Thought you all here would enjoy.

From the great Marquette blog Paint Touches:

http://painttouches.com/2013/08/21/compa...ttendance/

No comparison especially after Louisville leaves and they add ECU, Tulane and Tulsa in their place.

Wow!

There are so many factual attendance errors in that chart, where'd he get those numbers? On both sides the American and Big East.

Official average attendances from the NCAA:
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/m_basketba...d/2013.pdf

School (Conference, # of home games) - Average Attendance
Louisville (American, 16) - 21,571 *
Creighton (Big East, 17) - 17,155
Memphis (American, 18) - 16,336
Marquette (Big East, 16) - 15,033
Georgetown (Big East, 17) - 10,911
Connecticut (American, 16) - 10,728
Xavier (Big East, 15) - 9,781
Cincinnati (American, 18) - 9,253
Villanova (Big East, 16) - 8,022
Butler (Big East, 16) - 7,899
Providence (Big East, 18) - 7,772
Depaul (Big East, 17) - 7,681
St John's (Big East, 17) - 7,330
Seton Hall (Big East, 17) - 7,035
Temple (American, 17) - 5,917
South Florida (American, 18) - 5,389
Rutgers (American, 16) - 4,922 *
Central Florida (American, 20) - 4,523
Houston (American, 18) - 3,707
Southern Methodist (American, 14) - 3,443

*- Departs next year
Future Additions:
Tulsa (American, 14) - 4,580
East Carolina (American, 21) - 4,659
Tulane (American, 19) - 1,851

My guess is schools moving up will see a bump in both conferences, while the holdovers in both will likely see declines as marquee names will be off their conference slates going forward.

the chart was 5 year average which I would assume is correct.

I think actually for USF, they'll see a bump up in attendance- if for nothing else, the game with UCF should be a sell out.

As for us, I think some of our OOC schedules will improve, thus we may see instead of a 3000 attendance game, more of a 10000 attendance game, which will help our attendance quite frankly more than the decrease in not playing certain Big East Schools that left.

Five year averages are nice - but they can hide trends... like UConn and UCF attendance slides (which coincides with their sanctions) or that Georgetown saw a spike from their Final Four run and have been sliding since or vice versa Creighton increasing its attendance by nearly a third over the last couple years is masked.

People make fun of Tulane's attendance, but given their newly remodeled 80 y/o fieldhouse finally got rid of wooden benches last year replacing them with roughly 2,500 chairback seats plus a bleacher student section - it hasn't been a facility for off campus fans to want to experience. This summer they're adding conveniences like concession stands and restrooms, new scoreboard and technology... so there will likely be boosts ahead, but it's not as if there is a lot of room to improve without expansion and playing their BIG games at the NBA-sized New Orleans Arena (or whatever they call it these days) next to the Superdome.

(08-22-2013 09:19 AM)IceJus10 Wrote:  Five year averages are nice - but they can hide trends... like UConn and UCF attendance slides (which coincides with their sanctions) or that Georgetown saw a spike from their Final Four run and have been sliding since or vice versa Creighton increasing its attendance by nearly a third over the last couple years is masked.

People make fun of Tulane's attendance, but given their newly remodeled 80 y/o fieldhouse finally got rid of wooden benches last year replacing them with roughly 2,500 chairback seats plus a bleacher student section - it hasn't been a facility for off campus fans to want to experience. This summer they're adding conveniences like concession stands and restrooms, new scoreboard and technology... so there will likely be boosts ahead, but it's not as if there is a lot of room to improve without expansion and playing their BIG games at the NBA-sized New Orleans Arena (or whatever they call it these days) next to the Superdome.

that's fine you can say that, but you can't say that it had a lot of factual errors on it.

it will be interesting to see what the attendance is like for the AAC this year.

(08-22-2013 09:19 AM)IceJus10 Wrote:  People make fun of Tulane's attendance,

Something people forget about Tulane and Rice etc is that people who go to those schools broadly speaking don't care about college sports. If you got into Tulane or Rice (or Vanderbilt), you had other options--if you wanted to root root root for your school, you'd have gone somewhere else. So there's not the same alumni pressure as there is at a lot of schools.

Obviously, people at 17 and 27 and 37 and 47 don't have the same priorities, but it's a big factor.

(08-21-2013 02:46 PM)aughnanure Wrote:  Thought you all here would enjoy.

From the great Marquette blog Paint Touches:

http://painttouches.com/2013/08/21/compa...ttendance/

Well, the C-USA members' attendance will increase with UConn, Cincy, and Temple every year. Plus SMU and Houston are renovating their arenas, USF just renovated theirs. Temple's has been increasing and will continue to. X's will grow with the Big East slate.

