://winthropintelligence.com/2011/07/...rformance/
I don't buy this at all. It's a myth that is repeatedly perpetuated by those who want to promote the small, college town agenda. Let's take some examples.
Michigan has the largest stadiums in the country, which it fills ever year. It's only about 30 miles or so outside Detroit but technically not in the Detroit metro area. In the world of today's transportation, 30-40 miles is nothing. Michigan might as well be in downtown Detroit.
Penn State is out in the boondocks of central Pennsylvania. It too has one of the largest stadiums in the country, which it also routinely sells out. Is that because it's removed from a metro area? If you think so, you've never been to a Penn Stae game. The fans are all coming from metropolitan Philly and driving 4-5 hours to get to the game. Penn State would draw just as well if it were in downtown Philly.
Land grant colleges were not normally built in urban areas. They were funded to meet agricultural needs, which is why they are where they are. However, regardless of their locations, they are the state's flagship universities and are a focus of civic pride. They are old and long established with large numbers of alumni who support them with ticket purchases and outright donations. They have a football culture that in many cases goes back 100 years. It's this culture that drives the interest, not their locations.
In order to do a factual comparison, there would have to be an equal number of state flagships in big cities with pro football competition. But there aren't because that's not where most of the flagships are located. Given that flagships top the attendance lists, of course the list is going to show schools in small towns. But it's not cause & effect. It's simply a factor of where the flagships are located.
The idea that a school has o be located in a TV "market" simply ignores everything we know about markets. Professional franchises command markets because their identity coincides with their city. But this is not true of universities. Flagships in particular have statewide identities. What is important about them is that they deliver the big city markets within their states because that's where much of their alumni is located and because it's where much of their stae's population is located. The ability to deliver a market is what matters, not whether a team is physically located within that market. For a flagship, the market is the entire state, not the home town. The fact that networks track viewership by urban markets is irrelevant to the fact that flagship markets are the state and is not broken up by urban market.
If schools in or near big cities with pro teams can't draw fans, someone's going to have to explain to me how Washington and Arizona State draw 60,000 fans in competition with pro franchises in their immediate vicinity, how Florida & Texas A&M despite being within just a couple of hours of Jacksonville and Houston respectively. The 90,000 fans that each draws aren't coming from Gainesville and College Station exclusively. People today actually know how to get in a car and drive somewhere they want to go even if it's not in the immediate vicinity.
Georgia is only a little over an hour from Atlanta. Are you telling me that the power of the NFL is so great that it stifles any interst in local college teams but when you get over the city line, the NFL loses it's influence? I somehow think that a lot of those 90,000 fans at Georgia games are driving down from Atlanta. LSU is a similar distance from New Orleans and also draws 90,000. Same is true for Notre Dame (Chicago & Indianapolis) and Missouri (St. Louis).
And why are there flagships in great college towns that don't draw 80-100K? Orw even 60K? Ole Miss in Oxford doesn't draw any better than Pitt despite the power of the SEC. North Carolina in Chapel Hill doesn't draw any better than Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Oregon in Eugene doesn't draw any better than Stanford in the Bay Area. These 3 aren't examples of good college towns, they are great college towns, 3 of the best you can find in America.
Te notion that it all boils down to geography and the NFL is simplistic and ignores every other factor that goes into building a program successful enough to command large scale interest in attendance and TV viewership.
IMO, institutional culture and tradition has as much to do with explaining the success of Alabama and Notre Dame in college football as it does with explaining the Yankees and Red Sox in Major League Baseball.