(08-22-2013 09:19 AM)IceJus10 Wrote:  Five year averages are nice - but they can hide trends...

So in other words, there are no factual errors, which you claimed in your other post.

(08-22-2013 09:33 AM)stever20 Wrote:  it will be interesting to see what the attendance is like for the AAC this year.

This.

Since Tulane has been the subject of some comment on this thread, I will respond.

It was in 1989 that I first discussed Tulane's need for a new basketball arena. Perry Clark, the then-just-hired head basketball coach, said that he expected a new or significantly-expanded arena in "about 6 or 8 years" -- 1995 to 1997. Well, we're now 16-to-18 years past that. Of course, Tulane and New Orleans have had some other issues to deal with in the mean time, but still. A facility that holds 3,600 and is smaller than many high school gyms is simply not going to be taken seriously by many recruits -- even recruits that are not necessarily on track for the NBA.

At least we now (as of September 2011) have a dedicated practice facility. The Hertz Center is actually very impressive and represents something Tulane never, ever had until 2 years ago. And the tiny arena has just undergone a thorough renovation. So there is some sign of hope.

(08-22-2013 09:19 AM)IceJus10 Wrote:  Five year averages are nice - but they can hide trends... like UConn and UCF attendance slides (which coincides with their sanctions) or that Georgetown saw a spike from their Final Four run and have been sliding since or vice versa Creighton increasing its attendance by nearly a third over the last couple years is masked.

People make fun of Tulane's attendance, but given their newly remodeled 80 y/o fieldhouse finally got rid of wooden benches last year replacing them with roughly 2,500 chairback seats plus a bleacher student section - it hasn't been a facility for off campus fans to want to experience. This summer they're adding conveniences like concession stands and restrooms, new scoreboard and technology... so there will likely be boosts ahead, but it's not as if there is a lot of room to improve without expansion and playing their BIG games at the NBA-sized New Orleans Arena (or whatever they call it these days) next to the Superdome.

Odd comments . . .

Did you read the link? It mentions that the only team that has seen declining attendance every year in the 5-year period (2009-13) is Marquette.

Five year averages are actually designed to minimize the impact of one year anomalies like the ones at UConn and UCF. For example, when its sanctions' year is eliminated UConn averaged 12,100 in the other 4 years. That's only 300 different than its 5-year average. Hardly worth mentioning. Same thing with UCF. Changes by only about 250 when the sanctions' year is not included.

Georgetown's Final Four season was in 2007 and is not part of this 5-year average. Neither is the year after when their attendance jumped by about 2000 per game. Their attendance actually improved for 2 years after 2007. I'm not sure what we can attribute that to, but I hardly think that 2009's attendance was directly tied to the Final Four 2 years earlier. And how has Georgetown's attendance been sliding since 2007? Their attendance has been better than 2007 every year since then. It's dropped for the past 2 years, but those 2 years have still been far better than 2007. You seem to be implying that Georgetown's attendance is related to a decline in performance since 2007. But Georgetown's performance declined only in 2010 and 2011 when their attendance remained over 12000, but attendance declined in 2012 and 2013 when Georgetown was outstanding on the court, In fact, Georgetown experienced its lowest attendance in 2013 despite coming off an outstanding season in 2012, despite winning the Big East regular season in 2013, and despite having the national Player of the Year in 2013. The 5-year average actually does a nice job of representing what attendance has been like at Georgetown.

Creighton's increase over the last few years is a mirage. Two years ago in 2011, Creighton had its lowest attendance in the past 8 years (13,500). last year they had their highest (17,200). So yes, they jumped by about a third if you only look at those 2 years. But if you look at the longer term trend, they have been pretty consistently been right around 15K. The 13,5 and 17,2 simply represent the normal fluctuations of highs and lows around that midpoint. Obviously attendance gets a bounce (the past 2 years) when a team has a first team All American and wins its conference in back-to-back seasons. But the 15,500 5-year reported in the OP is actually the best representation of what the long term trend has been at Creighton, not the extremes of 17,2 or 13,5.

It's funny how people use facilities as an excuse for programs being down. Duke plays in a 75 year old facility that hasn't been touched in 25 years. It has many uncomfortable bleacher seats and no luxury boxes. Yet watching a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium is considered to be one of the great experiences in college basketball. Kansas and Indiana both also play in old, outdated facilities and yet they too have 2 of the elite programs in college basketball.

(08-22-2013 12:01 PM)SouthPhillyFall Wrote:  

(08-21-2013 02:46 PM)aughnanure Wrote:  Thought you all here would enjoy.

From the great Marquette blog Paint Touches:

http://painttouches.com/2013/08/21/compa...ttendance/

Well, the C-USA members' attendance will increase with UConn, Cincy, and Temple every year. Plus SMU and Houston are renovating their arenas, USF just renovated theirs. Temple's has been increasing and will continue to. X's will grow with the Big East slate.

Why will attendance for the CUSA teams improve as a result of the change in schedule?

In 2005, CUSA still had Memphis, they had Louisville, a Final Four team, they had the Bog Huggins' Cincinnati program going to its 14th straight tournament, they had Marquette just 2 years off its Final Four run, and strong programs at Depaul, UAB, and Charlotte. They were a deeper basketball conference than this year's AAC. Here were that attendance numbers that year for AAC schools who were CUSA members back then:

Louisville - 18,700
Cincinnati - 11,300
Memphis - 9,600
ECU - 4,800
Houston - 4,200
USF - 3,200
Tulane - 1,800

In other words, the teams who draw big crowds, drew big back then. The programs that suck eggs, sucked back then too. The schedule was not a factor. It's the quality of the programs that mattered then and matter now. The schedule won't be any better this year than it was back then. In fact, it's probably worse this year.

I should note for anyone who thinks that having a competitive team will make a difference. . . While it obviously will to some degree, Houston actually had a pretty good team that year with a winning record both in conference and OOC. They had big wins over Louisville, Memphis, Missouri and LSU. Despite that, their attendance was still awful.

A major point about attendance with Melky's comparison, They had 14 teams, and played 16 teams. So only played 3 teams home and home, so not all schools were guaranteed to play at home. You miss 5 teams per year. In the AAC on the other hand(and it works for us as well), USF is guaranteed to have home dates with UConn, Cincy, Temple, and Memphis. Not to mention UCF. This is one thing that makes me wonder for the AAC if you see them going 20 conference game schedule next year, and still keep the true round robin.

So like Houston, they didn't play DePaul, Marquette, Cincy, Charlotte, or ECU at home. That's 4 of the 6 strong teams that you mentioned. The 3 teams they played home and away that year- TCU, USF, and So Miss.

Do Big East schools have any interest in a MBB "Conference Challenge" against Any other league that's Not already involved in a "challenge"?

On the AAC board, that question was put to our fans and of course the answer was Big East in a landslide. So I'm just wondering who would the BE pick for that sort of thing. I'm guessing ACC or B1G, but of course they're already paired-up with each other.

I think most of the Big East fans would prefer either Pac-12 (especially since Fox already has some of the rights) or Big Ten (which Fox owns half the Big Ten Network).

I think it's a joke to say we're going to base our challenge just strictly on Fox.. I do think going vs the AAC might not be that bad, especially since SMU just got a top 5 recruit and looks like they're going to be for real. It'd get us at least some time on ESPN which we can't discount. It would get us some good OOC games at home for FS1 which is good as well. The AAC is going to be a really good conference- I think a challenge with them would be better than what we have been having with the SEC quite frankly.

I don't see Big 10 agreeing to a challenge, and I don't see the connection at all with the Pac 12. I think Pac 12 would do a challenge with MWC over us quite frankly as well.

(08-26-2013 01:46 PM)Jet915 Wrote:  I think most of the Big East fans would prefer either Pac-12 (especially since Fox already has some of the rights) or Big Ten (which Fox owns half the Big Ten Network).

I don't think the B1G would trade the ACC for any other league, except (possibly) the PAC.

A PAC/Big East challenge would be interesting.

Agreed that working out the TV-rights is the most complex part of the arrangement. It just blows my mind how power the media has over stuff like that nowadays.

(08-26-2013 01:57 PM)stever20 Wrote:  I don't see Big 10 agreeing to a challenge, and I don't see the connection at all with the Pac 12. I think Pac 12 would do a challenge with MWC over us quite frankly as well.

I agree the B1G isn't going to happen.

PAC would never willingly put itself on the same level as the Mtn. That's about as likely as an "SEC/C-USA challenge".

(08-26-2013 02:06 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  

(08-26-2013 01:57 PM)stever20 Wrote:  I don't see Big 10 agreeing to a challenge, and I don't see the connection at all with the Pac 12. I think Pac 12 would do a challenge with MWC over us quite frankly as well.

I agree the B1G isn't going to happen.

PAC would never willingly put itself on the same level as the Mtn. That's about as likely as an "SEC/C-USA challenge".

in Basketball, the Mtn is at the same level as the Pac 12 now. Heck, last few years, MWC has been ahead quite frankly of the P12. It's nothing like CUSA at all quite frankly.